CTSJ Undergraduate Journal Posting - Volume 10 by Occidental College

Critical Theory & Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research Occidental College

Volume 10: Spring 2021

Introduction to the Issue By the Journal Editorial Board The Critical Theory and Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research is excited to continue offering and amplifying transformational ideas by launching Volume 10. The pieces chosen for this Volume offer a wide range of topics that are analyzed through a theoretical lens. The artists and authors chosen to participate in this Volume introduce transformative ways of addressing societal dilemmas and critiques of established institutions that challenge the way we view and interact with societal norms. These pieces surpass the bounds of an academic work, embodying a call for action, justice, and a challenge to normative ideologies. Our cover, “Emancipation of the Apocalypse Dream” by Danika Odell (Occidental College, Los Angeles, California) draws on the connection between images, themes of architecture, environmental collapse, and apocalyptic dreams. The inspiration stemmed from the isolation of COVID-19 and the increasingly visible effects of climate change that have turned the artist’s life into an apocalyptic fever dream (of losing teeth). “Sterilization in the United States and Utilizing German Transitional Justice Methods” by Rachel O’Connor (University of North Carolina, Wilmington, North Carolina) introduces a transformative approach to address the issues of forced sterilization in the United States. O’Connor introduces the historical and political context of forced sterilization to allow the audience to

understand the complexity that makes this issue one that especially affects marginalized folks. Then, in order to introduce what transitional justice is, O’Connor presents the Nuremberg Trials as a successful example and discusses ways the United States can take steps towards reparations. Peter Araujo Fair (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia), through their article “Reaching Critical Mass: Discussing the Impacts of the Françafrique Regime on Nigerien Environmental Sovereignty and the Barriers It Poses to the Effectiveness of Paramilitary Responses Against It,” articulates the problem of the French control over uranium mining and exports which removed Nigerian control of environmental sovereignty. Fair presents an exploration of environmental sovereignty and its limitations due to the lack of attention to the impact of colonialism and other international regimes. Vamika Jain’s (University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) “The Kamyab Jawan: Producing Pakistani Youth as Gendered, Islamic and Neoliberal Citizens” examines and critiques how in order to create “national progress,” Pakistani “youth” are ideologically produced as “gendered,” “Islamic,” and “neoliberal” citizen-assets for the nation. Wenqi Huang (Marymount Manhattan College, Manhattan, New York) in “Are You Hungry? The Role of the Food Industry in China’s Rising Economy” investigates the visibility of workers' social consciousness in

this particular ecological system. Huang’s work studies the food industry’s prevailing philosophy as a major aspect of Chinese lifestyle on management, labor power, and consumption through a sociological lens that unpacks the relationship between the stakeholders and experiences from their perspectives through a series of interviews and surveys. In the photograph “Sunday Morning in the Tenderloin,” Maggie Lajoie (University of California, Irvine, California) captures the mourning streets of the Tenderloin District in San Francisco, home mostly to people of color, after the George Floyd protests. The image depicts the disappointment of those living in the poverty ridden district directly adjacent to some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country. Lajoie’s second photo, “Noon Routine in China Town,” captures the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco whose inhabitants are living within the repercussions of racism, losing customers, and isolated from the rest of the city. Finally, in “Illegible Subjects, Impossible Borders: Transgender Latina Women as Subjects of State Violence,” Grace A. Vedock (Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont) grapples with the situational location of transgender latina women seeking asylum

in the United States and how they experience border violence to understand how borders function in the broader modern world. Vedock works to convey trangender women’s anxiety in the modern state as they transgress imposed borders of gender binary and physically cross a militarized border between two sovereign nations, using a multidisciplinary combination of contemporary political theory, Foucauldian analysis, and interviews with subjects who have experienced border violence. This issue celebrates the second year since the relaunch of the Critical Theory & Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research, and we as an Editorial Board could not be more proud of the work we are presenting. We could not publish this piece without the guidance of our faculty adviser, Malek Moazzam-Doulat, whom we thank for his boundless support and wisdom in the process of solidifying our new publication structure, especially from within the struggles of the Covid-19 pandemic. Finally, we’d like to thank the Department of Critical Theory & Social Justice of Occidental College, which has provided us with the means to create this publication, including a profound group of innovative faculty members. Their support has been instrumental in the amplification of the voices included in this Volume.

