Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.1177/23996544231207680
{"title":"Corrigendum to “Marielle’s seeds: Contesting the emotional life of corruption talk in Bolsonaro’s Brazil”","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/23996544231207680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544231207680","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141414604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-20DOI: 10.1177/23996544241254249
Ryan Centner, Mara Nogueira
In an age of resurgent populism, emotional geographies play an underexamined yet pivotal role in explaining cross-class alliances that have enabled particularly angry forms of revanchist politics across world regions. This essay delineates the notion of “revanchist populism” and its grounding in “entitled anger,” as well as self-righteous geographical imaginations more broadly, to shed new light on the Brazilian case in recent years, which is further explored in this special issue. Beyond Brazil, we suggest how this approach can be used to bring a more geographical perspective to related iterations of revanchist populism elsewhere in the world and across the political spectrum, from Venezuela to Turkey, and Argentina to India.
{"title":"Geographies of entitled anger: Revanchist populism in Brazil and beyond","authors":"Ryan Centner, Mara Nogueira","doi":"10.1177/23996544241254249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241254249","url":null,"abstract":"In an age of resurgent populism, emotional geographies play an underexamined yet pivotal role in explaining cross-class alliances that have enabled particularly angry forms of revanchist politics across world regions. This essay delineates the notion of “revanchist populism” and its grounding in “entitled anger,” as well as self-righteous geographical imaginations more broadly, to shed new light on the Brazilian case in recent years, which is further explored in this special issue. Beyond Brazil, we suggest how this approach can be used to bring a more geographical perspective to related iterations of revanchist populism elsewhere in the world and across the political spectrum, from Venezuela to Turkey, and Argentina to India.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141121988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-20DOI: 10.1177/23996544241255793
Hafsah Siddiqui
Citizen-led activism to demand and secure adequate housing rights, infrastructure, and services in Islamabad forms part of a longstanding socio-political movement in Pakistan. This activism brings together different classes of urban residents. Drawing from qualitative research comprising of 129 interviews, this article reveals an emerging ‘overlapping politics’, defined as the political relationship between two (or more) distinct socio-economic classes of citizen(s) in response to any form of injustice or inequality. This (re)conceptualises everyday forms of urban political practice by countering existing assumptions that urban politics is rooted in class homogeneity. Inspired by the Islamabad case, I argue that ‘overlapping politics’ emerges largely as an alternative to, and progression from, clientelistic politics through four modes where ‘overlapping’ occurs across class lines: knowledge and information; networks and membership; support; and ownership and responsibility. The outcomes of ‘overlapping politics’ manifest spatially in the city, for example through increased interaction between urbanites, privately organised service provision, and urban protests. Although the practice of ‘overlapping politics’ has limitations, it provides an important new conceptual tool and language for understanding and analysing forms of politics that are embedded in cross-class relationships between urban citizens.
