Posts Tagged ‘the Other’

Foucault on Geography and Population

// August 31st, 2008 // No Comments » // Immigration, Political Theory, Racism

“One might wonder, as a conceit or a hypothesis, whether geographical knowledge doesn’t carry within itself the circle of the frontier, whether this be a national, departmental or cantonal frontier; and hence, whether one shouldn’t add to the figures of internment you have indicated–that of the madmen, the criminal, the patient, the proletariat–the national internment of the citizen-soldier. Wouldn’t we have here a space of confinement which is both infinitely vaster and less hermetic”

Foucault: That’s a very appealing notion. And the inmate, in your view, would be a national man? Because the geographical discourse which justifies frontiers is that of nationalism?”

(Questions on Geography, Power/Knowledge)

I think the question can be seen assuming and also leading us towards a carceral archipelago–how a punitive system is physically dispersed and yet covers the entirety of society. One of the topics I really want to cover on this blog in the near future is Foucault’s concept of the ‘apparatuses of security’ and how they are applicable to our society. In liberal societies and the liberal international order, we are led to believe that our ‘freedoms’ require ‘apparatuses of security.’ As Foucault states, “Freedom is nothing else but the correlative of apparatuses of security.”

Stemming from this is my concern about the ‘archipelago of detention,’ especially concerning the increasing confinement of mobility regarding migrant bodies–bodies that are constructed and labeled as ‘criminal.’

Foucault also lays out a population/people distinction in Security, Territory and Population that is worthy of further exploration. Population has two meanings — one denotes a group of subjects with rights or subjects to a sovereign etc. but the one we are interested in is population as a process that needs regulation and management, a process that correlates with the awareness of the ‘public’ and maybe even the sharp binaries of citizen/non-citizen. Now, while Foucault poses the question of the ‘inmate’ as the “national man” and that is true since borders, citizenship and nationality are all confinements, I do want to focus on the (bi)(trans)(multi)-national Others as inmates, both literally and figuratively. And I don’t think we can leave economics out of the picture.

This post here – Documenting the ‘birth’ of illegal immigration, while not perfect, serves as a start and historical background in terms of the United States context.

The Invisibles that Made the Beijing Games – Dark Side of the Olympics

// August 19th, 2008 // 6 Comments » // Gender, Human Rights, Immigration, Nationalism, Political Theory

I mentioned earlier that the computer-generated 55-second video footage of giant fireworks on film at the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was pure simulacrum–with no relation to ‘reality.’ It turns out that there was more “staging” than meets the eye at the 2008 Beijing games.

First, a 9-year old lip-synced the song “Ode to the Motherland” because the original singer was not considered pretty enough.

Then, we had reports of a pre-recorded “live” fireworks display as aforementioned.

Chinese officials also admitted to deploying cheer squads (legions of spectators wearing matching yellow shirts) to ‘create’ atmosphere and hide the empty seats. (Why were there empty seats at this major world spectacle? We will come back to this point soon).

Now Beijing officials are admitting that children dressed in different ethnic costumes in China who carried the Chinese flag were not actually from those ethnic groups.

And all the while, the CCP has cracked down on Olympics piracy–the sale of ‘inauthentic’ Olympic gear. In order to move away from the perception of China as a “low class pirating country” according to CNN,

On April 26, World Intellectual Property Day, cities across China demonstrated the country’s commitment to quashing piracy by staging public exhibitions and destroying pirated goods.

This is the essence of hyper-reality, the fake crackdowns on pirated goods (the brand names also representative of nothing) to allude to a China that is indeed unreal; it does not exist.

Maybe these reports do not bother average viewers who understand that they are consuming images that are not necessarily representative of reality.  And this post is by no means condemning China for “faking” the Olympics–that would be far too juvenile and hypocritical and I will leave that to the Orientalists and hate-mongers.

In ‘postmodern’ society, the simulated copy has preceded the real and while I am not asserting like Jean Baudrillard did that “the real no longer exists,” I do hold that the mass profusion of images for consumption–the systemic act of the manipulation of signs–play a major role in masking and convoluting our perceptions of reality.

