GSGS 2400 Final

Sedentary Bias (Castles)

People should remain in the place or country where they were born, and that their identity and sense of self are inherently tied to that location. This is a bias because, when viewed through the lens of human history and international development, it contradicts the natural and historical tendency of people to move.

Structural Violence (Holmes)

Refers to the systematic and often invisible ways that social, political, and economic structures harm or disadvantage certain groups of people. It is deeply impersonal—no single individual is directly responsible—yet it is sustained by institutions, norms, and policies that create unequal access to resources, opportunities, and rights. This form of violence is cyclical and embedded within systems like education, employment, and immigration, where certain people are positioned to suffer due to their social status.

Symbolic Violence (Holmes)

Refers to the subtle and often unconscious ways that cultural symbols, social norms, and identity markers justify and normalize inequality. It operates through everyday understandings of who "belongs" in certain social positions—such as a CEO versus an undocumented Triqui farmworker—and makes these hierarchies appear natural or deserved. Through language, behavior, and social expectations, symbolic violence shapes how everyone interprets and accepts structural inequalities. It reinforces the idea that some people's suffering or exploitation is inevitable, legitimizing their lower position within the social structure without the need for overt force or coercion.

Agency (Castles)

the capacity of individuals to make their own choices and act independently, free from the constraints or expectations imposed by society and institutions. It reflects a person's ability to think and decide for themselves, rather than simply following social norms, structural pressures, or external influences

Structure (Castles)

Refers to the social, economic, political, and cultural systems into which individuals are born—systems that shape and constrain what is possible for them, often without their control. Includes the rules, institutions, and hierarchies that determine access to resources, opportunities, and mobility

Habitus (Holmes)

Refers to the deeply ingrained and embodied dispositions, habits, and ways of being that individuals develop through their social and historical experiences. It is an unconscious, embodied social practice—the way that social structures and cultural norms become internalized and expressed through the body, behavior, and perception. It structures not only how the body moves and exists in the world but also how individuals understand themselves and relate to others.

Bad Faith (Sartre)

Unconscious self-deception that leads to one's own exploitation or the exploitation of others.

Bare Life (Agamben)

Refers to the condition in which a person is reduced to their mere biological existence—stripped of rights, protections, and social recognition. In this state, individuals are dehumanized and exist outside the political and legal order, denied the forms of belonging that make one fully "human" in society. It reflects the paradox that society both grants and removes humanity: while laws and institutions define what it means to be human, they can also exclude certain people from those protections. Those living in a state of bare life—such as refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, prisoners, or the homeless—exist physically but are denied meaningful participation, dignity, and representation. They exist, but they do not truly live within the structures of social and political life.

Migration (Castles)

Refers to the movement of people from the Global South—those from poorer or "undesirable" countries—whose labor is undervalued and whose movement is often restricted. These migrants, often racialized and holding weaker passports, are seen as economically necessary but socially unwanted

Mobility (Castles)

the movement of people from the Global North—often white, wealthier individuals with powerful passports—whose movement is celebrated and associated with opportunity, freedom, and professional advancement

Labor Migration (Castles)

when people move for work, relocate to provide labor

State Sovereignty (Wendy Brown)

A nation-state has ultimate authority and control within its borders. Brown emphasizes that borders and walls often serve less as instruments of actual control and more as a theatre of sovereignty—a performance that dramatizes security and signals power.

Labor Power (De Genova)

one's future ability to work (the ultimate commodity)

Commodification of Labor (De Genova)

selling labor in exchange for wages, effectively turning the ability to work into a marketable product.

Commodity Fetishism (Marx)

we forget the labor that goes into all commodities, and we neglect the social relations we have with those who make our products

Intimate Economies (Vogt)

Where intimacy intersects with economic survival and protection; Protective Pairings. Refers to the ways that relationships, care, and social connections are created, managed, and negotiated within the context of migration. This concept focuses on the interactions that arise between migrants in spaces of transit, such as migrant shelters, clinics, or even moving freight trains. Unlike traditional notions of intimacy as private or sexual, intimate economies emphasize relational life and the practical, often temporary, encounters that shape survival, reciprocity, and strategies in the face of structural constraints.

Phantom States (Vogt)

State shows up to scare you and then retreats again

government serves a scare tactic (militarization) but does not provide collective goods or services

Citizens see the government but cannot feel its benefits

The US, for the last century, has not really been a phantom state

Protective Pairings (Vogt)

strategic partnerships formed along migration routes in which individuals rely on one another for safety, access to resources, and survival. These arrangements often involve reciprocity and mutual trust, such as watching someone's child, maintaining vigilance, or following rules to gain entry into migrant shelters. Protective pairings can also become more intimate, sometimes including sexual exchanges, but the defining feature is the strategic and survival-oriented nature of the relationship.

