Journal Blog
Public Anthropologist‘s suggested reading today is Love and Liberation. Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region by Lauren Carruth.
Shifting the focus from international humanitarian workers to Somali locals caring for each other, Carruth develops a rich ethnographic analysis of interdependence, kinship, and ethnic solidarity in Ethiopia’s Somali region.
The book is an important contribution to both humanitarian studies and the anthropology of care.
In the 3rd episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Anthropologist Angela Garcia on the endless dispossession, inequality, and heroin use etched in the history and memory of northern New Mexico. Professor Garcia’s avant-garde scholarship combines apparently isolated moments of intimacy, addiction, care and abuse to shed light on the impacts of a colonial past that is eating up the landscape inside.
In Sovereign Forces John-Andrew McNeish, an anthropologist based in Norway, offers a fresh perspective on “resource sovereignty,” identifying sovereignty, at various scales and in different spaces, as a vital analytic concept for understanding land, territory and energy development in Latin America and beyond. Reflecting on more than twenty years of ethnographic engagement and research projects in and on Latin America, McNeish constructs a rich, historically grounded, account of the region’s economic and political development and how it is inextricably bound with sovereign claims to territory and resources.
The author begins his new book by figuratively plunging us into the cold waters of everyday violence against indigenous environmental defenders in present-day Latin America. He recounts the case of Hector Jaime, an indigenous community leader, from the Chocó region of Colombia, who receives a telephone message that an assassin has been hired by a criminal organization to kill him and his family. Jaime, who has been working with other community members to block mining and other extractive activities from entering their legal territory, reaches out for assistance to McNeish and others via a signature campaign, urging that national authorities protect him and investigate the threat to his and his families’ lives and livelihoods. No direct police protection results, although Jaime is given a bulletproof vest and an investigation is begun.
McNeish’s opening narrative device, recounting this personalized account, powerfully reminds us that the themes he deals with are not merely scholarly preoccupations. These are urgent practical challenges daily confronting citizens, families, activists and authorities. Indeed, this sense of urgency is sustained throughout the volume, as it expertly unpacks contestations around resource landscapes, mainly in Bolivia, Guatemala, and Colombia.
A particular strength of the book is its situating of Latin American experiences of resource contestation within the global political economy, drawing on historical sources and analysis to explain the multiple forces and actors, both within and outside the region, at play in shaping its developmental trajectories. McNeish’s basic thesis, which extends from his earlier published works, is that sovereignty practically matters at multiple scales: it is crucial in explaining national, regional and local decisions on the ownership, use, protection and management of natural resources. From his perspective, Latin American conflicts over land and resources are “conjoined economic and ontological conflicts regarding the equivalence of knowledge and value” (p. 22).
Taking aim at the top-down readings of state-building and resource contestation often found in the resource curse literature, McNeish draws on debates in the cognate fields of social anthropology, political economy and political ecology to further develop the concept of “resource sovereignty.” What are found in the Latin American cases examined are not straightforward manifestations of the classic idea of supreme authority in a defined geographic territory. Rather, multiple attitudes to territory, identity, capital and resources co-exist, compete and conflict – ultimately helping explain empirical outcomes. In this story, indigenous and peasant peoples have been victims of colonization and, frequently, of annihilation, but also agents whose everyday encounters with the state, the market, and politics have left distinctive marks on the geographies and institutions of Latin American states.
The author builds his argument using a series of “ethnographic fragments” drawn from his years of engagement with Latin America. In Chapter 1, two major events in Bolivian politics (the gasolinazo fuel subsidy backlash and TIPNIS roadbuilding protests) are used to explore the broader relationships in Latin America between the politics of natural resources, territory and sovereign claims within and beyond the state. The second chapter uses the example of fuel and resource smuggling along the Bolivian and Guatemalan borders to discuss contrasting visions and definitions of sovereignty, but also to demonstrate how classic accounts of resource politics pay insufficient attention to sovereign claims beyond and beneath the state.
The intertwining of the politics of sovereignty and natural resources is further explored in Chapter 3, with cases from Colombia and Guatemala of new political and legal spaces actively created, despite risks of violence, through community engagement with state entities. The fourth chapter focuses on the politics of establishing lithium production in the Bolivian Highlands. This Salar de Uyuni case shows that contests around resource sovereignty are not limited to fossil fuels but are also manifest in what are conventionally thought-of as “green” resources. Chapter 5, the final case-based chapter, returns to McNeish’s normative claim, with which the book begins, that resource sovereignty matters for peace and governance goals. Reflecting on the land rights case of the Embra Chamí community of the Cañamomo Lomaprieta in western Colombia, he shows how the state can sometimes directly enable the illegal circumvention and abuse of rights. Technocratic avoidance of certain features of contested resource sovereignty thus requires attention if environmental governance is to deliver on its aims.
Finally, the concluding chapter succeeds in pulling together in one place the various concepts and cases expounded upon in the earlier, empirical sections of the book. This is a helpful addition since the volume can sometimes feel a little bewildering in the breadth and depth of its scope and examples, especially to non-Latin America experts. McNeish views contestations around resource sovereignty as arising from the efforts of citizens and communities to secure a future without constant fear of violence or the actual experience of insecurity. He further suggests that a significant match can be made between the concept of contested resource sovereignty and critical institutionalism. The latter’s recognition that institutions are the outcome not just of acts of design, but of long-term acts of “bricolage” whereby indigenous and peasant communities write themselves back into the history of state-formation, shows that the engagement of these communities has, put bluntly, a direct impact on the success and failure of environmental governance.
In conclusion, Sovereign Forces is a fascinating, multi-disciplinary and historically grounded account of the contested resource politics of Latin America. It makes an impassioned plea for critical engagement with resource sovereignty as a crucial aspect of environmental peacebuilding, that resonates far beyond the country contexts examined here. The book is a must-read for anyone wishing to engage with the complexities of everyday environmental governance in Latin America and elsewhere.
In the 2nd episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Anthropologist Nikhil Anand on the concept of wet cities. Professor Anand focuses on Mumbai, a city built in and out of the Arabian Sea. He encourages us to think about the long history of engineering cities as dry lands devoid of wetness, and how that is contributing to the current climate events.
The term ‘coming out’ is still unfamiliar to many Indians. It is safe to say that it is a new term known mostly to the urban, English-speaking world of India who are familiar with gender and sexual minorities. Coming out of the closet can mean different things to different people; it can be an emancipatory act for some, forced upon for others. The timing of coming out and to whom is a matter of careful evaluation of consequences and trust. It is a self-learnt process born out of an inevitable need and a survival tool to overcome mental health issues. With this background in mind, this blog revolves centrally around my own coming out experience, which I have analysed as a ritual. I attempt to explain the coming out process that I have developed over the years through reflexive learning. I use autoethnography to narrate how my identity transcends contextual spaces while navigating in and out of the closet.