{"title":"Conceptualising overlapping politics: Cross-class political relationships in urban Pakistan","authors":"Hafsah Siddiqui","doi":"10.1177/23996544241255793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241255793","url":null,"abstract":"Citizen-led activism to demand and secure adequate housing rights, infrastructure, and services in Islamabad forms part of a longstanding socio-political movement in Pakistan. This activism brings together different classes of urban residents. Drawing from qualitative research comprising of 129 interviews, this article reveals an emerging ‘overlapping politics’, defined as the political relationship between two (or more) distinct socio-economic classes of citizen(s) in response to any form of injustice or inequality. This (re)conceptualises everyday forms of urban political practice by countering existing assumptions that urban politics is rooted in class homogeneity. Inspired by the Islamabad case, I argue that ‘overlapping politics’ emerges largely as an alternative to, and progression from, clientelistic politics through four modes where ‘overlapping’ occurs across class lines: knowledge and information; networks and membership; support; and ownership and responsibility. The outcomes of ‘overlapping politics’ manifest spatially in the city, for example through increased interaction between urbanites, privately organised service provision, and urban protests. Although the practice of ‘overlapping politics’ has limitations, it provides an important new conceptual tool and language for understanding and analysing forms of politics that are embedded in cross-class relationships between urban citizens.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141121591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-14DOI: 10.1177/23996544241246944
Lili Wang
Taking note of the limitations of previously dominant political economy perspectives on China’s urban transformation, and inspired by recent works calling for “beyond-growth” and “micro-level” studies of the Chinese state, as well as ethnographic approaches to the state, this paper aims to explore the often-untold everyday politics of decision-making processes in China’s state-led urban development. Using an urban design project at Hexi New Town in Nanjing, China, as an empirical lens, the article makes three main contributions. Firstly, it reveals how the Chinese local state is constitutive of and lived through intense negotiations and contestations over urban visions, subjectivities, and rules of practices in everyday life. Secondly, building upon existing ethnographic approaches to the state, which focus primarily on state-society dynamics, this paper develops a framework to re-conceptualize the power topology within the Chinese local state as a field of relational modalities (ruling power relations (re)enacted in everyday practices) and relational embeddedness (situated positionalities and subjectivities of state actors). Thirdly, it further shows how the power modalities (the interplay of political-economy power vs technical-power, territorial power vs trans-territorial power) of the Chinese local state are constantly reworked, sometimes re-enacted, sometimes challenged, through both formal and tacit rules in the state’s everyday life. As such, the article provides a new set of entry points to open the black-box of the Chinese local state and to explore the relational nature and an ethnographic perspective of the local state and urban politics in China and beyond.
{"title":"Demystifying the Chinese local state: Planning and contesting urban growth at Hexi New Town, Nanjing","authors":"Lili Wang","doi":"10.1177/23996544241246944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241246944","url":null,"abstract":"Taking note of the limitations of previously dominant political economy perspectives on China’s urban transformation, and inspired by recent works calling for “beyond-growth” and “micro-level” studies of the Chinese state, as well as ethnographic approaches to the state, this paper aims to explore the often-untold everyday politics of decision-making processes in China’s state-led urban development. Using an urban design project at Hexi New Town in Nanjing, China, as an empirical lens, the article makes three main contributions. Firstly, it reveals how the Chinese local state is constitutive of and lived through intense negotiations and contestations over urban visions, subjectivities, and rules of practices in everyday life. Secondly, building upon existing ethnographic approaches to the state, which focus primarily on state-society dynamics, this paper develops a framework to re-conceptualize the power topology within the Chinese local state as a field of relational modalities (ruling power relations (re)enacted in everyday practices) and relational embeddedness (situated positionalities and subjectivities of state actors). Thirdly, it further shows how the power modalities (the interplay of political-economy power vs technical-power, territorial power vs trans-territorial power) of the Chinese local state are constantly reworked, sometimes re-enacted, sometimes challenged, through both formal and tacit rules in the state’s everyday life. As such, the article provides a new set of entry points to open the black-box of the Chinese local state and to explore the relational nature and an ethnographic perspective of the local state and urban politics in China and beyond.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140704043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.1177/23996544241232514
Giulia C. Romano
To explain the poor results of several international collaborative projects dedicated to exploring eco-city concepts in China, some scholars pointed out that Chinese policymakers operate a form of cherry-picking that prefers technical knowledge to policy proposals. This approach is consistent with the hypothesis of a presumed Chinese style of policy transfers, according to which Chinese policymakers learn from abroad selectively and gradually. This study aims to test this hypothesis by analyzing one of these eco-city collaborations: the transfer of “Careful Urban Renewal” to the city of Yangzhou. Through a longitudinal study that looked at policy developments over the period 2003–2019 and a focus on the “demand side” of policy mobilities, it illustrates that transfers concerned several policy aspects, going beyond technical recommendations. This disconfirms the hypothesis of a consistent policy transfer style, as no specific policy preference could be spotted. Rather, the analysis of the policy process illustrated that different policy transfer styles emerged in the period considered. Variations in policy transfer style can be ascribed to the willingness, motivations, and interests of specific individuals, in particular city party secretaries and local bureaucrats, as well as to the room of maneuver and resources these actors possess, in turn, determined by the institutional structures in which they operate. Situational factors also led to variations. While this single case study cannot encompass all variations of policy transfer style, it is nonetheless hoped that this research inspires more longitudinal studies, which in turn can contribute to a promising discussion in policy studies and urban studies.