Contributors Editorial Board Jenna Beales Dani Cooke Gieselle Gatewood Margot Heron Kayla Lim Isabel Mascuch Serena Pelenghian Mira Tarabeine Lulu Wiesemann

Faculty Advisor Malek Moazzam-Doulat

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 Sterilization in the United States and Utilizing German Transitional Justice Methods Rachel O’Connor - University of North Carolina, Wilmington 13 Reaching Critical Mass: Discussing the Impacts of the Françafrique Regime on Nigerien Environmental Sovereignty and the Barriers It Poses to the Effectiveness of Paramilitary Responses Against It Peter Araujo Fair - Australian National University 26 Emancipation of the Apocalypse Dream Danika Odell - Occidental College 38 The Kamyab Jawan: Producing Pakistani Youth as Gendered, Islamic and Neoliberal Citizens Vamika Jain - University of Toronto 46 Are You Hungry? The Role of the Food Industry in China’s Rising Economy Wenqi Huang - Marymount Manhattan College 65 Sunday Morning in the Tenderloin Noon Routine in China Town Maggie Lajoie - University of California, Irvine 67 Illegible Subjects, Impossible Borders: Transgender Latina Women as Subjects of State Violence Grace A. Vedock - Middlebury College

Sterilization in the United States and Utilizing German Transitional Justice Methods Rachel O’Connor | University of North Carolina, Wilmington In mid-2020, The Guardian released an article

discussing

employee

whistleblower—an

Enforcement)

needed. Eugenics is the result of a marriage

detention center in Georgia—that saw people,

between the developing field of genetics and

detained for being undocumented, being

the desire to link that to undesirable traits.2

forcibly sterilized in ICE detention centers in

This

Georgia.1 This describes one case in a long

disproportionately affecting poor women as

history of the United States forcing people,

well as women of color.3 Multiple states’

both undocumented immigrants and citizens,

policies have led to over 60,000 people being

to undergo sterilization procedures in what is

sterilized, a process overseen by eugenics

deemed to be in the best interest of the state or

boards.4 The youngest known victim was 10

the patients by historically racist eugenics

years old at the time of their sterilization.5

Customs

County

sterilization facing the United States today, a discussion on the history of sterilization is

and

Irwin

address the issues of forced

ICE

(Immigration

the

boards. This paper will discuss the transitional justice

methods

utilized

has

led

eugenics

policies

The 1927 Supreme Court case of Buck

Germany,

v. Bell, wherein 17-year-old Carrie Buck

specifically during the Nuremberg Trials, to

attempted to prevent her sterilization, allowed

begin the process of justice after the horrors of

sterilization to take place despite it being

the Holocaust and to help the victims heal.

against the direct wishes of the patient.6 Buck

This will allow for a discussion to form on

v. Bell allowed for sterilization under the

future transitional justice practices that may be

Eugenics Board’s decision that someone was

used to assist victims of contemporary and

of “feeblemindedness.”6 Buck v. Bell has not

historical prejudice within the United States,

been overruled by the Supreme Court of the

including forced sterilizations. 2

Mooney 1037 Gutiérrez and Fuentes 90 4 Silver 863 5 Silver 867 6 Mooney 1038 3

Bryant

United States and, as of 2004, seven states still

sterilized.11 Postpartum sterilizations were

allowed

common as mothers went to hospitals to give

for

the

forced

sterilization of

individuals.7

birth.12 Puerto Rican women were also used to

Sterilization fell out of popularity after

act as experimental subjects for birth control

the Holocaust and resulting Nuremberg Trials

medications so that those methods could gain

as Nazi doctors mentioned their policies were

approval and be given to those living in the

based on model policies from the US.

