21: Punishment and the Border Pt. 1 Flashcards
state of exception
process whereby sovereign authorities declare emergencies to suspend legal protections afforded to individuals
denotes special circumstances where sovereign authority is allowed to exempt law
spaces of exception
physical/political locations where an individual’s rights and protections under law can be stripped away upon entrance
state vs. space of exception
states are temporary - only a certain amount of time where sovereign authority can justify suspension of civil rights
spaces are more permanent - designate geographical areas
bare life
individuals whose deaths are of little consequences
life stripped of any social qualities, including any rights
structural violence
type of violence committed when a social structure or institution harms people by preventing them from fulfilling basic needs
passive, indirect violence that is invisible, making it difficult to attribute agency
agency
action or intervention to produce a particular effect
to treat human entities as the only ones capable of taking socially meaningful action is anthropocentric
hybrid collectif and the PTD strategy
understanding how non-human actors are intentionally mobilised to produce suffering, pain and violence
accounting for both human and non-human agency that comes together to produce agency for a particular act that may or may not be directly attributable to human agency
why are we applying the hybrid collective to the understanding of the southern border?
primary reason that the US government is able to get away with this is because they deflect agency from human entities onto non-human entities
desert hybrid collectif is strategically mobilised by the US government
NAFTA
purpose to decrease trade barriers between US and Mexico
immediate aftermath was that the Mexican economy was flooded with subsidised American corn and other agricultural products
very few jobs of agricultural labour in Mexico, but many in the US
political response of NAFTA
a lot of pubic pressure in the 1990s from the electorate and lawsuits of how they were handling immigration
very chaotic and violent apprehension of immigrants
in response, the government began experimenting with dealing with the problem of migration with a mix of strategies across different governmental agencies aimed to discourage migrants from crossing the border in the first place
argument that fuelling border traffic across the desert inevitably would create death
government designated the desert as a space of exception where immigrants passing through would be stripped of legal rights/protection and reduced to bare life