{"title":"The transfer of eco-city concepts to China: A selective and gradual policy transfer style?","authors":"Giulia C. Romano","doi":"10.1177/23996544241232514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241232514","url":null,"abstract":"To explain the poor results of several international collaborative projects dedicated to exploring eco-city concepts in China, some scholars pointed out that Chinese policymakers operate a form of cherry-picking that prefers technical knowledge to policy proposals. This approach is consistent with the hypothesis of a presumed Chinese style of policy transfers, according to which Chinese policymakers learn from abroad selectively and gradually. This study aims to test this hypothesis by analyzing one of these eco-city collaborations: the transfer of “Careful Urban Renewal” to the city of Yangzhou. Through a longitudinal study that looked at policy developments over the period 2003–2019 and a focus on the “demand side” of policy mobilities, it illustrates that transfers concerned several policy aspects, going beyond technical recommendations. This disconfirms the hypothesis of a consistent policy transfer style, as no specific policy preference could be spotted. Rather, the analysis of the policy process illustrated that different policy transfer styles emerged in the period considered. Variations in policy transfer style can be ascribed to the willingness, motivations, and interests of specific individuals, in particular city party secretaries and local bureaucrats, as well as to the room of maneuver and resources these actors possess, in turn, determined by the institutional structures in which they operate. Situational factors also led to variations. While this single case study cannot encompass all variations of policy transfer style, it is nonetheless hoped that this research inspires more longitudinal studies, which in turn can contribute to a promising discussion in policy studies and urban studies.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139838037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.1177/23996544241232514
Giulia C. Romano
To explain the poor results of several international collaborative projects dedicated to exploring eco-city concepts in China, some scholars pointed out that Chinese policymakers operate a form of cherry-picking that prefers technical knowledge to policy proposals. This approach is consistent with the hypothesis of a presumed Chinese style of policy transfers, according to which Chinese policymakers learn from abroad selectively and gradually. This study aims to test this hypothesis by analyzing one of these eco-city collaborations: the transfer of “Careful Urban Renewal” to the city of Yangzhou. Through a longitudinal study that looked at policy developments over the period 2003–2019 and a focus on the “demand side” of policy mobilities, it illustrates that transfers concerned several policy aspects, going beyond technical recommendations. This disconfirms the hypothesis of a consistent policy transfer style, as no specific policy preference could be spotted. Rather, the analysis of the policy process illustrated that different policy transfer styles emerged in the period considered. Variations in policy transfer style can be ascribed to the willingness, motivations, and interests of specific individuals, in particular city party secretaries and local bureaucrats, as well as to the room of maneuver and resources these actors possess, in turn, determined by the institutional structures in which they operate. Situational factors also led to variations. While this single case study cannot encompass all variations of policy transfer style, it is nonetheless hoped that this research inspires more longitudinal studies, which in turn can contribute to a promising discussion in policy studies and urban studies.