I hail from a fast-growing metropolitan city in South India where there are safe spaces such as support groups and NGOs, which my rural friends do not have. As is the case in most countries in the world, criminalising laws on homosexuality have colonial origins. Despite having a rich history and queer tradition in India, homosexuality is heavily frowned upon in Indian society. Awareness about sexual health, let alone homosexuality, is still a far dream. For example, men who identify as gay are thought by society at large to become transgender in the future. Although the supreme court of India decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, it will be a long time before there is complete societal acceptance, and there are no explicit anti-discriminatory laws in India that will legally protect an individual based on their sexual orientation. However, post-2018, some multi-national companies in India have initiated diversity and inclusion policies.
From the outset, it appears that I have a dichotomous life, taking up different identities as and how the situation demands. Privately, I am chiefly a gay man (of late, I am questioning this identity, too). Yet for the outer world, I am a middle-class, polyglot, backward caste, urban-raised, English-educated clinician and public health professional, with little exposure to world travel due to work, and with varied interests including philately, Indian philosophy, pottery, among others. I use the word ‘transcend’ instead of ‘transform’. In my understanding, transforming is a superficial change physically visible to others. In contrast, transcendence involves an enormous shift in personality, which is susceptible to quick changes, involving a distinct private and public self (p 57) where the two are related.
The idea of coming out is an exhaustingprocess, often with both negative and positive consequences. I have come across friends who have been ostracised by their highly conservative religious families and friends in India, causing severe mental health issues ranging from depression to suicidal ideations. The thought of coming out makes me highly anxious. Growing up, I didn’t have any resources to help myself deal with bullying and the self-awareness that I am different from others. The socio-cultural conditioning of my personhood in the heteronormative society led to the othering of myself to the extent that I believed something was wrong with me and my behaviour. Personhood (p 57) is ‘acquired gradually from birth onwards as the child becomes increasingly familiar with the shared customs and knowledge of society’. The fear of rejection and ridicule has led to lower academic and work performance, and I also developed psycho-somatic conditions such as fibromyalgia. The social fears I have developed are linked to clinical health conditions. General prejudice in society, minority stress, lack of accessible help and stigma related to rejection and discrimination all lead to excessive stress resulting in a range of mental and systemic health and behavioural issues among the queer community that are largely unnoticed.
On the other hand, coming out to a few friends strengthened our relationships, and there was mutual growth and understanding of differences in sexuality and sexual orientation. It also helped me to overcome my internalised homophobia. So far, I have come out only to friends and to two cousins in my family. I come from a joint family which is holding onto traditional Indian family values and customs. Since my family is unaware of my sexual orientation, the pressure to marry a girl is always there. I have learned to dodge the topic by giving excuses such as studying further, sometimes telling my family that I don’t find marriage interesting, pointing to the failed marriages in family and friend circles, or sometimes quoting the Hindu monkhood as an ideal way of living. Despite changes in contemporary Indian society with rapid urbanisation and Western lifestyle influences, the family institution plays an important role in India. Though there is an intergenerational change in the marriage system in India where inter-religious and inter-caste marriages are on the rise, one survey revealed that middle-class Indian youth favoured the legalisation of same-sex marriage, but were still not attracted to homosexual marriages. Every time I manage to dodge the marriage topic, I am aware of the pricking lies that I tell. Deep within, I crave a boyfriend, possibly moving where there is no discrimination against homosexuality and gay marriage is legalised. Therefore, sometimes, coming out is an answer to those close and trusting friends concerned about my well-being and showing genuine interest in my personal life.
The ritual of coming out is a step-by-step process, complex and not always linear. It is like working out the maths to find an answer based entirely on assumptions. Every coming out ritual is a rite of passage to that person. Gennep’s description of rites of passage finds familiarity here. Rites of passage (p 148) is an event in a person’s life such as divorce, retirement, and so on, where an individual goes through separation, trial, and reintegration, marking progress through life stages. Eichler has used an autoethnography tool to illustrate his coming out using vignettes ranging from materials to places. Garrick has analysed the coming out act of self-disclosure using the ritual theory and the rites of passage and offers a generalisation that ritual can be protective and act as a guide for self-disclosure.
My coming out ritual involves three stages: a preparatory phase that happens in my mind, the actual coming-out event, and the post-coming-out engagement. The first stage is the most challenging part for me. It involves answering an algorithmic pattern of questions in my mind. I deal with many uncertainties of ifs and buts. A slight doubt could cancel the ritual. It begins with a person in mind to whom I could come out and then follows a barrage of mind-numbing questions. Why should I come out to this person? What is the necessity? Is there a threat to my life, work, or future that necessitates an outing? What is it that I am getting back in exchange? Will I face any threats from this person later? If yes, what is my safety net? Are there any secrets of this person I know which would prevent them from putting me in a fix?
Once I have convincing answers that fulfil the criteria of the first stage, the ritual preparation begins. How do I come out? Should I do it in person, write an email, or send a text? The first time I came out to my closest friend, I took more than four hours of talking to speak the three words that have defined my life – ‘I am gay!’. Nowadays, it has downgraded to a simple text message. The timing of coming out is another essential aspect of the ritual. It involves a lot of homework about the chosen person’s daily routine that leads to other questions about the selected person. For example, is this person going through any stressful situations at the moment? Will this person be able to handle this information that they might not have known? Do I have to inform anyone else and be prepared for any untoward outcome as a safety measure?
Once these questions are all resolved, then comes the second stage: the actual coming-out ritual. I have always preferred doing it in person. It gives me more confidence. It leaves me with a comfort that I have confronted my projected fear. It is also about providing a chance for them to clarify any questions about homosexuality in general and specific questions about myself, setting a stage to enter the third phase. While I come out, I take a deep breath, directly look into the other person’s eyes, smile and say the three golden words. In the beginning, I would prepare a speech describing how good a person I am (and so should not be discriminated against based on my homosexual inclination), and how this relationship is so significant to me that I cannot hide it.
The third phase is a continuation of the second with a self-imposed obligation to engage. I take the responsibility of helping the person understand my coming out. I have deduced that coming out is not a mono act since I involve the other person. I have realised that everyone, whether queer or straight, has to metaphorically come out of the closet.
