ABSTRACT
The volatility of the present moment requires scholars to direct nuanced intellectual attention to the intertwined space of borders and sexuality. While these subjects have historically come into visibility in academic research as separate and self-contained fields of study, the emphasis has to be shifted to their constitutive connection and intersection. In their examination of contexts, institutions and representations that perpetuate forms of exclusion, this special issue advances a strong and necessary critique of the materialities and politics of sexuality and borders in the global present.
The subject of borders defies containment, and the conjunction of borders and sexuality even more so; as such, the scholarly challenges posed are many. It is only with collaborative energy and interdisciplinary work that we can begin to unravel the multi-sited and multilayered complexity of this subject. It is this belief that prompted the vibrant dialogue about that took place in the conference at New York University in the spring of 2019. As the editors of this special issue note in the introduction, it was their intention to leave the terrain conceptually open to see what scholarly connections would be made in response to the call for papers on the theme of Sexuality and Borders. The broad-ranging set of essays presented here addresses the important and rather undertheorized intersection of borders and sexuality from a variety of global locations. Collectively, these essays succeed admirably in showing how race, gender and sexuality are systematically disciplined by borders and their attendant logics of securitization. The volatility of the present moment requires scholars to direct this manner of nuanced intellectual attention to the intertwined space of migration, borders and sexuality. I offer my rationale and a few reflections.
First and foremost, border regimes and their regulation of gender and sexuality are pressing concerns that define the global present. At the same time, the practices and processes of bordering and the implications on the politics of sexuality have distinct echoes of colonial pasts. The special issue recognizes this need for historicizing border politics. The debate over who can be rightfully admitted into the nation and questions of belonging remain crucial issues of national contestation. While global causes such as the neoliberal economy, political unrest and the consequences of climate change have intensified the need to migrate, these trajectories are also accompanied by a marked increase in anti-immigrant hostility. Issues concerning gender and sexuality which occupy a central role in the imaginary of a xenophobic nationalism are incorporated into logics of border control. There is a long history of references to the sexual appetite and deviant sexualities of the colonized, migrant men and their proclivity to sexual violence, their violent lust for white bodies, and the stigmatization of queer bodies. These types of representations continue and other recent instances are analysed in depth by the authors in this special issue. Bordering regimes and mythologies of nationalism mutually sustain each other, by consolidating racialized narratives of sexual danger, risk and contamination.
The urgency of the issues explored in this special issue reveals and reminds us about how deeply academic work matters. Ideologies become powerful when they are incorporated into the everyday functioning of societies. For scholars of gender and sexuality, the status quo, represents a state of saturation when social hierarchies become a naturalized part of the everyday. This normalization of power structures needs to be problematized, addressed and critiqued. Border regimes and their control of raced and gendered bodies work in tandem with social systems and their stratified arrangements. Assumptions and presuppositions about gender identities and sexuality are continually, and often insidiously, reworked. For example, in many parts of the world, neoliberal economic policies and nationalist ideologies have reformulated and reignited heteropatriarchal ideologies and practices with seemingly new justifications. At this moment in time, addressing forms of systemic prejudice and analysing the elision of particular types of bodies constitute a necessary decolonial intervention.
Borders in their multiple material manifestations and their institutional and symbolic significance constitute a dense site of study. Several scholars from across disciplines have advanced compelling arguments and demonstrated empirically that borders perform diverse functions and are laden with multiple meanings. With the discourse on borders proliferating from all directions and with increased technologization, the character and infrastructural capacity of the border is also expanding. This has intensified the flexing of state power at the border and accelerated processes of attaching labels of risk to particular raced and gendered bodies. Migrant bodies have been subjected to all manner of scrutiny and their admissibility to the national community tested for conformity to heteronormative visions of the imagined nation. The archives of immigration history are replete with accounts of immigrants and asylum seekers excluded on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender stereotyping, morality or sexually transmissible diseases. As the examples discussed in this issue show, the enactments of power and policing at the border amplify and solidify existing systems of racial and sexual discrimination. The narratives and material experiences are complex and require transnational conceptual frames as demonstrated in this special issue.
Given the shifting nature of the border and the opacity of its processes, the study of borders demands innovative lines of inquiry. The intersection explored in this special issue is already embedded within multiple hierarchies, agendas, and histories. When ideologies attach themselves to bodies and institutions, they stabilize configurations of power and solidify biopolitical agendas. The scholarly challenge is to map, track and analyse how this happens and reveal the logics that are reclaimed or sustained to justify the stigmatization and invisibility of bodies. For this end, I believe, along with scholars engaged in feminist, critical race, queer and postcolonial studies, that our questions and methods should be guided by a vision of just futures rather than an adherence to canonical requirements and disciplinary boundaries. It is not enough just to point to the discriminatory processes set into motion by border regimes, but to show through careful methodological and analytical attention, how systems manipulate and regulate lives and identities. The production of decolonial knowledge is demanding and premised on resisting and decentring default positions. This special issue responds to the challenge.
The study of borders, migration and sexuality has historically come into visibility in academic research as separate and self-contained fields of study. However, the emphasis has to be shifted to their constitutive connection, juxtaposition and intersection where contestations of public and private life take place. By bringing critical theoretical perspective to bear on the manner in which sexuality and race are naturalized or disciplined, these essays collectively expose the political workings of bordering processes in the contemporary moment.
In the entanglement of borderscapes and sexuality in different geographical sites and political contexts, we see the weight of dominant ideologies and their oppressive control of bodies and lives. In their examination of contexts, institutions and representations that perpetuate forms of exclusion, the authors featured here make a strong case for scholarship that resists and challenges the status quo. Today with the pandemic exposing the deep inequities of global societies and the precariousness of human life, there is an urgent need for scholarship that provides a robust critical response to vital social and political intersections. This special issue offers a strong and impassioned intervention into the materialities and politics of sexuality and borders.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).