{"title":"The transfer of eco-city concepts to China: A selective and gradual policy transfer style?","authors":"Giulia C. Romano","doi":"10.1177/23996544241232514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241232514","url":null,"abstract":"To explain the poor results of several international collaborative projects dedicated to exploring eco-city concepts in China, some scholars pointed out that Chinese policymakers operate a form of cherry-picking that prefers technical knowledge to policy proposals. This approach is consistent with the hypothesis of a presumed Chinese style of policy transfers, according to which Chinese policymakers learn from abroad selectively and gradually. This study aims to test this hypothesis by analyzing one of these eco-city collaborations: the transfer of “Careful Urban Renewal” to the city of Yangzhou. Through a longitudinal study that looked at policy developments over the period 2003–2019 and a focus on the “demand side” of policy mobilities, it illustrates that transfers concerned several policy aspects, going beyond technical recommendations. This disconfirms the hypothesis of a consistent policy transfer style, as no specific policy preference could be spotted. Rather, the analysis of the policy process illustrated that different policy transfer styles emerged in the period considered. Variations in policy transfer style can be ascribed to the willingness, motivations, and interests of specific individuals, in particular city party secretaries and local bureaucrats, as well as to the room of maneuver and resources these actors possess, in turn, determined by the institutional structures in which they operate. Situational factors also led to variations. While this single case study cannot encompass all variations of policy transfer style, it is nonetheless hoped that this research inspires more longitudinal studies, which in turn can contribute to a promising discussion in policy studies and urban studies.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139778452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-13DOI: 10.1177/23996544241232250
T. Erman, Aminath Nisha Zadhy-Çepoğlu
Drawing upon critical feminist theorising, this article intervenes in the debates about humanitarian aid organisations in the case of urban refugees to highlight the ubiquity of in/formal practices in their interlinkedness that increasingly shape aid distribution. By examining humanitarian enactments at three levels –the national, the district and the neighbourhood– in the case of Ankara, Turkey, the article advances theoretical discussions about how formality and informality are intertwined as spatial techniques and discursive practices are deployed justifying in/formality in practice. We argue that such spatial and discursive interventions have become normalised as local aid distributors seek legitimacy in a contested process to counteract their image as unregulated. By centring the experiences of urban refugee women and their engagement with in/formal humanitarian practices, we expose the gendered connotations underpinning these interventions at the three levels of humanitarian enactments as (1) detached paternalism at the national level creating refugee women’s alienation, (2) a culture of Islamic charity at the district level prompting gendered performances of victimhood and (3) patriarchal ideology of male saviours linked to Islam at the neighbourhood level disciplining refugee women and leading to their (sexual) exploitation. In doing so, we problematise spatial and discursive modalities of in/formality, which produce profoundly gendered precarities, causing refugee women’s subordination in multiple ways. Bringing attention to how in/formality− as a part of contemporary conditions of refugeehood− interacts with gender, and how legitimacy is attained through on-the-ground spatial techniques coupled with discourses, we contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the humanitarian field.
{"title":"Spaces of in/formality in the Turkish humanitarian field: Spatial and discursive practices impacting refugee women","authors":"T. Erman, Aminath Nisha Zadhy-Çepoğlu","doi":"10.1177/23996544241232250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241232250","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing upon critical feminist theorising, this article intervenes in the debates about humanitarian aid organisations in the case of urban refugees to highlight the ubiquity of in/formal practices in their interlinkedness that increasingly shape aid distribution. By examining humanitarian enactments at three levels –the national, the district and the neighbourhood– in the case of Ankara, Turkey, the article advances theoretical discussions about how formality and informality are intertwined as spatial techniques and discursive practices are deployed justifying in/formality in practice. We argue that such spatial and discursive interventions have become normalised as local aid distributors seek legitimacy in a contested process to counteract their image as unregulated. By centring the experiences of urban refugee women and their engagement with in/formal humanitarian practices, we expose the gendered connotations underpinning these interventions at the three levels of humanitarian enactments as (1) detached paternalism at the national level creating refugee women’s alienation, (2) a culture of Islamic charity at the district level prompting gendered performances of victimhood and (3) patriarchal ideology of male saviours linked to Islam at the neighbourhood level disciplining refugee women and leading to their (sexual) exploitation. In doing so, we problematise spatial and discursive modalities of in/formality, which produce profoundly gendered precarities, causing refugee women’s subordination in multiple ways. Bringing attention to how in/formality− as a part of contemporary conditions of refugeehood− interacts with gender, and how legitimacy is attained through on-the-ground spatial techniques coupled with discourses, we contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the humanitarian field.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139841666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-13DOI: 10.1177/23996544241232250
