In light of reports of Polish border guards turning away black refugees in order to prioritize white Ukrainians, a thread drawing on my article with @CUP_PoliSci in @NationalitiesP 1/
https://twitter.com/NataliaAntonova/status/1497725491956039681
Exclusion of migrants isn’t always on the basis of nationalism. But it can be. And it is often racialized. Migrants are an easy, visible Other, seeming to fall neatly into the us-versus-them framework of nationalism. 2/
doi.org/10.1017/nps.20…
doi.org/10.1017/nps.20…
The article explores the limits of nationalism concepts for the analysis of various types of identity, in this case migrant otherness, with applications to studies of structural racism, gender, and efforts to decolonize scholarship that engage us-versus-them categories. 3/
Populist politics as ideology or technology of governance can be a vehicle for othering migrants through scapegoating rhetoric, usually in the context of democratic politics. Securitization presents migrants and migration as an existential threat demanding an urgent solution. 4/
Some scholars of securitization have turned to biopolitical approaches to explain policies that simultaneously other and humanize migrants. 5/
The biopolitical state is a concept that denotes an activist array of agents and institutions of power that holds human lives as the object of political exercise. Biopolitical borders do not track with map lines and can transcend national territories. 6/
A growing scholarship problematizes the inherent othering that occurs when migrants are given a particular label. Many scholars seek to break down dichotomies such as migrant/refugee, migrant/expatriate, legal/illegal, high/low-skilled workers, and internal/international. 7/
These dichotomies often set up a normative Other that centers around the idea that migrants lack agency unless they are engaging in dubious behavior. 8/
Ideas of otherness are often politically constructed and top-down to simplify and quantify. Once created, many have difficulty seeing beyond the artificial nature of categories because they come to be seen as natural, objective, or value-free. 9/
Categories become embedded in policy and are mapped onto different legal, political, and social statuses. Categories create a slippery slope of associations, blurring the boundaries between legal status, race, and religion. 10/
An important outcome of assessing boundaries is that it lays bare the limits of the types of dichotomous thinking that are embedded in us-versus-them frameworks, whether in the study of nationalism, migration, race, or gender. 11/
These limits become clear even when migrant othering is rejected out of humanitarian impulse but migrants are recast as victims of circumstance, structure, policy, or exploitative forces, effectively re-othered vis-à-vis those with agency. 12/
Also see my introduction to a special issue on Migrant Rights, Agency, and Vulnerability. The SI explores how migrants can leverage the various vulnerabilities they encounter, turning them into agency and self-sufficiency. 13/ doi.org/10.1017/nps.20…
Our SI includes an important analysis by
@IrinaKuzn
and Oksana Mikheieva about the problems facing IDPs in Ukraine after 2014, a situation that cannot help but to worsen under current conditions. 14/ doi.org/10.1017/nps.20…
@IrinaKuzn
and Oksana Mikheieva about the problems facing IDPs in Ukraine after 2014, a situation that cannot help but to worsen under current conditions. 14/ doi.org/10.1017/nps.20…
BBC interviewed a mixed-race family Ukrainian/Nigerian on the Polish side of the border. Hard to know if it is instrumental racial placement or just an attempt to find English speakers.
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