Who better than me to answer questions on who else have I come out to, how sex works between two men, and so on? They only knew me as a façade. I also have to patiently listen to anyone’s unsolicited advice. All of this subsequently reduces any future awkward encounters.
After the ritual, I might not be reintegrated back into the person’s life. There is a risk of exposing one’s vulnerability to exploitation and to losing loved ones. The ritual is similar to the exchange of a gift except that there are no materials exchanged, only emotions. Coming out is sharing important information about one’s sexual orientation to gain support and solidarity, seeking a stronger allyship, overcoming deep layers of inhibition, shame, and guilt. For this is necessary to build a kinship network, a ‘chosen family’ of those who are accepting my sexuality, yet also open those who disagree.
I will illustrate this process using two examples. I confessed my sexual orientation to one of my closest friends, Shaantha, in 2016. I planned to meet her at a restaurant over lunch. We sat down over the table, ordered food, and were catching up about our work and other things. I had planned my conversation in detail. At one point, I mentioned my new project at work where my team were involved in developing a community health programme for queer folks. I mentioned it nonchalantly to observe her reaction. Knowing her personally for many years, I knew she would not judge me. Yet I wanted to be assured. The conversation moved to relationships and marriage. I brought up the issue of marriage not being an option to many individuals and she responded that it was unfortunate. I asked a follow-up question about what her feelings were about homosexual people. She said, without taking any time to think, that she would accept them for what they are. Taking advantage of the moment, I asked her how would she feel if anyone came out to her, to which she replied she would feel very happy that someone thought of her as trusting enough to share such personal information. At this moment, I revealed it to her. There was an instant shock on her face, but she got up from her chair and came towards me to give a tight hug. This was very assuring. She had many questions afterwards about my dating scene, personal journey, and so on. Throughout this conversation, I was on my guard and testing the waters slowly. I had to check every move, reassure myself that I was doing well, and be ready to abort the procedure if I sensed any red flag.
Almost three years later, I was visiting on one of my cousins who was going through a rough time and quit his job abruptly. He was visibly uncomfortable with my arrival. Sensing this, I prepared to leave, but he asked me to stay for a little longer. I obliged; yet the awkward silence continued. He suddenly popped the question and confronted me, asking if I was gay. He caught me off guard and I froze. I was speechless. I took a deep breath and just answered ‘yes’. By this time, I had performed many coming out rituals and I started to realise that it was a tiring process. A simple yes was easier than to carry out the laborious procedure. My cousin appeared flabbergasted. He told me to see a doctor to get rid of my homosexuality (he wouldn’t utter the word gay later in the conversation). I mustered up enough courage to tell him that I was fine and needed no treatment and then left immediately to prevent any further embarrassment. He cut off all communications with me. It did not bother me much but occasionally hurt me that a family member could stop talking to me because of my sexual orientation. I came face to face with one of my worst fears. This incident opened my eyes to the fact that people will choose to be homophobic because of the conditioning of society and I could do very little to change it.
From my experiences, coming out is a repetitive process and not a one-time event. It is an elaborate ritual involving lots of preparation and anticipating repercussions. I have found out that this technique resonates more or less with other queer individuals’ styles with whom I interacted through support group networks and random strangers on the internet. Using the language of queer people, ‘it gets better’ after every coming-out ceremony. I have become better with my choice of words, gained more confidence in uttering the word ‘gay’, and learnt from mistakes. Through this autoethnography, I have elucidated the nuances of navigating the in and out of my closet space. As I conduct this ritual often, I am at ease and perform it effortlessly, shedding the shame and guilt little by little, thus transcending to the true self. I have, over the years, broken the false sense of two lives and slowly accepted the fluid nature of life in general and, specifically, the spectrum of gender and sexual identity.
Introduction
The October 2018 migrant caravans prompted migration to be reconfigured as a political issue in the Central America–Mexico–United States region. Described as a forgotten crisis by the European Commission (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, 2021), transit and settlement migration from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to Mexico had until then been invisible to regional and international institutions (Coutin, 2005) and migrants were primarily assisted by networks of shelters and associations overseen by the Catholic Church. However, in October 2018, the situation changed radically when thousands of people mobilised in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to migrate collectively to the United States in migrant caravans, defying the region’s securitarian apparatus. Within a regional geopolitical context dominated by the United States, these mobilisations were framed as a national security concern and, in January 2019, the US government launched the “Remain in Mexico” programme. This restrictive migration policy remains in place and forces people seeking asylum in the United States to wait for a decision on their application on Mexican territory (Homeland Security, 2019; WOLA, 2019). As a result of this measure, Mexico was obliged to take responsibility for supplying humanitarian aid to the waiting migrants, while militarisation spread across the national territory in an attempt to limit the number of people reaching the northern border. The consequences of these changes are highly concerning: today, thousands of people are trapped at Mexico’s northern border in poor conditions and their human rights and rights to asylum are being violated.
As well as mobilising the security apparatus, the hypervisibility of the migrant caravans prompted the declaration of a regional humanitarian crisis and led many local and international humanitarian organisations to take action to meet the needs of people in transit or waiting at the borders. Media and humanitarian attention has focused particularly on Mexico’s northern and southern borders, which have become geographic and symbolic spaces of violent dispute over the right to mobility. However, Mexico’s interior states have been frequently overlooked as areas structurally traversed by migrants and shaped by tensions between securitarian and humanitarian concerns. What is happening in the states located far from the country’s borders? How is the migration issue constructed and what is the response to it? This post reflects on these questions in the context of the state of Puebla in Central Mexico, which has been identified as a key transit area for migrants where securitarian and humanitarian dynamics are reproduced and extended. It is based on ethnographic research conducted in Puebla between July and September 2019 with three non-governmental organisations (two international and one Mexican) and an international humanitarian organisation involved in providing migrants with humanitarian assistance. This fieldwork was carried out as part of the research project ‘Reinforcing the Permanent Seminar on Gender and Migration’ (2019) coordinated by the Institute of Feminist Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain (INSTIFEM-UCM) and the Centre of Gender Studies at the Autonomous University of Puebla in Mexico (CEG-BUAP).
