Borders as Mirrors: Racial Hierarchies and Policing Migration

Abstract

This article considers how state-controlled borders and bordering practices are conceptualized, what they symbolize, and the consequences of these representations. By analyzing critically the metaphors that are used to describe borders and migration, and by drawing on empirical research on policing migration in the United Kingdom, an alternative metaphor, where borders are depicted heuristically as mirrors, may be instructive for capturing the multiple functions of borders and their racializing consequences. I propose that borders and their control across Western liberal democracies are like mirrors that represent, reflect and, at times, deflect the reality of exclusionary attitudes and the racialized anxieties they foment. Harnessing the function of borders through a process of self-reflection, where societies hold a mirror to themselves, may be both instructive and transformative. By reconsidering the metaphors employed in relation to migration, the article contributes to interdisciplinary debates on border studies, critical race perspectives and the criminalization of mobility.

Feeling difference: Race, migration, and the affective infrastructure of a Danish detention camp

“…Some officers also readily admitted that the run-down facilities to be material manifestations of deliberate political neglect of the people detained and that conditions would have been considered unacceptable, had the people imprisoned been Danish. Hence, much like the ways in which the UK government's hostile environment regime has proven to reverberate in the work of detention custody officers (see Bosworth, 2018), police (Parmar, 2018(Parmar, , 2020 and Home Office employees (Bhatia, 2020), the Danish government's promise to make life intolerable for deportable migrants reverberated in the affective infrastructure of Ellebaek detention camp. Several officers in Ellebaek shared that they found it easier to disassociate from people encountered in Ellebaek than prisoners in regular prisons, where they felt closer to the prisoners, knew more of their background and were engaged in their life stories.…”

“…The officers’ pattern of identification demonstrates how detention, as a bordering practice, functions to delineate the racialised boundaries of citizenship (Bosworth, Parmar, et al, 2018; Parmar, 2020). As a junction of the Danish asylum and immigration control system, Ellebæk was supposed to enforce deportable persons’ onward journey ‘home’ to the places where they, according to Danish migration authorities’ decision, ostensibly ‘belonged’.…”

“…But you are not allowed to write that the rapists are foreigners!’ 1 I objected to his statements – as he expected me to – and a heated discussion ensued. Through his passionate argumentation, Jonas’ demonstrates Ahmed’s (2004) important point that the hate attached to the ‘other’ is formative of the delineation and love of the collective self (see also Parmar, 2020). His idea of the Danish homeland relied on a racial imaginary of a homogeneously white, Christian nation, where I as a white woman was included in that which was to be protected.…”

Mirrored Social Representations of Canadian Caseworkers with Migratory Paths Intervening with Refugees in the Host Country

“…According to G. Breakwell [80], the bi-univocal relations between identity and social representations are driven by intragroup and intergroup dynamics. As the process of self-reflection, where individuals and groups look in the mirror, can be both instructive and transformative [81], the mirror effect allows for a self-awareness that leads to deontological decisions that deny possible wrongdoing in relation to the other [82].…”

Sappers of Fortress Europe: exploring the micropolitics of borders through the occupational culture of asylum caseworkers in Greece

“…In doing so, we take on the inspiring call by Alpa Parmar (2018) of changing the narratives around migration by deploying new metaphors that expose how the border exceeds itself and allow for positive reimagining, multiple forms of resistance, mobilisation and transformation to emerge. We begin by exploring the function of various metaphors used in EU's border regime to outline the relation between the biopolitics of Fortress Europe and what we define as micropolitics of borders.…”