Introduction: Heterochronotopes of exception and the frontiers and faultlines of citizenship

Abstract

The five interlinked essays in this issue of Continuum consider questions of the (re)production of borders – biopolitical, spatial, legal, historical, symbolic – intended to contain and exclude asylum seekers. The essays situate these modalities and technologies of exclusion in the context of broader questions of nationalism, citizenship, biopolitics, neoliberalism and the transnational genealogies of colonialism and racism. They make the collective argument that the issue of border security is not the preoccupation of a single political party or government but serves to magnetize a cluster of concerns and issues that are central to contemporary formations of citizenship, identity, territoriality and statehood in the West.

Acknowledgements

For financial assistance for this project we are grateful to the Centre for Advanced Studies in Australia, Asia and the Pacific (CASAAP) at Curtin University of Technology. This issue could not have been put together without the research and editorial skills of Susan Leong, and we thank her for her calm, efficiency and eye for detail. Warm thanks also to Panizza Allmark, Vijay Devadas and Tanja Dreher for their ready assistance with various aspects of this issue.

Notes

1. The term borderpanic is borrowed from the Borderpanic Symposium held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in September 2002. Two of the contributors to this issue were participants at the symposium.