T. Erman, Aminath Nisha Zadhy-Çepoğlu
Drawing upon critical feminist theorising, this article intervenes in the debates about humanitarian aid organisations in the case of urban refugees to highlight the ubiquity of in/formal practices in their interlinkedness that increasingly shape aid distribution. By examining humanitarian enactments at three levels –the national, the district and the neighbourhood– in the case of Ankara, Turkey, the article advances theoretical discussions about how formality and informality are intertwined as spatial techniques and discursive practices are deployed justifying in/formality in practice. We argue that such spatial and discursive interventions have become normalised as local aid distributors seek legitimacy in a contested process to counteract their image as unregulated. By centring the experiences of urban refugee women and their engagement with in/formal humanitarian practices, we expose the gendered connotations underpinning these interventions at the three levels of humanitarian enactments as (1) detached paternalism at the national level creating refugee women’s alienation, (2) a culture of Islamic charity at the district level prompting gendered performances of victimhood and (3) patriarchal ideology of male saviours linked to Islam at the neighbourhood level disciplining refugee women and leading to their (sexual) exploitation. In doing so, we problematise spatial and discursive modalities of in/formality, which produce profoundly gendered precarities, causing refugee women’s subordination in multiple ways. Bringing attention to how in/formality− as a part of contemporary conditions of refugeehood− interacts with gender, and how legitimacy is attained through on-the-ground spatial techniques coupled with discourses, we contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the humanitarian field.
{"title":"Spaces of in/formality in the Turkish humanitarian field: Spatial and discursive practices impacting refugee women","authors":"T. Erman, Aminath Nisha Zadhy-Çepoğlu","doi":"10.1177/23996544241232250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241232250","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing upon critical feminist theorising, this article intervenes in the debates about humanitarian aid organisations in the case of urban refugees to highlight the ubiquity of in/formal practices in their interlinkedness that increasingly shape aid distribution. By examining humanitarian enactments at three levels –the national, the district and the neighbourhood– in the case of Ankara, Turkey, the article advances theoretical discussions about how formality and informality are intertwined as spatial techniques and discursive practices are deployed justifying in/formality in practice. We argue that such spatial and discursive interventions have become normalised as local aid distributors seek legitimacy in a contested process to counteract their image as unregulated. By centring the experiences of urban refugee women and their engagement with in/formal humanitarian practices, we expose the gendered connotations underpinning these interventions at the three levels of humanitarian enactments as (1) detached paternalism at the national level creating refugee women’s alienation, (2) a culture of Islamic charity at the district level prompting gendered performances of victimhood and (3) patriarchal ideology of male saviours linked to Islam at the neighbourhood level disciplining refugee women and leading to their (sexual) exploitation. In doing so, we problematise spatial and discursive modalities of in/formality, which produce profoundly gendered precarities, causing refugee women’s subordination in multiple ways. Bringing attention to how in/formality− as a part of contemporary conditions of refugeehood− interacts with gender, and how legitimacy is attained through on-the-ground spatial techniques coupled with discourses, we contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the humanitarian field.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139781850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-09DOI: 10.1177/23996544241232325
L. Borrelli, William Walters
It is hard to imagine how deportation regimes could function without the threat or the exercise of force. Yet surprisingly a focus on forces and bodies, and more generally the question of corporeality, has rarely been foregrounded by migration scholars looking at deportation. Academic study of clandestine border crossing as well as detention abounds with descriptions and theorization at the level of the body. Why not deportation? Building on fieldwork with cantonal police units in Switzerland between 2015 and 2017, this paper calls for scholars of deportation to take corporeality seriously. We follow some of the corporeal practices implemented by state actors and related experts and authorities to understand how bodies feature in removal practices in terms of senses, feelings, affects, nerves, pulses, breathing. Violence overarches this scene, but it is by no means the whole story in the state’s struggle for sovereignty and racialised removal, since we should equally register the other moves that are integral to deportation operations such as calming, monitoring, medicating, consoling, dressing, undressing, and inspecting. To overlook the corporeal is to risk producing an overly sanitized, cleansed, tidy depiction of deportation.
