Mobility: The New Blue

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Acknowledegement

The author is extremely grateful to Brad Vivian for his assistance with the essay.

Notes

[1] See Alex Bellos, review of Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World, by Guy Deutscher, The Guardian, June 11, 2010: 8; Radiolab, “Why Isn't the Sky Blue?,” WNYC, May 22, 2012, radio broadcast, http://www.radiolab.org/2012/may/21/sky-isnt-blue/; and John Noble Wilford, “Homer's Sea: Wine Dark?,” New York Times, December 20, 1983: C1.

[2] On the twentieth anniversary of the founding of NAFTA, as economists celebrated its accomplishments, Europeans wondered when, if ever, it would legally codify freedom of movement. See “Deeper, Better, NAFTA,” The Economist, January 4–10, 2014, 8. NAFTA does not even come close to recognizing the rights that EU citizens have, including freedom of movement; however, the European exuberance over mobility is tested whenever EU citizens from poor markets (such as Bulgaria and Romania) gain access to richer countries. See “The Gates are Open,” The Economist, January 4–10, 2014, 40.

[3] Examples of successful immigrants include Google Founder Sergey Brin. Others are listed in the introduction of Khalid Koser, International Migration: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).

[4] See John Torpey's book on the history of the passport: The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

[5] See Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) and Alessandra Beasley Von Burg, “Toward a Rhetorical Cosmopolitanism: Stoics, Kant, and the Challenges of European Integration,” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 14 (2011): 114–28.

[6] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, NY: Harcourt, 1994), 298.

[7] Labor migration to the UK is now structured by the points-based system (PBS), regulated by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) (59–60). Canada has a similar system.

[8] Anderson provides a link to the full “Rivers of Blood” speech, which is interesting for public address scholars. See “Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,” The Guardian, November 6, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html

[9] See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1958) and Men in Dark Times (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1995).

[10] Honig, as cited by Cresswell, also writes about “supercitizens” (189).

[11] In August 2013, an example of making undocumented migrants visible happened in Arizona, where anti-deportation activists stopped a bus carrying undocumented migrants and called attention to their chained bodies, hidden behind dark glass windows. See Arizona Dream Act Coalition, http://theadac.org/ and United We Dream, http://unitedwedream.org/

[12] This is similar to the argument Anderson presents. See note 9 above.

[13] Also discussed on page 29.

[14] The rich can now buy a path to citizenship in several countries, including the US and Malta; even a student visa for the US requires evidence of a bank account with a cash balance that covers the entire period of study. According to the US Department of State, “F-1 secondary school students are required to pay the school the full cost of education by repaying the school system for the full, unsubsidized, per capita cost of providing the education to him or her.” See “Foreign Students (F-1) in Public Schools,” http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1269.html.

[15] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, Il Potere Sovrano e la Nuda Vita (Torino, Italy: Einaudi Editore, 1995), 34–35, 51–55, 68–70. See also Giorgio Agamben, “Politica dell'esilio,” Derive Approdi. No. 16 (Naples: Labirinto, 1998): 25–27.

[16] See note 6.