These reflections are framed within the existing debate on humanitarian borders, which are defined by Walters (2011) as a complex, contradictory assemblage comprising humanitarianism and the securitarian dimension of migration control and management. Humanitarianism is a cultural model of assistance involving intervention at borders as spaces of migration management, with the aim and mandate of alleviating human suffering through a coordinated network of different stakeholders. According to De Lauri (2019), the expansion of humanitarianism in these spaces is redefining borders not only as basic components of migration control and containment, but also as areas affected by humanitarian crises, giving rise to new approaches to migration governance grounded in an acknowledgement of suffering, compassion and aid. Against this backdrop, it is important to conceptualise borders not only in terms of their securitarian dimension but also as cultural products, “invisible or ostentatious boundaries used to create ‘different’ groups of human beings” (Juliano, 1998). The borders shaping Mexico’s migration scene are culturally constructed and reproduced in multiple ways. The hypervisible process whereby migration is constructed as a humanitarian issue in a context of ongoing crisis (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021) is culturally redefining the migrant population in terms of otherness and foreignness. Migration is pinpointed as a regional issue requiring legitimate intervention and presented simultaneously as a depoliticised humanitarian object and a threat to national security. The dynamics and tensions inherent in the humanitarian border extend and are reproduced beyond territorial borders in the overlooked migration transit area of the state of Puebla.
The ethnographic context
The state of Puebla is located in the southern part of Central Mexico, approximately 130 km to the south-east of Mexico City. It has traditionally been a migrant-sending region, with migrants travelling to the United States in particular (Cortés, Forina & Manjarrez, 2017). Internal migration remains a priority on the local political agenda, which is currently focused on responding to return migration in the state. However, Puebla is also a destination for international migrants, especially those from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. According to the Migration Statistical Bulletin, Puebla received 2,804 migrants in 2019 and returned 1,883, most of whom came from Central America (Unidad de Política Migratoria, 2019). Meanwhile, in 2021, 3,521 people arrived in the state and 2,266 were returned (Unidad de Política Migratoria, 2021). In their study of Central American migration in Puebla, Cortés, Forina and Manjarrez (2017) show that the state is a key stage in Mexico’s main migration routes. Firstly, it lies on the route taken by the Beast: the train used by many migrants to cross Mexico. Secondly, the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan for the Southern Border in 2014 and the increasing militarisation of the cargo train have transformed Puebla into a transit region, with migrants taking alternative, unnoticed routes on foot, accompanied by people smugglers or using motorised transport when their financial resources allow. Puebla is also a stage on the route to Mexico City, which is the departure point for the main routes leading to the northern border.
International migration in Puebla has been identified as transit migration, so it has not been labelled a political issue on the local public agenda. Although their institutional invisibility can facilitate their transit towards the north of the country, it also leaves migrants more vulnerable to dangers such as kidnapping, mugging, abuse, detention and deportation as they move (Cortés, Forina & Manjarrez, 2017). Indeed, migrants are only invisible on the local public agenda to the extent that their status as individuals with rights goes unacknowledged. Puebla has drawn increasing attention from the security apparatus as a stage on the migration route: the state is home to one of the 29 permanent holding centres used to detain irregular migrants that have opened in Mexico (Global Detention Project, 2021) and are coordinated by the National Institute of Migration (INM). In the words of Sánchez Gavi (2016), this institutional invisibility also contrasts with the visibility afforded to migrants as “delinquents” and their construction as objects of suspicion and peculiarity among some political groups and the local population. Amid these tensions, the Catholic Church has traditionally been responsible for providing migrants with humanitarian assistance in Puebla through the Human Mobility Pastoral Program and a network of five shelters. These are supplemented by impromptu aid initiatives (Sánchez-Gavi, 2016): a mobile Red Cross surgery on the Beast train route at Ciudad Serdán and groups of women known as Las Patronas led by Doña Luisa (Moncó, 2021).
Reconfiguring migration in Puebla
An analysis of the ethnographic data collected in 2019 shows how the arrival of the first migrant caravans in 2018 brought about major changes in humanitarian assistance for migrants in Puebla (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021). Firstly, one of the most significant impacts of the emergence of the caravans as a new form of regional mobility was a dramatic increase in scrutiny of the routes used by migrants to cross the country. In this context, Puebla has been publicly recognised as a stage on the migration route to Mexico City, where migrants continue towards the northern border (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021). Secondly, the emergency situation in October 2018 prompted a number of public and private stakeholders to mobilise to respond to the needs of the migrants in transit. The public authorities, coordinated by Claudia Rivera Vivanco from the left-wing National Regeneration Movement as municipal president (2018–2021), introduced measures to accommodate the migrants on a temporary basis, providing shelter, medical care and basic necessities. Civil society associations, local and international non-governmental organisations, and international organisations also played a part in managing the reception of the migrants.
Puebla’s increasing visibility as a transit region for international migrants has resulted in the emergence of a new political issue for the organisations covered by our 2019 ethnographic fieldwork. Despite traditionally being involved in preventing internal migration, they were obliged to reorder their priorities in response to the emerging migration problem. In the narrative they present, the political context of crisis and its tensions made it difficult to establish a clear stance and structured working agenda. Their humanitarian work was shaped by two tensions in particular. Firstly, the highly mobile nature of the population impeded longer-term planning. The extent to which migration is temporary varies across Mexico, ranging from high levels of mobility to long waits at the northern border or in detention centres (a consequence of policies intended to contain migration). In 2019, Puebla continued to receive large numbers of migrants travelling northwards, which led to prolonged uncertainty for humanitarian stakeholders.
Secondly, a clear tension emerged between the political stance held by humanitarian stakeholders and the contextual need to negotiate the security-focused law governing migration management in Mexico. Broadly speaking, the humanitarians’ political approach to migration revolved around the right to asylum and human rights (Benincasa & Cortés, 2021). However, this stance and the search for political responses were undermined by Mexico’s inconsistent official discourse, which wavered between concern for protecting migrants’ rights and restrictive measures used to detain, imprison and deport them, violating these rights and creating an ambiguity that has yet to be resolved (París Pombo, 2019). Moreover, the construction of a prolonged humanitarian crisis fuelled the notion of instability in relation to Mexico’s migration and political situation, legitimising and reinforcing humanitarianism as the only possible response to migration.
These tensions illuminate how Puebla has become a focus of attention for humanitarian intervention in migration in Mexico. Changes in the migration situation in Puebla, which have been driven and highlighted by the migrant caravans, are transforming the state into a clear space of tension between mobility, humanitarianism and securitarianism. This ethnographic case study shows how the intersection between border dynamics and humanitarian action transcends national borders to affect Mexico’s interior states. The humanitarian border that is being constructed in Mexico is expanding and being reproduced in the state of Puebla, which is emerging as an internal humanitarian border. This process highlights the urgent need to understand these specific local manifestations of the border with the aim of demonstrating and comparing the ways in which migrants are stripped of their political and human rights (Moncó, 2021) and the influence of the humanitarian border on their mobility and immobility as they cross the state of Puebla.