Protective Pairing Names (Vogt)

Jessenia and Abel

Jessiana held in captivity for a month, repeatedly drugged, raped, and ultimately impregnated (by Gordo).

Arterial Border (Vogt)

refers to the diffuse and mobile enforcement of state power along migrants' routes, extending beyond official national boundaries. Rather than existing only at formal checkpoints, the arterial border manifests through a network of surveillance, deportation systems, and enforcement infrastructures—on roads, railways, near shelters, and other transit spaces. (fluid, multidirectional, and contested nature of state bordering, enforcement follows migrants wherever they move; migrants adapt by creating new "arteries" or clandestine routes)

Social Death

Working: Technically alive, but it feels like you're dead - if you do die, you can be replaced immediately. Society decides whose lives are more expendable than others. similar to bare life

Primitive Accumulation (Marx)

refers to the historical process by which pre-capitalist modes of production were transformed into capitalist ones; process includes the privatization of common lands, dispossession of peasants, commodification of labor, and appropriation of resources through colonialism and state power.

Alienation

the life that you live becomes alien to you

Routine becomes monotonous, repetitive, boring

Border Externalization (Vonk)

the process by which a state extends its border-control practices beyond its own territorial boundaries by pressuring, funding, or partnering with other countries to stop migrants before they reach the state's physical border. This includes creating "arterial borders" (Vogt)—internalized checkpoints, patrols, and surveillance throughout a migrant's journey that can appear anywhere along key routes, effectively turning entire regions or countries into enforcement and deportation systems.

Southern Border Program (Vonk)

the U.S. policy of funding and pressuring Mexico to detain and deport migrants—especially Central Americans—before they reach the U.S. border. Beginning in 2014, it expanded Mexico's border militarization, shut down major routes like La Bestia, and made migration far more dangerous. The program effectively outsourced U.S. immigration enforcement, leading to a massive rise in deportations, including of children.

The Great Dispossession (Hickel)

refers to the long historical process beginning with European conquest and colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia, through which land, resources, and labor were systematically taken from Indigenous and peasant communities. This large-scale expropriation enabled the commodification of land in Europe and created the massive transfer of wealth that laid the foundation for capitalism as the dominant mode of production. Often described as "accumulation by dispossession" (Harvey), this process extracted wealth from the Global South and concentrated it in the Global North, producing the global inequalities that structure the world economy today.

Border Militarization (Vonk)

the expansion and intensification of military-style enforcement at and around a state's borders. This includes deploying federal agencies (e.g., Border Patrol, ICE), increasing surveillance technologies, fortifying detention centers, and adopting military tactics, weapons, and infrastructure to control migration. Militarization transforms immigration enforcement into a security mission, framing migrants as threats and justifying the use of force, discipline, and deterrence.

Dependency Theory (Hickel)

There is a tendency for capital to accumulate in Global north cities such that they form a kind of economic and social-political core to which the rest of the world's periphery must orient themselves.

Infantilization of Peace (Malkki)

the tendency to portray peace as a pure, innocent, and apolitical ideal—often symbolized through women and children—that exists outside real-world conflict and power dynamics. By framing peace as a sentimental, depoliticized state of harmony, this view obscures how violence, intervention, and domination are carried out in the name of "keeping the peace," preventing us from critically examining how conflict actually works.

Childification (Malkki)

the way children are cast as innocent, apolitical, and morally pure—tabula rasa figures who are small, vulnerable, and in need of protection. This framing shapes how children appear in politics, development, and humanitarianism, even though the same child may be recategorized as an "adult" when seen with a gun or involved in conflict. Closely tied to the infantilization of peace, childification uses idealized images of childhood (e.g., charity appeals like "$1/day can save a child") to simplify complex political realities.

The Carceral State (Herskind)

a political system in which policing, surveillance, and incarceration become central functions of government, extending far beyond prisons to include immigrant detention and border enforcement. Technologies and tactics first used against migrants—such as surveillance tools and militarized policing—are increasingly turned inward on citizens, reflecting the broader reach of the prison industrial complex in everyday life.

Militarized policing

the transformation of police forces to operate like a military, using high-tech weapons, armored vehicles, and large budgets to control populations. Connected to border militarization, it enforces state power and sovereignty by suppressing protests and civil unrest, often protecting corporate interests under the guise of public safety.