The most disturbing part of the Olympic spectacle does not have to do with the 55 second CGI, lip-synching or child actors; it has little to do with the spectacularly grand banquet of scrolls, drums, processions, songs and dances that were supposed to reflect 5000 years of Chinese civilization. This hyper-reality and idealized transposition blanketed the ‘real’ people of China, the people that would ideally occupy those empty seats, the ones in rural areas who would never even see the games but have their land taken away in an attempt to create the facade, those that toiled behind the scenes to make these Olympics a success, the ‘undesirables’ that China was all too eager to eliminate from the screens before the games begun even while appearing to extoll the values of its own historical laboring past and present during the staged simulation.

The migrant laborers that toiled hard with little-to-no legal and health protections, and built the Bird’s Nest are nowhere to be seen. They came, they built, and they left knowing that they would never have access to the amazing sites that they have put together, that the world may never recognize their amazing feats and reward them with medals. After all, we are glued to our screens watching and applauding people running, swimming, cycling and jumping for medals, sponsorships, and fame. But the true achievers are the migrant workers, the unsung heroes who made these games possible.
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Who is more ‘undesirable ?’ The ‘illegal alien’ or homosexual ?

// May 19th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // All things LGBT, Gender, Human Rights, Immigration, Politics

Over the weekend, I was reading some pro-migrant news at a Catholic site that I had stumbled on via Google News Alert service. And on the sidebar, the very site was spewing hatred about same-sex marriage in California. The churches and religious ‘right’ who first established ’sanctuary’ and are very pro-migrant, are also the ones who are very wrong on LGBT issues. So what happens when we have a gay undocumented migrant??

This post has been in my mind for quite some time because lets face it, those of us in the pro-migrant community know undocumented persons who are also gay, lesbian, transgender. This intersectionality is further complicated by our homophobic and heterosexist immigration laws that do not recognize ‘marriage’ or partnership between people of the same-sex, and hence we have undocumented partners who are forced to live in the shadows, break off their relationships or move to another country.

It is utterly discriminatory to single out a ‘particular group of people’ and deny them equal rights and protections under the law–that is not debatable.

The sheer increase in the hate mail on my pro-migrant/pro-gay Youtube videos since the marriage equality ruling has prompted me to finally say something. To some extent, I can understand arguments against ‘undocumented migrants.’ I can understand working class fears of migrants taking their jobs, respect for the ‘rule of law’ and those who apply legally etc. even while refuting them. But marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws for LGBT people? NOT even debatable, which is often why the comments I receive are hilarious:

“…California will face the wrath of Sodom and Gomorrah…Now that gays are destroying marriage, there will be a huge earthquake in California… violence, perversion, lawlessness …Sodom and Gomorroh II. The U.S. will come to an end soon…Thank god you people cannot pass on your impaired genes by reproducing…What is next–legalizing sex with animals?…Why aren’t real lesbians hot like the ones in TV sitcoms?…”

What is this –the new Comedy Central Online???? It reminds me of this one scene in The L word when Kate Moening (Shane, the poster child of androgyny) waves her hands in the air saying “Where do you live, ________? It’s entirely possible” when her ignorant straight male housemate says that lesbians can’t fuck. But we are going off on a tangent.

The point is that as an out and proud lesbian, I haven’t dedicated my time to the gay rights movement precisely because I cannot begin to wrap my mind around the egregious fallacies, inaccuracies, lies, misrepresentation and sheer IGNORANCE of a vast majority of people. But that will change in the next 6 months as I am not about to sit around and watch California voters dash the hopes and dreams of people in my community, some of whom are our idols, since we so lack representation of ‘healthy, stable and loving’ same-sex families.

So where does the church stand on undocumented gays and lesbians? Who do you think is more undesirable in the current political climate of immigrant crackdowns and constitutional amendments for marriage discrimination? And how can we support our undocumented gay/lesbian students who have to deal with both anti-migrant and anti-gay sentiments?

