Postnational acts of citizenship: how an anti-border politics is shaping feminist spaces of service provision in Toronto, Canada

Abji, Salina

doi:10.1080/14616742.2018.1480901

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Research has examined, for example, the development of an international human rights regime and the protection of minority rights, the potential for globalisation to erode the relevance of nationalism to political organisation, and the emergence of supra- nation-state legal and political institutions (Arcarazo, 2015; Besson, 2006; Kostakopoulou, 2001; Nanz, 2006; Soysal, 1994; Tambini, 2001). Recently, however, a small body of scholarship has sought to re-focus the lens of post-national analysis onto micro-political discursive practices of contestation which seek to resist hegemonic nationalist framings of membership and rights (Abji, 2013, 2018; Tonkiss, 2019). Here post-nationalism is conceptualised as ‘actor-oriented’ and is studied empirically as micro-level practice (Tonkiss, 2019).…”

Section: Post-nationalism and Affectmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A Baby Is a Baby’: The Asha Protests and the Sociology of Affective Post-Nationalism

Tonkiss

2020

Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Theories of post-nationalism are concerned with deconstructing the relationship between citizenship and national identity. While literature in this field has tended towards macroinstitutionalist analysis, recent research has re-articulated post-nationalism as micro-level practice. This article builds on this development by attending to the 'affective conditions' of such micropolitical practices. The article draws on research into protests in Brisbane in February 2016 to prevent 'Asha', a child seeking asylum, from being returned to offshore detention. The analysis of this case demonstrates that affect performs a dual function in the practice of post-nationalism, to catalyse action in solidarity with the noncitizen informed primarily by the emotional resonance of a particular rendering of vulnerability, and in re-imagined solidarity with the co-citizen around a post-national community of feeling. Informed by this analysis, the article highlights the complex and fragile nature of a post-national solidarity dependent on intersecting, overlapping and at times problematic, affective conditions.

show abstract

Section: Post-nationalism and Affectmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A Baby Is a Baby’: The Asha Protests and the Sociology of Affective Post-Nationalism

Tonkiss

2020

Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Crenshaw's early work on the structural violence of immigration controls for survivors of gender-based violence has been followed by a burgeoning feminist field addressing this issue (Abji, 2018;Abji et al, 2019;Bhuyan et al, 2014;Glenn, 2015;Maynard, 2017;Stasiulis & Bakan, 2005;Walia, 2013). Taken together, feminist critiques of immigration controls in Canada illustrate what I have termed a growing nexus between migration, security and gender-based violence.…”

Section: Advancing Feminist Intersectional Approaches: Centering the Survivorship Of Migrant Women Of Colourmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Crenshaw defines structural intersectionality as the co-constitution of gendered, racialized, and classed structures of state power in law (see also Bhuyan, Osborne, Zahraei & Tarshis, 2014;Maynard, 2017;Walia, 2013). I apply this approach to extend crimmigration scholarship, providing a reading of Lucía's case that is informed by my own fieldwork and interviews with service providers working within the anti-violence against women sector in Toronto, Canada (Abji, 2016(Abji, , 2018Abji, Korteweg & Williams, 2019;Bergen & Abji, 2020). I argue that what gets criminalized in such cases is not only irregular migration, but also the strategies of survivorship that racialized and migrant women have developed to address the multiple forms of violence in their lives.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Punishing Survivors and Criminalizing Survivorship: A Feminist Intersectional Approach to Migrant Justice in the Crimmigration System