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This short book is an ethnographic essay on the constitution of the abused subject through testimony in the Italian judicial system. How do experiences of intimate violence get translated into legally intelligible language? How does the ambivalence and trauma of intimate partner violence complicate the articulation of experience in the court? What inadequate institutional structure renders a victim’s narration of violent experience necessary but impossible at the same time? Gribaldo refers to domestic violence as “Violence Degree Zero” in anthropological research (13) – one of those “dead zones of the imagination” (Graeber 2012) that simultaneously represents “an excess of relevance” and an area of “violent simplification” (15). Her book fills this gap with a theoretically sophisticated investigation of the encounter between women’s words and the legal system, paying keen attention to the friction between intimacy and violence in the production of subjectivity and modalities of truth-telling.
Gribaldo makes a compelling case for ethnographic knowledge in providing a privileged site to examine the complicated relationship between intimacy and violence, the conflicting demands of victimhood in legal institutions, and the potentials of ambivalence and hesitations in narrating experience of violence. Engaging with a wide range of feminist and anthropological scholarship on violence, subjectivity, and silences, Gribaldo’s analytical focus is on the different modalities of “speaking violence” (4). The domestic violence cases in the book revolves around women as victims and men as perpetrators in heterosexual relationships.
In Chapter 1 (Un)Familiar Violence, Gribaldo draws on anthropological and feminist scholarship to expound on the tensions between intimate relations and legal institutions, and the paradoxes in rendering women’s victimhood legible and legitimate. Drawing on Foucault while bearing in mind “the unresolved tension between the chance to rethink and free gender differences” (30), Gribaldo focuses our attention on the issue of experience and the possibility of conveying and verifying such knowledge. The evidentiary requirements of the court – coherent, clear, objective – is contradicted by the subjective, experience-based, and emotion-filled narratives that victims produce.
Chapter 2 Wavering Intentions illuminates the contradictions of women’s subjectivization as victims and as witness in court. Originally introduced to protect women from familial pressure to withdraw their cases, the Italian Criminal Code requires mandatory prosecution of domestic violence cases, in which the women’s testimonies are central to the trial. This juridical protection presumes women as passive subjects who could not make their own decisions but also expects them to be reliable speaking subjects. For a host of reasons, many women choose not to press charges or retract their statements during the trial. Those who do testify would be interrogated not only for the veracity of their claims, their understanding of violence, but also their own subjectivity. Their testimonies are further constrained by the modalities of judicial procedure that requires coherence and focus. For example, a woman was stopped by the judge when she lamented “I didn’t go to work because I had a black eye…love is not enough.” Domestic violence hearings do not produce a simple dichotomization of perpetrators and victims, but rather, “the proof of the crime [of domestic violence] is constituted by the intimate relationship, the experience of violence, and the consciousness of the abused victim (53).” The victim’s perception and statements crucially become such proof.
In Chapter 3, Gribaldo questions the focus on victim’s testimonial proof, and critiques the burden of confession on the victim who “must supply a meaningful framework that allows for recognition and certification, making the production of evidence possible” (86). The centrality of the victim’s testimony means that she is the main target of interrogation and questioning – “not only to verify the facts but also verify women’s capacities to understand and communicate the intimate violence experienced” (91). Furthermore, because the intention of the perpetrator could only be evidenced by the victim’s testimony, “[t]he victim is asked to speak for the perpetrator, to clarify the reasons behind the crime” (85). Any difficulty in remembering events, inconsistency in narration, or failure to comply with the judicial modality of questioning, comes to be interpreted by the defense and the judge as the woman’s unreliability as a witness. Feelings, contexts, and performance pertinent to the woman’s own communication of the experience of violence are considered excesses in the judicial proceedings.
Gribaldo’s ethnography in Chapter 4 The Gender of True-Lying helps readers see vividly how the authenticity of women’s narrated experience is always suspect. Speaking up as a victim-subject renders unreliable the woman’s intentionality in breaking the silence. It is the entirety of the victim’s act of testifying that is being assessed – down to “the appropriate emotional tone” in which she delivers her testimony, as one prosecutor said (99). Gribaldo must be credited for effectively bringing together court exchanges with the perspectives of prosecutors, judges, social service managers, demonstrating the contradictory expectations that the victim “must be subjugated, passive, and aware at the same time” (99). Reflecting on these impossible expectations in institutionalized political language, Gribaldo advocates for “the need to consider hesitations, and the unexpectedly oblique and mediating modes of testimony, action, subtraction, and resistance” (112).
Gribaldo demonstrates a dexterity with theory and ethnography when analyzing the unorthodox testimony performed by Giovanna. Her expressions departed from the expectation of coherence and clarity required by the court, and resembled the mode of self-expression called ‘la piazzata’ (open quarrelling in public). By describing how Giovanna’s declaration of love for her ex-husband allows the judge to verify the authenticity of her testimony, Gribaldo demonstrates the ways the gendered subaltern subject made herself recognizable. The significance of love captured here echoes with legal scholar Mark West’s (2006) analysis of love as a significant discourse in Japanese court decisions on love-suicide, murder, and stalking. A brief discussion about how love is understood as an emotion both in popular culture and in legal institutions – something that West accomplished with ample room in his full-length book – would advance readers’ understanding of the role emotions play in mediating legal processes on intimate relations.
In condensing years of fieldwork into a short book that is both theoretically engaged and ethnographically illuminating, Gribaldo had to make some difficult choices. She states in the Introduction that she keeps the ethnography “suspended” (9) – not locating the juridical dynamics by setting them within the specific Italian context – in order to address specific theoretical issues. As such, the priority of Unexpected Subjects is theoretical elaboration over thick description. Therefore, readers may find ample room for reflection in Gribaldo’s eloquent exposition of concepts from Strathern, Ortner, Mahmood, Foucault, and Agamben, but may at times be left wondering how some of her ethnography fits in. For example, a woman at a shelter insisted on talking about the story of her intimate relationship, a narrative mode not accommodated by the Italian penal code. Gribaldo suggests that the resistance to speak about violence lies in the contradiction inherent in intimate violence – “[t]hese women have embodied a perception of intimacy with a liberal stress on self-responsibility and freedom. They are victims who see themselves as guilty for not knowing how to react to a context of power abuse considered to be obsolete in a society presumed egalitarian” (56). It is unclear to the readers how these ideas were articulated by her interviewees. Furthermore, readers who are not familiar with gender politics in Italy would appreciate an earlier discussion of the white woman-mother figure in the Italian imaginary (102, Chapter 4) that circulates in and behind these testimonies. For example, such contextualization may help readers understand how a woman, who was displeased with her children’s testimony exonerating her ex-partner, retracted her testimony and forgave the perpetrator when called upon by the judge (42, Chapter 2).
