Seeing beyond the State: The Population Control Movement and the Problem of Sovereignty

Connelly, Matthew

doi:10.1093/pastj/gtl016

Cited by 58 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Migration is often described as a "flow" which is shaped by immigration policy (Adamson, 2006;Doty, 1996a). Connelly (2006) highlights the centrality of mobility to immigration policy by noting that "efforts to shape the quantity, 'quality' and mobility of populations constitute the quintessential state-building project" (p. 198). At first glance this characterization may seem similar to the claims advanced by scholars whose principal focus is on the construction of national identity.…”

Section: The Effects Of Late Twentieth Century Us Immigration Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the border

Wiebel¹

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The focus of this project is to consider U.S. immigration policy as a critical domain in the political management of populations in advanced liberal states. Rather than seeking to understand how discourses over U.S. immigration policy function to construct identity (national, ethnic, and/or immigrant), this project seeks to understand how debates over U.S. immigration policy function to shape, manage, and direct the conduct of migrants, immigrants, and citizens. The project avoids the emphasis in much of the extant scholarship on U.S. immigration policy on the question of identity in favor of an ethos of investigation indebted to Foucault's concept of governmentality.Studies of governmentality eschew grand theories or unitary conceptions of the state in favor of empirical studies of techniques, programs, strategies and technologies that seek to guide, shape, and direct the conduct of others. While much of the interest of governmentality studies centers on mundane mechanisms that shape conduct, I argue that debates over immigration policy function as critical sites where the state is articulated into activities of government. The state, therefore, is not conceptualized as a source of power to be smashed. As such, policy debates are not mere deliberations by politicians and experts about the merits of particular courses of action; they are sites at which populations are made visible and particular mechanisms for shaping conduct are elevated.As such, the project attends to policy discussions featured as part of an overall strategic shift in U.S. immigration policy from apprehension to deterrence which began in the early 1990s. The new strategy sought to prevent migrants from entering the U.S. rather than apprehending them once they were here. Analyzing congressional hearings and floor debates, this project argues that discussions of immigration control policies (ranging from the enhanced border policing initiatives, to measures aimed at eliminating the employment and social services magnets, to official English legislation), function as part of a complex of programs, techniques, procedures through which authorities embody 2 and give effect to particular ways of governing that seek to manage the conduct of populations both within and outside of the United States. Abstract Approved: ____________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ii To Vesta iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project was a long time in the making. I would like to thank all those who helped me along the way. Special thanks to the Communication Studies Department at the University of Iowa who never gave up on me. I would like to particularly express my sincerest gratitude to my advisor David Depew for his encouragement, support, and intellectual guidance. Without his generosity and wisdom this project might never have come to fruition. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee. To David Hingstman for serving as my second reader and suggesting that I study immigration discourses. To Aimee Carrillo Rowe whose work on whiteness and anti-imm...

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Section: The Effects Of Late Twentieth Century Us Immigration Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the border

Wiebel¹

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“…Thus, the synergy of interests within and beyond Japan shaped Japanese participation in the international cooperation in family planning and the idea of Southeast Asia as the primary focus of Japan’s family planning packaged as development aid. On the one hand, this described Japan’s involvement in the global-scale biopolitics which in the 1960s and 1970s took a tangible form as family planning campaigns in the “Third World.” These campaigns, supported by what Connelly called the “population establishment” (2008), were a population control measure in the regions represented as “non-Western,” and were predicated on the simplistic notion that diverse and complex socioeconomic problems and underdevelopment were caused by rising birth rates and were thus fixable quickly through disciplining reproductive bodies in family planning schemes (Bashford 2014, 2008, 2006, Connelly 2008: 195-369, 2006a, 2006b, 2003, Demeny and McNicoll 2006, Symonds and Carder 1973). On the other hand, the world population problem from the 1920s onward “was as much about geopolitics as it was about biopolitics” (Bashford 2014: 3) because problems of overpopulation dovetailed with other interrelated issues, such as food, territory and resources, which required considerations of international diplomacy.…”

Section: International Cooperation In Family Planning In Cold War Asiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first is the geopolitics that participated in the dialogues of overpopulation and ultimately gave rise to international family planning initiatives during the period. As Alison Bashford (2014, 2008a, 2008b, 2006) and Matthew Connelly (2008, 2006a, 2006b) aptly articulate, while population governance was an inherent component of the biopolitics of modern society, geopolitics simultaneously shaped dialogues over population throughout the twentieth-century, precisely because population problems also dovetailed with issues that transcended state borders. In the 1960s, when contemporaries increasingly relied on the biopolitical solution to the world population problem and launched family planning initiatives as development aid in the so-called Third World, these initiatives, too, did not escape the influence of geopolitics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between the West and Asia: “Humanistic” Japanese Family Planning in the Cold War

Homei

2016

East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Jo

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This paper studies the formation of Japanese ventures in family planning deployed in various villages in Asia from the 1960s onward in the name of development aid. By critically examining how Asia became the priority area for Japan's international cooperation in family planning and by analyzing how the adjective "humanistic" was used to underscore the originality of Japan's family planning program overseas, the paper shows that visions of Japanese actors were directly informed by Japan's delicate position in Cold War geopolitics, between the imagined West represented by the United States and "underdeveloped" Asia, at a time when Japan was striving to (re-)establish its position in world politics and economics. Additionally, by highlighting subjectivities and intra-Asian networks centered on Japanese actors, the paper also aims to destabilize the current historiography on population control which has hitherto focused either on Western actors in the transnational population control movement or on non-Western "acceptors" subjected to the population control programs.

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“…24 As Matthew Connelly argued vis-à-vis population control, these organizations were part of an extraordinary network that also encompassed third world elites, national states, and intergovernmental agencies. 25 Contextualizing the nation furthermore entails taking full account of the internal divisions within it-geographical as well as physical. Daniel Speich accomplishes this by showing how differences in visions of modernization within Kenya shaped differences in political affiliation and eventually Kenyan politics.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%