Abji¹

2020

SSJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholars have identified crimmigration – or the criminalization of “irregular” migration in law – as a key issue affecting migrant access to justice in contemporary immigrant-receiving societies. Yet the gendered and racialized implications of crimmigration for diverse migrant populations remains underdeveloped in this literature. This study advances a feminist intersectional approach to crimmigration and migrant justice in Canada. I add to recent research showing how punitive immigration controls disproportionately affect racialized men from the global south, constituting what Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo have called a “gendered racial removal program” (2013). In my study, I shift analytical attention to consider the effects of the contemporary crimmigration system on migrant women survivors of gender-based violence. While such cases constitute a small sub-group within a larger population of migrants in detention, nevertheless scholarly attention to this group can expose the multiple axes along which state power is enacted – an analytical strategy that foundational scholars like Crenshaw (1991) used to theorize “structural intersectionality” in the US. In focusing on crimmigration in the Canadian context, I draw attention to the growing nexus between migration, security, and gender-based violence that has emerged alongside other processes of crimmigration. I then provide a case analysis of the 2013 death while in custody of Lucía Dominga Vega Jiménez, an “undocumented” migrant woman from Mexico. My analysis illustrates how migrant women’s strategies to survive gender-based violence are re-cast as grounds for their detention and removal, constituting what I argue is a criminalization of survivorship.The research overall demonstrates the centrality of gendered and racialized structural violence in crimmigration processes by challenging more universalist approaches to migrant justice.

show abstract

“…Scholars have critiqued such laws, noting how they effectively constitute a double punishment for individuals who serve their time but then are subject to deportation (Atak, Hudson, & Nakache, 2017; Burt et al, 2016; Silverman & Molnar, 2016). Other scholars have illuminated how border enforcement is often combined with racial profiling to police marginalized communities, demonstrating how the effects of crimmigration are particularly egregious for minority populations (Abji, 2018; Armenta, 2017; Romero, 2008; Villegas, 2015). While scholarship on crimmigration has made important contributions to addressing the carceral logics underlying immigration policies, very little attention is paid to the links between crimmigration and the child protection system.…”

Section: Extending Anticarceral Feminisms: the Connection Between Chimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We argue that a focus on abolition and transformative justice rather than reforms would simultaneously decrease overpolicing of marginalized communities and create more productive strategies for addressing the epidemic of violence in children’s lives. Abolition of CPS as it currently exists would form a key part of the broader strategy to abolish prisons, immigration detention, and borders (Abji, 2018; Maynard, 2017; Walia, 2013).…”

Section: Advancing Anticarceral Feminisms: Strategies For Reforming Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating the Carceral Pipeline: Social Work’s Role in Funneling Newcomer Children From the Child Protection System to Jail and Deportation

Bergen

Abji

2019

Affilia

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines the intersections of the child protection, immigration and criminal systems, and the carceral logics that undergird all three systems. Taking seriously Patricia Hill Collins’ (2017) call to analyze “intensified points of convergence” (p. 1464), we analyze the role of social work in perpetuating carceral systems and the tools that feminist social work provides for disrupting them. Using a case analysis of a foster child in Halifax, Canada, who in 2018 was faced with deportation after social workers failed to secure his citizenship status, we argue that a pipeline exists between child protection and a growing “crimmigration” system. The carceral logics of this pipeline not only draw from anti-Black, Islamophobic, and settler colonial histories of oppression, but they also position certain noncitizen families as unassimilable and requiring of state intervention rather than social supports. With this carceral pipeline in mind, we then draw from feminist anticarceral and intersectional approaches to consider a range of resistance strategies. Ultimately, we argue for a transformative justice approach that goes beyond reforming the pipeline and instead takes seriously the insights of abolitionist movements as an alternative to purely reformist approaches.

show abstract

Postnational acts of citizenship: how an anti-border politics is shaping feminist spaces of service provision in Toronto, Canada

Cited by 11 publications

References 33 publications

‘A Baby Is a Baby’: The Asha Protests and the Sociology of Affective Post-Nationalism

‘A Baby Is a Baby’: The Asha Protests and the Sociology of Affective Post-Nationalism

Punishing Survivors and Criminalizing Survivorship: A Feminist Intersectional Approach to Migrant Justice in the Crimmigration System

Facilitating the Carceral Pipeline: Social Work’s Role in Funneling Newcomer Children From the Child Protection System to Jail and Deportation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About