Unexpected Subjects should be applauded for being among the few ethnographic investigations into judicial proceedings on domestic violence. Its thoughtful engagement with a rich body of feminist and anthropological scholarship opens up a crucial space for theoretical reflections on violence, testimony, and the law. To accomplish all these in such a short book is an intellectual feat. The book should be read by researchers, postgraduate students, and upper-level undergraduate of all disciplines interested in gender, violence, and the law.
Reference
West, Mark. 2006. Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide, and Statutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
In the 1st episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Anthropologist Tania Murray Li on the history and future of palm oil plantation in Indonesia and other parts of the world. Professor Li explains what monocrop palm oil plantation may be revealing about economic inequality and why is it so important to pay attention to dominant conception of development.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a large-scale military invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning, 24 February 2022, European publics and leaders have responded urgently with nearly unanimous condemnation and rallied to support the Ukrainian state and people. Like many others, we are deeply troubled by the unfolding of war. However, as scholars studying war, we also raise concerns about the current and hasty militarisation of Europe. Moreover, while public empathy and support for the people of Ukraine are both understandable and warranted, we also point to the humanitarian racism it exposes and the global rise of Russophobia.
As we write this piece, thousands of soldiers and civilians have already died unnecessary deaths in the midst of war. Furthermore, more than a million Ukrainians have currently been displaced from their homes. And the war has just began. Millions more are likely to be hurt, die or be displaced in the weeks and months to come. How can we prevent this from happening? How can we avoid that the war and suffering in Ukraine escalates or becomes normalised (some still remember how the siege of Sarajevo was first met with similar outcry, which didn’t last long)? Moreover, how can we avoid both a new great war in Europe and the further militarisation of European societies with the unpredictable consequences this entails?
To begin, we want to highlight that the Russian invasion is not an isolated event but has a history of relations between Russia and Ukraine as well as between Russia, the US and NATO. For instance, although most media ignored it, approximately 14,000 people have been killed in the war in the Donbas since 2014, in a country that has been on the brink of large scale war since the Euromaidan. Moreover, the US and Europe have specific interests in the conflict, which currently risk turning the war in Ukraine into a proxy war. Also, frequent assertions that “war has no place in Europe” or that “this is the first European war since the cold war” are not only historically incorrect (think only of the war in the Balkans in the 1990s), but morally problematic as they neglect European countries’ violent interventions in foreign wars in Africa and the Middle East.
Less than two weeks after Putin started the invasion of Ukraine, there seems to be widespread popular understanding that diplomacy has been tried and failed, and that external military assistance is the only viable solution, a belief that is built on a fault premise. It is never too late to pursue diplomatic channels. Diplomacy can and does take place alongside violence, as has happened and continues to happen in conflicts around the world – indeed we should not forget that there are ongoing conflicts today that are concerning both for possible escalations as well as for the huge humanitarian consequences they bring, for example in Myanmar, Yemen, and Ethiopia.
To understand, and work towards ending, the war in Ukraine requires informed knowledge about its root causes and the evolution of the conflict. It might also require greater self-reflection on the part of Europe and its subaltern relationship with the US, as well as questioning of the Eurocentric narratives and beliefs that prevent us from understanding the complexity of the conflict and the fears and desires of all parties involved. In this piece, however, we do not dwell on the causes of the war, but recommend some easily available and accessible readings to better understand the context and the actors involved in a scenario that ranges from energy competition and interests to the expansion of NATO, as well as to the often cited support of Ukrainian neo-Nazis groups. Instead, we want to specifically focus on three broader and arguably under-addressed aspects of the war that have profound, long-term and possibly devastating implications: the militarisation of Europe, the problem of humanitarian racism, and the worrying phenomenon of Russophobia.
The special session of the German parliament on Sunday 27 February amounted to a political earthquake. The German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany would help Ukraine with the supply of 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 surface-to-air missiles. More than that, the military budget would be scaled up by an additional 100 billion euros. With this, the German government broke with an anti-militarist tradition that developed following the defeat of the Nazi regime and with the principle of not sending weapons of war to conflict zones. Before, the US, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands had already provided or promised military assistance to Ukraine by sending weapons and mobilising troops in the NATO area. Apparently, the German move opened a space for other states to make “historical decisions”: among others, Sweden and Finland that have so far been considered “neutral” will send anti-tank weapons, rocket launchers, assault rifles and ammunition to Ukraine (see here). Forcing again in undesirable directions the predicament of its own Constitution, Italy is also sending weapons to Ukraine. The same has also been done by the “diplomatic champion” Norway, thus most likely undermining the possibility of serving as a credible broker in peace negotiations. Small NATO member states in the relative vicinity of the conflict, such as Croatia and Slovenia, do not have an armed industry they could call on and send to Ukraine. Balancing between obligations to NATO, the angry leader in the east, and the moral and political pressure to provide a tangible proof of being on the “right side”, they are bargaining with the lives of soldiers sent to the NATO’s borders. In the meantime, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are buying non-perishable food: they remember war.
To start with, we note how public affect has been mobilised and regulated to support these interventions in an information war controlled overwhelmingly by the US. Now, what is the argument for sending weapons to Ukraine? In the words of the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, the imperative for sending weapons is that “we must not leave Ukraine defenceless against the aggressor”. The aim is to prevent the weaker party being quickly overwhelmed by the superior force. But this is not the same as what we believe – maybe idealistically – would be the overarching goal: stopping war. Let us reflect on what could result from the externally assisted military build-up of Ukraine. Do we hope that it turns Ukraine into David defeating the Russian Goliath? Or, perhaps, this helps the US in its strategy from one of deterrence to cost imposition, which indicates that they predict, and might even seek, to prolong the conflict, in order to impose high costs on Russia?
The most optimistic scenario is that external military assistance could work to strengthen Ukraine’s bargaining position, and thus help to end the war. However, lessons from past interventions demonstrate the possibility of more harmful consequences. For example, let us remember the case of Afghanistan, which has been a theatre of external interventions since the late 1970s (if we only consider contemporary history and don’t go back to the British attempt to colonise Afghanistan). In response to the Soviet Union’s intervention in favour of the incumbent communist government in Kabul, the US CIA increased its support to the oppositional Mujahedin that were labelled as “freedom fighters” (this framing reappears in the statement by UK’s foreign secretary Liz Truss in which she also backs external volunteers that want to fight alongside Ukrainians). While the Soviet Union had anticipated a short operation, the external assistance enhanced the military capabilities of the opposition forces.
