Performance of National Sovereignty: Forced (Im)Mobility of Racialized Others in Contemporary and Historical Carceral Spaces

• In Event: Decarceral Futures: Dismantling Carceral Architectures in the Late-Stage American Empire

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the performance of national sovereignty through forced (im)mobility of racialized Others in both contemporary and historical carceral spaces. Drawing on histories of the colonial square, military maps, and the U.S.-Mexico border wall, I argue that forced (im)mobility of racialized Others is integral to colonial maintenance of white supremacy. I theorize containment and forced migration as interdependent colonial processes that are instituted as policies to establish and enforce colonial sovereignty while extracting racialized Others’ land and labor for white economic benefit. Policing has functioned to enforce, through legally sanctioned violence, surveillance, and segregation, the forced migration of racialized Others.

Colonial sovereignty, manifested in the modern nation-state, is intrinsically linked with the right to kill, and racism functions as a mechanism by which to regulate life and death (Mbembe, 2003). Colonial sovereignty is rooted in the nation-state’s right to determine its own membership—and who lies outside of that membership (Ngai, 2004). Racialized Others, excluded from nation-state membership, are deemed a threat to the safety and security of the nation-state. The nation-state thus implements policies to impel the migration and containment of racialized Others. I theorize the institution of forced migration and containment as central mechanisms of colonial violence that is enforced by policing. Colonial violence is inherently racist, perpetuated against racialized Others in service of white sovereignty, and rationalized through discourses of civilization and protection (Calvente, 2021). Police have enjoyed near-complete legal impunity for enforcing (im)mobility and enacting violence against racialized Others, which demonstrates the “colonial racial violence” within which racialized Others live (Calvente, 2021, p. 271). In this project, I focus on the United States and its history as a colonial territory to contextualize colonial racial violence enacted through carceral space.

I look at nation-state borders as invisible yet enforceable modes of containment that exist throughout the interior of the nation-state, well beyond the physical line that appears on maps or is demarcated by a border wall. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has the power to enforce U.S. immigration laws (e.g., arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants) throughout the U.S. By its own account, most of ICE’s work takes place in the U.S. interior, beyond the 100-mile border zone of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. For Ngai (2004), the breadth of ICE jurisdiction is directly relevant to theorization of nation-state borders: “The Border Patrol’s capacious definition of its jurisdiction illustrates the nation’s borders (the point of exclusion) collapsing into and becoming indistinguishable from the interior (the space of inclusion)” (p. 63). Borders therefore exist throughout the nation-state, not only at its geographical edges. I draw on Ngai’s discussion of the omnipresence of colonial borders to argue that the nation-state’s ongoing control, policing, surveillance, and criminalization casts all racialized Others as forced migrants who continually navigate borders in their daily lives. In doing so, I return to the question of performance to ask how public displays of carcerality enacted upon racialized Others shape national identity.

Author

• Stephanie Kaczynski, University of North Carolina at Chapel H