United States.13 Many times, these women

Hermann Goering, one of the defendants, went

were improperly informed or attempts at

as far as to say that it is the right of the state to

consent were not even pursued to protect

decide who can reproduce and who cannot.8

hospitals legally.13

Despite this decrease in the popularity of

Racist sterilization practices continue,

eugenics, North Carolina pushed forward with

not only in the ICE facility that was mentioned

its policies and, in 1968, gave the Eugenics

in this introduction, but also in contemporary

Board the right to remove welfare from

California hospitals. Madrigal v. Quilligan–a

families that refused to have themselves and

federal class action lawsuit case heard in

their children sterilized.9 The ability to remove

1978–allows a look into contemporary forced

access to resources like social welfare allowed

sterilization as victims came forward. Victims

for what has been described as “agency under

of the practices mentioned that hospital staff

constraints,” wherein an individual or family

refused

has the illusion of a choice, but in reality is

medications unless they agreed to postpartum

being manipulated by the other.10

sterilization done in the hospital.14 Other

Sterilization practices were not unique

women

to give women

were

sterilized

in labor pain

without

prior

to the states themselves. When the United

knowledge as doctors deemed it necessary to

States took control of Puerto Rico, it began its

prevent any more children from taking up the

eugenics programs there as well. By 1965,

resources

over a third of Puerto Rican mothers had been

described themselves as being targeted after

from welfare.15 Many

Gutiérrez and Fuentes 86 Gutiérrez and Fuentes 91 13 Gutiérrez and Fuentes 87 14 Gutiérrez and Fuentes 92 15 Gutiérrez and Fuentes 91–92

Silver 863 8 Girelli 133 9 Mooney 1037 10 Gutiérrez and Fuentes 88

women

hospital staff overheard them speaking in

committed, establish a precedent for crimes

Spanish.15 Some women were also threatened

against humanity, and allow for the beginnings

with the deportation of themselves and their

of reconciliation.19

families if they did not agree to the

Setting a historical record, through the

procedures.16 This court case illustrates how a

use of trials or truth commissions, as well as

woman’s ethnicity and language have affected

reparations,

her interactions with eugenicists, their racist

reconciliation between groups of people.

actions taken into effect.

Reparations are methods through which the

To understand the transitional justice

allows

for

the

potential

state can acknowledge the pain of the victims.

practices that can be applied from the

Nuremberg Trials to the current eugenic

come with a formal apology from the state;

sterilization practices facing the United States,

otherwise, this compensation may be seen as

these trials must first be explained. The

“blood money” to keep victims quiet.21

Nuremberg Trials were a set of trials after the

Despite the inability of reparations to ever

end of World War II that are seen as the

make up what victims have lost, reparations

beginning of transitional justice as a field.17

acknowledge survivors as victims. This is

The Nuremberg Trials tried the members of

important to the healing process as it allows

the Nazi Party complicit in the Holocaust,

the state to identify them as victims as well as

from judges to doctors. The United States

allowing victims to self-identify. Potential

Holocaust Memorial Museum has defined the

reparations

Holocaust as “the systematic, state-sponsored

sterilization might include compensation to

persecution of six million Jews” by the Nazis

individuals, citizenship for the undocumented

and their associates.18 The creation of the

migrants or documented immigrants forced to

Nuremberg Trials was originally a topic of

undergo the procedure, and the guarantee of

contention among the Allied leaders during

state-sponsored

World War II, but came to be in order to create

technology become available and the victim

a historical record of the crimes the Nazis

desire it.

Gutiérrez and Fuentes 93 Girelli 141 18 “Learn”

In order for this to work, reparations must

for

contemporary

reversals,

should

Girelli 126, 137; Besmel and Alvarez 183 Besmel and Alvarez 191 21 Van der Auweraert 16

coerced

the

The possible reparations highlighted

Research into the sterilization process

above are similar to Germany negotiating and

could constitute a modified truth commission,

agreeing on terms of reparations to victims of

where a non-judicial body will look into the

the Holocaust. Germany paid approximately

events in question for the purpose of public

$8 billion dollars in today’s money as

education. This aligns with preventing future

reparations to the newly forming Israel.22 This

events, as with the Nuremberg Trials allowing

allowed for disenfranchised Jews to begin new

for the creation of the transitional justice field

lives in Israel as well as helping Israel’s

and its promise to help prevent future

economy kick-start.

genocides in which minorities are targeted.

The second aspect of reparations and

This can be accomplished with the same

the Nuremberg Trials is both the establishment

method that the United States Holocaust

of a historical record as well as the promise of

Memorial Museum has come to employ. The

actions to prevent future victimization of

information gathered by the modified truth

minority groups. The establishment of a

commissions can be placed in museums, open

historical record is empowering for victims as

to the public and free of charge, for the

it requires that state to look into its actions.

purpose of educating the public on the racist

North Carolina is the only state so far to have

sterilization practices the United States has

investigated and archived the role that it took

undertaken.

in the forced sterilization of poor people.23

information in school systems, similar as to

North Carolina repealed their sterilization laws

how the Holocaust and World War II are

in 2003 and the governor issued a formal

included in academic curricula, will also be

apology.25 Other states are beginning this

important

practice, and these states have the ability to

allowing for sterilization.

