“Borders on Belonging” emerged from the 2007 Scholar and Feminist Conference XXXII, “Fashioning Citizenship: Gender and Immigration,” which, like this issue, drew attention to the public panic, fear, and resulting marginalization and criminalization of immigrants in the United States and across the world. Also like the conference, a wide-range of perspectives are represented in this issue, including those of activists, performers, scholars, and filmmakers. The conference also brought light to the question of how gender and sexuality are implicated in perceptions and policy about immigration. Gender has received surprisingly little attention in the public debates over immigration, despite the fact immigration policies in many countries are based on ideas of family integration that depend fundamentally on gender and sexuality.
Our contributors focus on many different areas of the world. Given that immigration is one aspect of global relations in our increasingly interconnected world, our hope is that making connections across contexts and providing comparative perspectives will help us to better understand a phenomenon that is too often treated in isolation: as if, for example, immigration to the United States is a social issue that stops at the nation’s borders.
“Part 1 – Media and Immigration” examines the role that mainstream media plays in perpetuating negative stereotypes and widespread fear of immigrants. “Part 2 – Critical Essays: Theorizing the Issues” presents the work of scholars who discuss a wide range of issues in relation to gender and immigration, including, borders, state violence and the criminalization of immigrants, definitions of “state” and “sovereignty,” gendered and sexualized labor, homoerotic fantasies, religion and racism. And finally, “Part 3 – Critical Engagements: Artists and Activists Intervene” is comprised of contributions by artists and activists who have worked to create more complex and accurate representations of the lives of and issues faced by immigrants—works that dispel stereotypes and promote social change.
We hope our readers agree that looking at immigration with a focus on gender, race and sexuality allows us to imagine immigration across scales and spaces and “also to struggle to imagine and realize,” as guest editor Neferti Tadiar states in her introduction, “more open and just possibilities of living and belonging.”
