Politics of race and border

Race as a biological construct

Core arguments made by Gray (undated) 1) races have a set of natural properties that are shared by all or most members of that race 2) natural properties are inheritable 3) these natural properties place races into different hierarchical system

Racial categories

Bernier (in Berhassoni and Latt 2008) 1st race Europe, North Africa, Persia, India. 2nd race Africa and Sahara desert. 3rd race East Asia, China, Uzbekistan, eastern Russia. 4th race Lapps of northern Scandinavia

Kant's racial categories

Kleingeld (2024) - 'white' race only human beings capable of politcal government. Hindus can be educated but not abstract concepts. 'Blacks' can be trained but incapable of leading themselves. Native Americans, lowest of the four calls them incapable of any culture

Race as a social construct

Race is 'a socially constructed relational category that is used both as a rationale and justification for different treatment' - Ray et al. (2023)

Racist structures - micro

Individual acts of bigotry, neutral acts not particularly about race but have different outcomes for racially minoritised groups

Racist structures - macro

Institutional racism - attitudes and practises within an organisation

Intersectionality quote

"No person has a single, easily stated unitary identity" (Delgado et al., 2012)

Intersectionality

Acknowledging identity categories, does not ask that other identities are subsumed under one

Critiques of intersectionality

Intersectionality is essentialist because it conceptualise individuals as having an unchanged fixed identity that they carry around with them from one situation to the next

History of identity politics in the UK

Organisation of women of Asia and African descent (OWAAD) established 1978

IPSOS stats

64% of the public now agree culture wars are a serious problem for UK society (up from 44% in 2020). Perceived tension between immigrants and people born in the UK has risen over the past two years (74% 2023 - 86% in 2026)

Racial contract

Charles Mills 1997 - an unspoken contract and agreement within society that benefits white people

Racial contract economic

An exploitation contract that creates global European and economic domination and national white racial privilege

Critiques of white supremacy

Cole (2019) - focusing on white supremacy can take away critical attention from the modes of production. Puts all white people together as being in a place of position and privilege

White supremacy quote

"The basic legitimation of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority" (Harmand in Mills 1997)

Whiteness

Socially and politically constructed and therefore a learned behaviour

State makes race

Vickers and Isaac (2012) - historically different legal and governance regimes, one for white citizens, the other for non-white citizens

The racial state

Omi and Winant (2014) - the state is inherently racial because every state action has racial consequences and because the state itself is structured to accomplish racial goals

Churchill quote

"Problems will arise if many coloured people settle here" - Churchill

Race legislation

1965 Race relations act - made discrimination unlawful on the grounds of colour, race, ethnicity

Powell and trial and police

1968 Enoch Powell rivers of blood speech. 1971 Mangrove 9 trial - gave first judicial acknowledgement of 'evidence of racial hatred' in the met police. 1999 Macpherson - failure of police

Population

In 2022/23 16% of the UK population from a minority ethnic background. In 2012 18% in England

Reports

Sewell Report (2021) - institutional racism does not exist. Casey review (2023) - institutional racism in policing

White backlash and tactics

Negative reactions to proximity of racially minoritised communities. Tactics include silencing, isolation, violence

Politics of race - Australia

Immigration restriction act 1901

Politics of race - South Africa

Segregation through law in 1948 with apartheid

Politics of race - France

Police - decades of brutality

European borders quote

"We all know you do not cross the border between France and Switzerland or Switzerland and Italy the same way when you have a European passport as when you have a passport from the former Yugoslavia" Eitenne Balibar 2002

Borders control quote

"Means of maintaining state control over the movement of people, goods, wealth and information" - Thomas Wilson and Hastings Donnon 1998

Imagined communities

Benedict Anderson - people fundamentally band together by belonging to some national community

Orientalism

Edward Said 1978 - Europeans exercise intellectual power over others, perpetuates ideas about the people of the Middle East being in need of civilisation from Europe

Borders strengthened

In response to war borders strengthened

Individuals constrained by three expropriations

John Torpey (2018) - 1) expropriation of the means of production from workers by capitalists 2) Expropriations of the legitimate means of violence from individuals by the state 3) expropriation of the means of movement from individuals by the state and the international system

Border control and passports quote

"Successfully monopolised the authority to permit movement within and across their jurisdiction" - Torpey 2000

Dual nature of the modern state

An agent of protection and domination. A source of security and endangerment

Documentation

• starts as an internal matter. Provides the right to work, poor relief and the duty to provide military service

Chinese Immigration Act

Chinese Exclusion Act 1882 - prohibiting all immigrantion of Chinese labourers for 10 years

No human being is illegal

A person cannot be illegal, only an action can. Human rights apply equally with or without documents

Non-refoulement

principle that refugees cannot be forced to return to their country of origin because of fear of persecution on the grounds of race, ethnicity, or membership in a social group

Securitisation Theory

Asserts that issues are not essentially threatening in themselves but become so when they are defined as 'security problems' e.g. calling immigration a threat to national security shifts it from a low priority political concern to a high priority one that requires action

Let them drown?

Search and rescue operations for small boats in the Mediterranean. In 2014 the UK Parliament claimed this created an unintended pull factor encouraging migrants to make the dangerous crossing

Militarisation of border control

Increased use of naval assets at sea. Investment in R&D of purpose designed technologies for deterrence, prevention and risk analysis

Techno borders

Surveillance systems, biometric identification, information networks

Response to migrant boat disasters 2011-13

European Commission created EUROSUR to help member states better track identify and rescue small vessels at sea

Legal challenges to pushbacks

ECHR case Hira Jamaa and others v Italy (Feb 2012) - court affirmed that ECHR applies on high seas and that pushbacks are illegal

Repealed by 'pullbacks'

Libyan coast guards intercept migrant boats and return them to Libya

Human rights watch

2021 - people encouraged by local travel agents in Middle East to travel to Belarus capital and cross at polish/belarussian border. Polish officers repel them or pushback those who succeed. Belarusian officials beat and detain those who return and coerce them into crossing again