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Abstract
This paper questions the utility the social category of “refugee” as defined by international human rights discourse. The notion of “racializing assemblages” supplies an analytic tool for situating the deportation machine and mass incarceration of refugees/asylum seekers as “death spaces” within modern Western humanity. Building on discussions related to “political death,” “social death” and “muertas en vida” (living dead), this paper explores an alternative framing of “the refugee” that relies less on human rights and more on other forms of emancipation. The history of “African American fugitivity” offers one possibility for reclaiming another articulation of freedom from persecution and enslavement.
Acknowledgements
My special thanks to the participants of the seminar, “Muertes en vida, vidas atravesadas por la muerte,” organized by Gabriel Gatti and María Martínez, as well as to Catherine Ramírez and Carolina Kobelinsky. The final version of this essay is much indebted to their constructive and incisive comments.
Notes
Notes
1 For further discussion of the criminalization of migrants, see Inda, “Fatal Prescriptions: Immigration Detention, Mismedication, and the Necropolitics of Uncare,” (Citation2020).
2 Among the mothers who testified before the Permanent Peoples Tribunal were: Ana Caridad Ruíz, whose brother disappeared in 2000; Lilia Fragoso’s husband, David Fuentes, disappeared in February 2013; Leticia Sánchez, whose son Luis Carlos Hernández disappeared on May 22, 2010; Emma Muñoz’s eight family members disappeared on June 19, 2011; and Olaya Dozal, mother of Alejandra Dozal. See Fregoso (Citation2017).
3 Karen Musalo, director for the Center for Gender and Refugee Rights at the University of California, Hastings School of Law, quoted in Benner and Dickerson (Citation2018).
4 The recent ruling by the Ninth Circuit differs from an earlier ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and forms the basis of an appeal to the Supreme Court.
5 My thanks to Cat Ramírez for suggesting Kanstroom’s book.
6 Letter #10. Published online by the Texas-based human rights organization, Grassroots Leadership (Citation2018). My translation.
7 For an examination of the necropolitics of uncare in migrant detention facilities, see Inda’s case study of Juan Carlos Baires in this issue.
8 The Corrections Corporation of America (CAA/CORECIVIC, formerly CAA) is the oldest private prison corporation, with over sixty facilities nationwide. See Freedom for Migrants, “Detention Statistics” (Citation2018).
9 Letter #20. My translation.
10 Letter #14. My translation.
11 For a similar category, see Holland’s “life-in-death” (Citation2010, p. 18).
12 In an article for this volume, Kobelinsky’s (Citation2020) use of “living dead” is more akin to Agamben’s notion of “bare life.”
13 See also Inda’s discussion of the growth of migrant incarceration and criminalization in the aftermath of the passage of new immigration laws in the 1980s and 1990s (Citation2020).
14 See The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition (Citation2011).
15 In her forthcoming book, Assimilation: An Alternative History, Cat Ramírez argues that the emphasis on migrants’ “contributions” to the host society “ends up reinforcing the logic of deservingness and bolstering the image of the host country as an egalitarian meritocracy. The argument that immigrants contribute to the host society also reifies them as bearers of human capital, not bearers of rights.” Email conversation with author.
16 I’m indebted to Cat Ramírez for referring Gruesz’ article.