Status Updates From Border and Rule: Global Mig...

“…our era’s migration crisis is not marked by human mobility but rather the reality of mass displacement and immobility, produced by the multifarious and interwoven systems of globalized capitalism, imperialism, and climate catastrophe.”

Crazy that migration is a natural phenomenon in nature (including humans) and yet we are so concerned with stopping and regulating it.

“Intervention in Afghanistan rarely receives media attention anymore, even though civilians killed by U.S. backed forces and air strikes in Afghanistan in 2019 outnumbered those killed by the taliban or isis.” (Written in 2020 before we pulled out) crazy tho

“The convergence of “tough on crime” and “tough on immigration” sustains racialized control, while also ensuring a compliant labor force through the containment of surplus labor that exists alongside the outsourcing of maquiladora labor and the insourcing of migrant labor. Mass incarceration and mass deportation within neoliberalism thus serve as key techniques of conterminous social and labor control.”

First gen Border patrol agents were apparently kkk members and Texas rangers (rangers kidnapped runaway slaves, hunted and murdered indigenous ppl and Mexicans living in contested Texas territory)

“We did not cross the border, the border crossed us” excellent way to describe migration in America, white settler colonialists annexed Texas and forced everyone living there including native peoples to become “American” or be deported from their homes, sometimes they were forced anyway and violently so.

F*** imperialism

"Everything written has been said before. The citations trace an inheritance of intellectual labor by brilliant writes, and the book also draws heavily from the innumerable conversations and collaborations with hundreds of community members and organizers over the years. Movement organizing spaces, and kinship networks within them have always been my primary teachers."

“Spectacle as the route to empathy means the atrocities itemized need to happen more often or get worse, to become more atrocious each round in hopes of being registered.” Scenes of border death maintain structures of racial violence and, as statistics of deaths pile up, we cannot evade an interrogation of the source of this violence shaped through imperial, racialized, and spatialized control.

"our era’s migration crisis is not marked by human mobility but rather the reality of mass displacement and immobility, produced by the multifarious and interwoven systems of globalized capitalism, imperialism, and climate catastrophe."

"neoliberalism is characterized by deregulation of financial and trade markets, privatization of public assets and institutions, social service cuts, protection of private property and corporate profits, an ideology of individualism and competition, and enhanced enforcement to coerce labor while policing impoverishment."

"According to BAJI, even though Black immigrants make up 7.2% of the total undocumented population, more than 20% of all migrants in deportation proceedings due to criminal convictions are Black..In an era where the word intersectionality has entered the public lexicon, the immigrant rights movement has failed at it. It is the deeply pervasive nature of anti-Black racism that erases the existence of Black migrants"

"The US–Mexico border must be understood not only as a racist weapon to exclude migrants and refugees, but as foundationally organized through, and hence inseparable from, imperialist expansion, Indigenous elimination, and anti-Black enslavement."

"Our movements must refuse both the vicious far right and the banal liberal center. Racist ethnonation-alism and liberal multiculturalism both serve to uphold racial regimes through a social organization of difference. A proclamation like “Immigrants steal our jobs,” and its rejoinder, “Our economy needs immigrants” treats immigrants as commodities to be traded in capitalist markets and discarded if deemed defective"

Very timely start to this read. Already learning so much! Need an updated version ASAP.

Enjoying more and more!!

Many thoughts about this book, mainly that it quoted my old umass professor Martín Espada which made me happy 😌💖 obv idk what the rest of the book holds but so far I think this text is really valuable for reference in terms of facts and figures! Lots of interesting stats, data, etc. but I would say not so helpful in terms of a nuanced argument/intervention/prescriptive suggestion. Enjoying though!!

Listening to audiobook… Trying not to have it go over my head but I think I’ll have to buy the physical version and reread so I can annotate 😬😬

(CW) wild factual excerpts from chapter 1 that only scratch the surface: the first border patrol agents being recruited from texas rangers (lynching vigilantes) and Klansmen; the La Matanza period of mass killings of Mexicans; the ICE ACCESS program being based on the Fugitive Slave Act; the formation of CA beginning with “two dozen state-funded militia like expeditions authorized to kill Indigenous people”.

This book makes me so angry. I really need to finish it, but it's such a heavy topic and it's a lot to absorb.

Chapter 3

Detention and Globalized Racial Violence

This is really heavy reading, but it's fantastic at deconstructing systems of oppression.

Obama!! I'm so disappointed in you.

"While [migrant] workers are declared illegal, the surplus value they create is never deemed illegal."

"The IMF is a predatory loan shark forcing conditions of market liberalization and state austerity as preconditions to receiving a loan, and using debt as a disciplinary mechanism to reorganize economies into bordered sites of resource extraction and labor exploitation." 👏👏👏

Feel like re-reading this during Election Day is the only thing that will keep me grounded

The irony of reading this on elections day isn’t lost on me

chapter 4 literally had me creaming

walia is spitting !!!🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

I feel so stupid when I read this