The war in Afghanistan continued until the Soviet Union ultimately withdrew its troops in February 1989 after ten years of fighting. War did not stop after the Soviet withdrawal. In 1992, the Mujahedin seized Kabul and killed then president Mohammad Najibullah. However, the Mujahedin government of Burhanuddin Rabbani never managed to pacify the country and the following period was characterised by battles between different Mujahedin militias, massacres, rape, kidnappings and looting. This period came to an end in the 1990s when the Taliban brought most of the country under control and established their “Islamic Emirate”. In 2001, Afghanistan became the main theatre of the global “war on terror” when the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom attacked it. Twenty years of war and “democratisation” later, the Taliban returned to power with more legitimacy than before. Now, we don’t want to delve deep into Afghan history, but we do want to get across what this and other cases suggest: this kind of external military assistance is more likely to prolong than end wars.
In the case of the current war in Ukraine, external military assistance also risks a horizontal escalation which, in the best case, can turn the war in Ukraine into a proxy war between Russia and NATO and, in the worst case, can lead to a new world war or nuclear war. As Judith Butler notes, “war begets war. It produces outraged and humiliated people”. It also justifies exceptional and otherwise unthinkable measures.
While some of these risks have been considered and debated, absent from most discussions are the more long-lasting and structural consequences of a military response to the Russian invasion. Among other things, the “historic decisions” in European countries risk orienting future policies and conflict resolutions away from diplomacy towards military action. At the same time, we are currently observing the militarisation of European societies by boosting their operational and combat readiness, in terms of logistics, manpower and minds. The consequences of this militarisation of European societies are unpredictable, but worrisome.
As mentioned above, the Russian attacks on Ukraine have provoked massive moral outcry and mobilised European citizens across the continent to support the Ukrainian people. While we stress that these expressions of empathy and support are warranted, they also reveal some uncomfortable facts. Firstly, Europeans do not suffer from compassion fatigue, as many analysts suggested in the wake of the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015. Conversely, seeing a European country with a largely white population being attacked awakens sentiments of solidarity and empathy in the European population that other wars and populations simply don’t. Scholars have long discussed the different degrees of humanity that are associated with world populations along binary views such as “civilized vs uncivilized”. Indeed, a massacre in Iraq or Afghanistan is described in global media (and perceived by the large majority) as less traumatic than a massacre in Europe or the US. It is not surprising, then, that many journalists, analysts, and politicians have described the war in Ukraine as more shocking and problematic than concurrent wars in “far-away”, “developing” or “non-democratic” places.
Moreover, countries including Poland and Hungary have also opened their borders to Ukrainians fleeing their homes, while Northern European countries have promised to accept thousands of Ukrainian refugees. While laudable, these actions expose a fundamental humanitarian racism.
On the one hand, Ukrainians, who are largely white and Christians, are deemed worthy of care, attention and protection, and allowed to cross even the most heavily policed European borders. On the other hand, the mostly black or brown refugees escaping violence and conflict in the Middle East or Africa remain excluded and unwanted, dehumanised as threats or burdens for European welfare states and societies.
The idea that Ukrainian refugees should be prioritised because they are Europeans or “like us” is not only morally repulsive, but also goes against the UN Refugee Convention which says that refugees should not face discrimination based on racial connotations, religion or country of origin.
In addition to this humanitarian racism, we are also worried about the current global rise of Russophobia. To be sure, Russophobia is not a new thing. In the wake of the Cold War and its aftermath, US pop culture has played a big role in configuring the Russian as the Other. We believe that the new, growing phase of Russophobia exacerbates divisions and jeopardises the possibility of dialogue.
In line with US interests, European leaders have quickly imposed severe restrictions on Russia and Russians with the intention to isolate Putin and create internal pressure on him. In fact, historically speaking, people/states under sanctions usually close ranks and persevere while the underprivileged/poor in their countries bear the consequences. In the process, global Russophobia enhanced by trends of cancel culture has been targeting Russians at all levels, as well as all expressions of their identity, culture and history. We also note with sad irony that political leaders and public figures in Europe and the US are demanding Russian personalities in foreign countries to publicly take a position against Putin or, if not, pay with a ban or public lynching, an attitude that resembles the idea of “regime” it claims to question.
Russophobia not only serves no purpose in ending the war, it is a form of injustice and creates the conditions for long term animosity and hate that will complicate future social and political relationships. Moreover, there are three major aspects this global Russophobia obscures. The first is the internal resistance in Russia against Putin and against the war. Being against the government in Russia is a difficult business that several have paid a high price for. Neglecting the efforts of oppositions and making “all Russians” a universal target of global blame is, simply put, short-sighted and immoral. The second aspect is the double standard used to look at war. Whereas in the case of Ukraine, Russophobia seemed a logical reaction for most, similar sentiments (with some exceptions) were not expressed when the US invented a Hollywood-style story to invade Iraq in 2003 or when NATO heavily bombed Libya in the name of human rights in 2011, to name only a couple of examples. We don’t think Europeans should be tolerant of military aggression; we just wish they would be as outraged as they are now with other military aggressions. The third aspect is the suffering the Russian population endures, especially under current Western sanctions. As Salla Turunen writes, “the sanctions on Russia will continue to take an ever-increasing toll on the Russian population, affecting the society as a whole. Lifetime savings plummet with the free fall of the Russian ruble, and access to basic commodities, such as medicine and food, decreases rapidly with an increasing isolation from the international system”.
Following Butler, we might note that war divides populations, not only between friends and foes, but between grievable and ungrievable populations. In the light of this actual Russophobia, the current and future suffering of the Russian population risks not only being obscured but justified. Eventually, these sentiments will keep nourishing the idea of a radical division between Russia and “the West”, thus reinforcing the mantra that war is inevitable, even just.
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This article was originally published with the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies.
Paloma had been in the immigration detention center for four days when I met her. While in confinement, she and her children had been given clothes and a room to share with other families. While discussing her asylum interview, I asked about her job in her native country. Taking her hand to the back of her neck and pulling up the tag of her t-shirt to show me the brand name, she said: “I used to work in a maquiladora for this company. I made these t-shirts!”
—Based on a story told to me during a 2016 interview with an NGO staffer working at an immigration detention center at the US–Mexico border
Each year, thousands of heteronuclear families cross the US–Mexico border, fleeing from the violence in their countries of origin and seeking asylum in the United States. Even though locking asylum-seekers up goes against the UNHCR guidelines, many of these women and their underage children end up confined in one of the family immigration detention centers in the US. Migration regimes today are based on deterrence rather than human rights, and the confinement of refugees has become a common practice across the world. In this article, I focus on how the inclusion of private actors in the migration management arena has resulted in corporations profiting from the confinement of populations who are fleeing violence. In this way, women like Paloma are subject to an endless cycle of exploitation, first in their countries of origin and then once they reach the Global North seeking asylum.