The biggest lesson from this post is that social and political rights cannot be ‘divided’ and given to people on the basis of binary categories and identities. It is not enough for some of us to push for just pro-migrant rights because even when some of us become legal citizens, we would be SECOND-CLASS citizens who pay taxes but don’t have our lives affirmed by the state. Likewise, it is not enough to exercise ‘federalism’ when it comes to LGBT rights since state laws do not affect homophobic federal immigration laws and the lives of our bi-national couples, who are torn apart by their countries for the crime of love. This struggle is not just about selective rights for a select group of people; it is a small step forward in the bigger fight against global inequity.

I hate identity politics. But it does matter.

Quote of the day:

“Gay haters just can’t get enough news about gay sex and gay everything.” jerrydoubleu

Documenting the birth of illegal immigration

// May 9th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Immigration, Nationalism, Racism

Someone at BNF felt compelled to tell me that the birth of illegal immigration was the coming of Europeans to the Americas. The comment is theoretically accurate but misses the point of the argument. By the ‘birth of illegal immigration,’ I am referring to the social and political construction of a certain type of immigration as illegal. That discourse did not exist prior to a certain time, even though the phenomenon was naturally-occurring. It’s much like Michel Foucault, who dates the origin of homosexuality in America to 1876. That doesn’t mean homosexuality does not exist prior to that, rather he means that the definition and categorization of ’sexual deviants’ in order to control, legislate, regulate and medicate comes about with the creation of the American nation-state. Much like that, the Native Americans did not partake in the Judeo-Christian moral and legal order of the European arrivals–they did not feel compelled to label them as ‘illegal’ and without documentation. The discourse of ‘illegal immigration’ does not really come into being until after Chinese Exclusion.

Anyway, here is some interesting archival material that I am posting upon request:

Paper: Unknown Title, published as Evening Bulletin; Date: 04-21-1882; Volume: LIV; Issue: 12; Page: 2;

This piece simply blew me away. It represents the start of the construction of desirable/undesirable immigration that snowballed into restricting the immigration of certain groups of peoples and hence, ‘illegal immigration.’ It contains the construction of a broad and acceptable ‘European immigration’ and right of citizenship faced with a contemporary Chinese ‘invasion’ quite unlike the former. I apologize for the unclear text—it is more than 100 years old and scanned.

img104/6686/trueandfalseimmigrationox6.jpg

Now this is the first use of ‘illegal immigration’ in an article. And it concerns the Chinese entering from the Canadian border.

San Francisco Bulletin, published as Daily Evening Bulletin; Date: 12-12-1889; Volume: LXIX; Issue: 57; Page: 4;

img99/9817/chineseimmigrationsg8.jpg

Philadelphia Inquirer, published as The Philadelphia Inquirer; Date: 03-23-1899; Volume: 140; Issue: 82; Page: 3;

And now we have moves to ‘check’ illegal immigration – deportation!

img517/6624/checkingillegalimmigratpz9.jpg

Bellingham Herald, published as The Bellingham Herald; Date: 07-31-1907; Volume: 16; Issue: 108; Page: 3;

img372/6330/govttostopillegalimmigrbt0.jpg

Not all the archived data screams anti-Chinese and anti-immigration. True to conditions today, immigration proponents also existed from the birth of ‘illegal immigration.’

Paper: Unknown Title, published as The Philadelphia Inquirer; Date: 06-05-1893; Volume: 128; Issue: 156; Page: 2;

img123/2263/eduthechineseuj4.jpg

Marking The Anniversary of ‘Illegal Immigration’

// May 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Human Rights, Immigration, Racism

May 6, 1882 is the date for the birth of ‘illegal immigration.’ Like most social concerns that are only deemed as a ‘problem’ when it benefits the state, the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States, the so-called ‘yellow peril’ and ‘Asian invasion’ now required ‘documentation.’ The Chinese were constructed as unassimilable peoples, not eligible for citizenship under the Chinese Exclusion Act of  1882. The Act also restricted Chinese immigration by excluding Chinese laborers from entering the country for the next 10 years under penalty of deportation and imprisonment. This would pave the way for more codes and statutes restricting Chinese immigration:

