The Production of Culprits: From Deportability to Detainability in the Aftermath of “Homeland Security”

The Queer Politics of Migration: Reflections on “Illegality” and Incorrigibility

“…The transparent sarcasm notwithstanding, these sorts of gestures could only uphold anew the presumed sanctity of the tasks of counter-terrorism that had by now become the paramount mandate of the immigration authorities. And they reaffirmed the dominant insinuation of a racialized logic of suspicion and culpability which figured Arab and other Muslim non-citizens as de facto enemy aliens (De Genova, 2007a;cf. Ahmad, 2002cf.…”

“…As the objects of an unprecedented and escalating climate of securitization, migrants have been increasingly depicted over the last several years as possessing a dubious agency that is unsavoury at best, if not plainly dangerous (De Genova, 2007a). Abjection is an especially apt interpretive frame through which to appreciate the complexities of the migrant condition, precisely because migrants are always-already within the space of the state and can never really be entirely expelled.…”

“…Indeed, the very idea of "immigrants' rights" instructively exposes some of the constitutive contradictions of the regime of citizenship itself and of "rights," more generally (De Genova, 2007a, 2010a, 2010b. As I would like to explicate in this concluding section, what I have designated to be the queer politics of migration is articulated alongside of-but fundamentally at odds with-this vexed concept of "immigrants' rights."…”

“…This particularly repressive attempted legislative ambush explicitly conjoined its proposed criminalization of "illegal immigration" with the dominant metaphysics of antiterrorism, and overtly signalled its own condition of possibility under the aegis of what I have designated the Homeland Security State (De Genova, 2007a). In response, millions of migrants ("illegal" and "legal" alike), along with their often U.S.-citizen children, rallied and marched in protests across the United States, taking the country by storm repeatedly over a period of nearly two months (Baker-Cristales, 2009;Bloemraad & Trost, 2008;De Genova, 2009;Gonzales, 2009;Heiskanen, 2009;Hincapié, 2009;Johnson and Hing, 2007;Pulido, 2007;Robinson, 2006;Lazos Vargas, 2007;Voss & Bloemraad, n.d.).…”

Bodies Folded in Migrant Crypts: Dis/Ability and the Material Culture of Border-Crossing

“…Border practices have been sites of contestations and struggles over "who belongs and who doesn't," who is and is not allowed to move freely in transnational or national spaces. Embedded as they are in the bordering process, policing and security practices produce the irregularity and illegitimacy of the migrating subject, performing the illegality of the migrant and constituting the migrant as a "dangerous citizen" [47,48]. At the same time, the ontology of bordering practices simultaneously implies processes of dissidence and resistance [49].…”