Neoliberalism and migration
Migrant detention, visa processing, border surveillance, transportation of detained migrants, offshore processing, and so on have all been privatized and are managed by corporations. These companies receive money from the government for each person they keep confined. In this way, states cooperate with private actors to carry out their work. These public–private agreements increase restrictive migration control policies. Migrant detention became commodified mostly after the 1980s. Within border securitization, confinement today has become one of the key elements in detention, and thus in the management of migrant and refugee populations. The origin of confinement as a common practice in immigration governance is connected to the securitization of migration; after 9/11, US border security merged and became the center of national security. The securitization rhetoric is based on the idea that migrants are potential threats—to security, culture, the economy—and this justifies the confinement of any foreign population. The combination of the demonization of migrants and the privatization of migration management increased migrant detention. For instance, in fiscal year 2018, a daily average of 42,188 migrants were held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Even though there has been a notable decrease of migrant detention with the Biden administration, in 2021 during the pandemic, the number of migrants detained increased from 14,000 early in the year, to 27,000 in June. Similarly, President Biden has kept the Trump-era public health rule to deter migrants from crossing the border.
Immigration detention centers such as Campsfield in Oxford, UK, the South Texas Family Residential Center, and Curtin Immigration Reception and Processing Centre in Australia are run by private corporations. Extreme cases of privately run offshore processing centers include the ones Australia has set up in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, or the one that the United States has in Cuba—Guantánamo Bay. One element that facilitates the global homogenization detention regimes is the fact that many of the same large, for-profit corporations that run most private prisons operate in almost all the countries of the Global North. This is one means through which techniques of confinement get diffused across different countries. To get a broad overview of how neoliberalism has reached different places through the privatization of detention centers, consider that in the UK, seven out of the nine immigrant detention centers—and all of the short-term holding facilities—are run by multinational, for-profit companies; in the US, for-profit companies control more than half of the detention bed spaces; and in Australia, all immigration detention centers are run by private companies.
Neoliberalism has been a key feature in the expansion of the immigration and refugee detention system. Private and nonstate actors have gradually entered the border control arena, including the sensitive functions of detention and removal. Within immigration and refugee management, many logistical services, such as the transportation of migrants and asylum-seekers, provision of clothing, food and telephone services in detention centers, airborne deportation operations, processing of visa applications, security, prison management, drone vigilance, and so on, have been privatized. Similarly, other companies profit from the private management of prisons, such as those providing food services, maintenance, education, health services, bail services, and so on. Research shows how the privatization of prisons has led to understaffed centers, with less training, fewer benefits, high employee turnover rates, more accidents, and discouragement of unionization.
Confining migrants and asylum-seekers in detention centers costs US taxpayers approximately $2 billion each year. Today in the US, nine of the ten biggest ICE immigration detention centers are private, accounting for 62% of all ICE immigration beds operated by private corporations. Of this, GEO and CoreCivic combined operate 72% of the privately contracted ICE immigration beds. Occasionally, counties charge ICE above daily cost and thus they use immigration detainees to fund jails and other county services. In addition, a Washington Post investigation found that CoreCivic receives $20 million per month to detain women and children at the South Texas Family Detention Center regardless of how many women and children are actually held there. CoreCivic and GEO are two very profitable companies that expanded their combined share of the private immigrant detention industry from 37% to 45% in 2014. CoreCivic’s profits increased from $133 million in 2007 to $195 million in 2014, and it has a $1 billion contract with Homeland Security. Similarly, in that same period, GEO’s profits increased by 244%. The stocks in CoreCivic increased by 34% and those in GEO rose by 18% the day after Donald Trump was elected president. In addition, CoreCivic’s subsidiary TransCor America LLC is the largest prisoner transportation company in the United States. This company gets paid by per prisoner per mile and thus overcrowds its vehicles, limits food and water intake, and does not take bathroom breaks. TransCor generated a revenue of $4.4 million in 2014 and $2.6 million in 2016. This data shows that the trend of privatizing detention centers and related services, combined with the increase in the detention of immigrants and asylum-seekers, serves the interests of private corporations. Although these companies have been profitable over the years, some of them also have other activities that are not exclusively related to immigrant and refugee detention, such as cleaning, IT, and parking management services, and it is hard to know how much profit they earn from each area of business. In any case, if prison management were not a profitable business, these companies would most certainly not be investing in the sector. In addition, data shows that in the United States, alternatives to detention, such as letting border-crossers live in communities, can cost as little as 70 cents to $17 per day per person, in comparison to the $159 that ICE spends to detain one person for one day.
Women, neocolonialism and neoliberal regimes
As in franchise colonialism, women in the Global South are exploited for their labor and positioned in an interdependent economic relationship of uneven development. These are ongoing structures of domination that remain in place to this day. The failure to acknowledge the constitutive role of colonial exploitation in contemporary neoliberalism leads to weak representations of what is happening today in regard to the confinement of asylum-seekers. The Western world has a long history of confining and exploiting the bodies of women and people of color. It is not only through the exploitative form of labor and resource extraction that characterized colonialism—echoed by Paloma’s example of making t-shirts in a maquiladora in her country—that Western states profit from postcolonial subjects; here, profit emerges from the technologies of exclusion themselves, where passive, confined bodies produce profit from being “out of place” rather than through their labor. The demonized asylum-seeker is confined and profit is generated from the physical care of her body (housing, feeding, clothing, and transporting it). This is how corporations extract wealth from asylum-seekers’ bodies. Even though there are alternatives to immigrant detention, confining refugees in private facilities is a more lucrative business than having them live in the receiving communities.
The detention of asylum-seekers illuminates how global confinement systems work. As most refugees come from countries in the Global South, confinement is highly racialized and can therefore be seen as a part of the larger racist system of mass incarceration. Punishment regimes are shaped by neoliberalism and are substantively enforced by transnational corporations controlling the detention, transportation, and visa processing (among other things) of migrants and refugees, tasks that were formerly performed by the state.
Note: this piece is based on the chapter “Women for Profit: Seeking Asylum in the U.S., a Neocolonial Story,” in Dignity in Movement: Borders, Bodies and Rights, edited by Jasmin Lilia Diab, pp. 191–206. E-International Relations Publishing, 2021.