S 6 (22 Stat. 58, . 120), provides that every Chinese person other than a laborer, who may be entitled to come within the United States, shall produce a prescribed certificate of his identity and of his right to enter: and Act July 5, 1884, provides that this certificate “shall be the sole evidence
permissible on the part of the person so producing the same to establish a right of entry into the United States.” Act Oct. 1. 18X8. prohibits any Chinese laborer who had been, or was then, or might hereafter be, a resident within the United States, and who had departed or might depart therefrom, to return to or remain in the United States. Held, that since the passage of the latter act no Chinese person, formerly resident in the United States but temporarily absent
therefrom, is entitled to return without the
prescribed certificate.—Wan Shing v. United
State», 140 U. S. 424. 11 S. Ct. 729, 35 L. Ed. 03.

What led to the enacted of Chinese exclusion? Was it working class fears of Chinese immigrants taking their jobs (as is the excuse given today) or simply sheer racism that the anti-illegal immigrant lobby denies in contemporary times?

The Act was approved by Congress on May 6, and signed into law by the President on May 8. The headline in the Inter Ocean read “China Cornered: President Arthur Signs the Bill for Restricting Mongolian Immigration” (Inter Ocean, May 9 1882, page 2, vol. XI, iss. 36). A month earlier, President Arthur had vetoed a similar bill since he was afraid of retaliation from the Qing government of China but newspapers were full of headlines such as “The Mongol Wins” (San Francisco Bulletin, April 6 1882) and “The Victory of the Chinophiles” (San Francisco Bulletin, April 5 1882). Wading through old newspaper archives from this time, I caught hold of several interesting pieces that centered around justifying the exclusion of Chinese from citizenship.

Amid protests against President Arthur, including burning his effigy, a committee meeting was held by Republicans where the President was addressed:

“…unlike our people in form and feature, in habit and character, informed in the rites of a pagan religion, and disciplined under a cruel code by a despotic Government, they are not qualified for the exercise of the rights or duties of American citizens…and from their tenacity and inflexibility of nature, we believe they never can become loyal citizens of the United States.”

The address went on to claim the invasion of Chinese laborers and the threat they posed to every interest and class of society. At the same time, efforts were underway to differentiate Chinese immigration from European immigration in order to justify the exclusion. San Francisco Bulletin ran a story on “True and False Immigration” with the basic premise that the Chinese laborer is not a ‘true immigrant’ since this immigration is characterized by uneven number of sexes; it is rather an invasion, the article concluded (April 21, 1882).

The Chinese Exclusion Act was abolished in 1943 but the concept of ‘documenting’ the foreign Other was underway and ‘illegal immigration’ or undocumented immigration was born and the after-effects continue to reverberate in contemporary immigration control policy.

(You can access old newspaper archives via your university library Newsbank or Proquest database).

Alright, here is the Boston AAG project

// November 19th, 2007 // No Comments » // Academic Conferences, Nationalism

Don’t ask me anything about this till after the Law school applications are in, hopefully mid-December.
This paper begins with an investigation of the lives of some undocumented students living in the United States who have been raised as Americans, but not seen as belonging to America. Historically, the notion of citizenship emerged with the abstract idea of the nation; citizens being the free romanticized abstract subjects belonging to an imagined space or community with allegiance only to the nation. With a discourse opposed to the hegemonic idea of national belonging, the ‘illegal’ or undocumented person has long threatened this free romanticized vision of the citizen, and hence the hegemonic project of the nation.
To be fundamentally American and yet marked as a political, social and cultural ‘Other’ means little legal redress, few job opportunities, multiple conflicting identities, and bleak prospects to eventual citizenship and national belonging for the undocumented student. Using original interviews with undocumented students fighting for the DREAM Act and their narratives, this paper seeks to answer the following questions: How do these undocumented students create spaces for themselves? How do they resist or come to terms with their statelessness, battle the label of an ‘illegal’ and the markings of racialized foreignness? The citizen/non-citizen, legal/illegal, inside/outside, us/them binary discourses that emerge in the political quagmire are seen as spatial placeholders and dividers that ultimately work for the nation-state project. Eventually, the paper deconstructs notions of the nation and nationhood, citizenship and belonging, renegotiating what it really means to be American.