The sexual politics of border control: an introduction

Abstract

In this introductory article to the special issue, we ask what role sexuality plays in the reproduction and contestation of border regimes and think sexuality towards its various entanglements with border control. As borders have been understood as a method for reproducing racialized distinctions, we argue that sexuality is also a method of bordering and illustrate how sexuality works as a key strategy for the capture, containment and regulation of mobility and movement. Taking a transnational approach, we bring together queer scholarship on borders and migration with the rich archive of feminist, Black, Indigenous and critical border perspectives to suggest that these strategies need to be understood in close relation to the (I) intersecting dynamics of colonial histories of racialization, (II) national regimes of reproductive control and (III) the containment of contagion, disease and sexual deviance.

Border Regimes: Homophobia and LGBT Place Making in Six Ordinary Cities in Europe

“…5 Theoretically, this place making can be seen as a key strategy for bordering. In order to contain sexual deviance, sexuality works as strategy for the "capture, containment and regulation of mobility and movement" (Holzberg et al 2021(Holzberg et al , p. 1485. In other words, sexual identities, behaviours and discourses are also shaped within borders.…”

“…A border is not only a divide but a 'cultural terrain' that disciplines and produces the queer, the troublesome and the confines of the normative. While research has focused on the struggle against state violence in nation states (Holzberg et al 2021), this paper takes a neighbourhood perspective and shows that the neighbourhood can also be understood, organised and contested through a sexuality discourse in the production of border regimes. Border regimes enable the division of space according to sexual and gendered norms with the dividing characteristics being defined along racist as well as classist lines.…”