Flickering Presence: Theorizing Race and Racism in the Governmentality of Borders and Migration

Analytics of biopolitics and government have proven to be powerful tools in a growing scholarship examining the bordering, surveillance, securitization and contestation of migratory processes. Yet the critical potential of such research is hampered by the rather limited ways it has managed to make s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: David Moffette, William Walters
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Brock University 2018-07-01
Series:Studies in Social Justice
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/1630
Description
Summary:Analytics of biopolitics and government have proven to be powerful tools in a growing scholarship examining the bordering, surveillance, securitization and contestation of migratory processes. Yet the critical potential of such research is hampered by the rather limited ways it has managed to make sense of race and racism. While Foucault was insistent that governmentality should orient itself to the understanding of singularities, too often race appears, when treated at all, as a general phenomenon. This article makes two contributions aimed at addressing these shortcomings. First, we survey studies in the governmentality of migration and develop a typology of what we call framings of race – the ways that race appears, is mobilized, or haunts this scholarship. Second, we look to recent debates about race and racism in Science & Technology Studies for useful theoretical innovations that might help us study border- and race-making as mutually constitutive processes.
ISSN:1911-4788