Week 3
border and rule
Key Questions
How have borders in the United States formed? In what ways has this border formation been connected to settler colonialism, anti-Blackness, and racism?
How has the creation of the United States’ contemporary border regime been imbricated with the simultaneous development of the prison industrial complex? What does this reveal about the link between migrant justice and anti-carceral movements?
How does the criminalization of migration facilitate capital accumulation? How can the relationship between borders and capitalism explain racist nationalism?
Required Materials
Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, “Historic Entanglements of US Border Formation” (AUDIO)
Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, “US Wars Abroad, US Wars at Home” (AUDIO)
Justin Akers Chacón, “The Only Way Out of the Crisis Is to Fight for Open Borders”
Supplementary Materials
Intercepted Podcast, "The Democrats' Long War on Immigrants"
Nandita Sharm, Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants, “Global Lockdown: Postcolonial Expansion of National Citizenship and Immigraton Controls”
Harsha Walia, Undoing Border Imperialism, “What is Border Imperialism?”
Cristina Jiménez Moreta and Cynthia Garcia, “Why We’re Fighting for a World Without ICE”
RAICES, “Black Immigrants in the U.S.”
Greg Grandin, “The Border Patrol Has Been a Cult of Brutality Since 1924”
Greg Grandin, “The Militarization of the Southern Border Is a Long-Standing American Tradition”
Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada From Slavery to the Present, “‘Of Whom We Have Too Many’: Black Life and Border Regulation”
Wasil Schauseil, “The Consolidation of Europe’s Border Regime in Greece”
Nick Buxton and Mark Akkerman, “The Rise of Border Imperialism”
Community Justice Exchange, “From Data Criminalization to Prison Abolition”
Adam Goodman, The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants, “Deportation in the Era of Militarized Borders and Mass Incarceration”
Detention Watch Network, “Ending Immigration Detention: Abolitionist Steps vs. Reformist Reforms”
Angélica Cházaro, “The End of Deportation”
Silky Shah, “The Movement to Defund and Abolish Immigration Jails Is Winning Major Victories”
Alice Speri, “Detained, then Violated”
exercise
Using information from this week and previous weeks, create a timeline of immigration policy. What events should be included on this timeline? Should it only be immigration-specific policy, or should it be more expansive and inclusive of the ways mobility has been restricted throughout the United States' history?