{"title":"Blood, sweat and tears: On the corporeality of deportation","authors":"L. Borrelli, William Walters","doi":"10.1177/23996544241232325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241232325","url":null,"abstract":"It is hard to imagine how deportation regimes could function without the threat or the exercise of force. Yet surprisingly a focus on forces and bodies, and more generally the question of corporeality, has rarely been foregrounded by migration scholars looking at deportation. Academic study of clandestine border crossing as well as detention abounds with descriptions and theorization at the level of the body. Why not deportation? Building on fieldwork with cantonal police units in Switzerland between 2015 and 2017, this paper calls for scholars of deportation to take corporeality seriously. We follow some of the corporeal practices implemented by state actors and related experts and authorities to understand how bodies feature in removal practices in terms of senses, feelings, affects, nerves, pulses, breathing. Violence overarches this scene, but it is by no means the whole story in the state’s struggle for sovereignty and racialised removal, since we should equally register the other moves that are integral to deportation operations such as calming, monitoring, medicating, consoling, dressing, undressing, and inspecting. To overlook the corporeal is to risk producing an overly sanitized, cleansed, tidy depiction of deportation.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139847873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-09DOI: 10.1177/23996544241232325
L. Borrelli, William Walters
It is hard to imagine how deportation regimes could function without the threat or the exercise of force. Yet surprisingly a focus on forces and bodies, and more generally the question of corporeality, has rarely been foregrounded by migration scholars looking at deportation. Academic study of clandestine border crossing as well as detention abounds with descriptions and theorization at the level of the body. Why not deportation? Building on fieldwork with cantonal police units in Switzerland between 2015 and 2017, this paper calls for scholars of deportation to take corporeality seriously. We follow some of the corporeal practices implemented by state actors and related experts and authorities to understand how bodies feature in removal practices in terms of senses, feelings, affects, nerves, pulses, breathing. Violence overarches this scene, but it is by no means the whole story in the state’s struggle for sovereignty and racialised removal, since we should equally register the other moves that are integral to deportation operations such as calming, monitoring, medicating, consoling, dressing, undressing, and inspecting. To overlook the corporeal is to risk producing an overly sanitized, cleansed, tidy depiction of deportation.
{"title":"Blood, sweat and tears: On the corporeality of deportation","authors":"L. Borrelli, William Walters","doi":"10.1177/23996544241232325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241232325","url":null,"abstract":"It is hard to imagine how deportation regimes could function without the threat or the exercise of force. Yet surprisingly a focus on forces and bodies, and more generally the question of corporeality, has rarely been foregrounded by migration scholars looking at deportation. Academic study of clandestine border crossing as well as detention abounds with descriptions and theorization at the level of the body. Why not deportation? Building on fieldwork with cantonal police units in Switzerland between 2015 and 2017, this paper calls for scholars of deportation to take corporeality seriously. We follow some of the corporeal practices implemented by state actors and related experts and authorities to understand how bodies feature in removal practices in terms of senses, feelings, affects, nerves, pulses, breathing. Violence overarches this scene, but it is by no means the whole story in the state’s struggle for sovereignty and racialised removal, since we should equally register the other moves that are integral to deportation operations such as calming, monitoring, medicating, consoling, dressing, undressing, and inspecting. To overlook the corporeal is to risk producing an overly sanitized, cleansed, tidy depiction of deportation.","PeriodicalId":507957,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139787953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}