Resistance in the neoliberal city

Liette Gilbert

City, 2005, vol. 9, issue 1, 23-32

Abstract: “Democracy generally stops both at the gates of the workplace and the borders of a state.” (Anderson, 2002 , p. 34) “The border seemed to move with me, hanging overhead like a cloud.” (Blaise, 1990 , p. 5) “I now understand that a man’s place in society is the one he takes.” ( Tar Angel , 2001)1 Borders, and their iconic images of gates, walls and fences, are ubiquitous representations of immigration policy and experiences. They express the control of territorial boundaries of a nation‐state and its people, distinguishing those inside from those outside. They also represent the physical, social and cultural transition in the lives of those who cross a border to settle in a new nation, and in the lives of the people left behind (Chavez, 2001). Points of arrival are perpetual points of departure in the journey of a migrant. Powerful metaphors of the immigrant journey, borders are determined and maintained by economic and political imperatives constructing the flows of capital, goods, ideas, technologies, etc. (Appadurai, 1996). International commercial treaties, such as the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, affirm the permeability of borders. Post‐September 11 discussion on the creation of a North American security perimeter that would allow for a multinational harmonization of counterterrorism efforts without impeding economic relations has generated particular pressures to re‐examine the security of continental borders. Increased border enforcement and technology have been the main harmonization strategies that bring a “high visibility and symbolic value of the border deterrence effort” and thus affirm the control of (some) people’s mobility and flow (Andreas, 2003, p. 6). Economic borders have largely been dismantled under the banner of free trade while security borders have been refortified under the threat of terrorism (even though the north and south borders had very little to do with the September 11 attacks). National security issues have expanded the criminalization of immigration even though legality and illegality are integrally constructed in immigration policy. As Samers (2003, p. 556) argues, “[t]here can be no undocumented immigration without immigration policy, and thus those who are deemed to be 'illegal’, 'irregular’, 'sans papiers’ or indeed 'undocumented’ shift with the nature of immigration policy”.

Date: 2005
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DOI: 10.1080/13604810500050153

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