The

implementation of

in preventing

this

future practices

suspend the statute of limitations during this

Another aspect of this contemporary

event in order to allow victims or their

eugenics process that must be discussed is the

families

lack of resources, like financial or mental

come

forward

and receive

assistance.24

health

assistance,

many

people,

mostly

women, had to live with. Due to a lack of resources, many women had to reach out to

Reiter 4 Silver 888 24 Silver 889 23

eugenics boards or social workers to get

to take birth control pills to test them for

approval

their own sterilization. A

approval by the Food and Drug Administration

woman’s decision to not have any more

to be sold in the United States needs to be

children had to fit the requirements of the

acknowledged.

eugenics boards. The woman’s desire to not

wherein doctors have the ability to make

have any more children was not seen as a good

medical decisions regarding a patient without

reason in itself to the eugenics boards.25 Social

the approval of the patient is necessary to

workers that women reached out to often had

address as it allows medical practitioners’

to falsify the woman’s application in order to

racist beliefs to continue sterilization practices

allow her to be sterilized, while aiding the

as well as preventing other women from

women in gaining reproductive autonomy was

accessing said resources that desire to do so.

for

The

medical

paternalism

very harmful to others that said fudging hurt.27

A major obstacle to these methods of

Poor people, mentally disabled people, or

transitional justice continues to be the lack of

people of color were significantly harmed in

budget for said practices. Many members of

this as the fudging played into the stereotypes

the government agreed that, even if the United

that supported their forced sterilization.

States were to begin to utilize transitional

Allowing women to have access to

justice

methods

regarding

the

racist

their own forms of birth control prevents the

sterilization policies in the United States, the

propagation of stereotypes that are used to hurt

lack of budget could prevent research into said

minorities. The state needs to acknowledge

issues and reparations being given to victims.26

that other oppressive, paternalistic practices

Methods of transitional justice will be

also allow for coercive sterilization to continue

key to allowing stronger social relations to

as they do. Modern-day medical paternalism

cultivate among marginalized populations and

must also be discussed with the contemporary

those with privilege in the United States.

victims that

These methods can be taken and modified

sections.

were mentioned in earlier

The

victims

fighting

for

from those found in Germany after the end of

compensation in the Madrigal v. Quilligan

World War II into present times. It is important

case as well as the Puerto Rican women forced

to note that reparations, apologies, and

Schoen 136

Silver 888

promises of preventative actions taking place

Requiring

linguists, translators, or

to ensure future compliance with human rights

other communications experts to discuss

do not make everything better. Instead,

procedures with patients should be required in

transitional justice methods are merely a key

order to protect citizens and immigrants alike

allowing the door to future reconciliation to be

from being targeted because of the language

opened

Actual

they speak. Doctors are afraid of losing federal

reconciliation between groups will require

resources and of being sued by victims.

time, empathy, and continued compliance, as

Understanding the racism of this practice, this

actions speak louder than words. This is also

“lack” of a shared method of communication,

modeled

will also help with reconciliation as those of

transitional justice are still utilized today, such

the majority, those not affected by these

as the creation

of Holocaust memorial

coercive sterilization practices, may begin to

museums, reparations, and educating children

understand the racist policies affecting many

on the importance of remembering.

that live in the United States.

and

ventured

Germany,

into.

methods

It is also important to realize that these

These transitional justice practices can

practices continue. Forced sterilizations are

also be applied to Puerto Rico, where racist

taking place today, specifically in Georgia, and

practices

the Supreme Court of the United States will

experimentation continue. Women continue to

not overturn Buck v. Bell.27 Buck v. Bell, an

be targeted in Puerto Rico in order to support

almost 100-year-old ruling that prevented

the economic growth of the United States by

people from maintaining their reproductive

sending women into the different labor sectors

autonomy, continues to impact the lives of

and preventing them from staying at home to

many.28 The overturning of this ruling will

care for families. Understanding that women

allow past victims and future potential victims

have

to feel safe that, if forced to undergo

decisions—be it women wanting forms of

sterilization, they would have the backing of

birth control to delay or avoid having children

the law.

or women that wish to have families in the

the

sterilization

right

make

medical

their

own

near future—are meant to be left to the individuals 27

Bryant 28 Mooney 1038

themselves.

This

shared

understanding between poor women, women

example. These practices fit with the German

of color, and disabled women will allow for

model of taking accountability for the actions

reconciliation between the groups as each

of the state. Going into depth on the

group comes to realize that the other groups

contemporary issues facing minorities as well

did not have the ability to make their own

as the historical roots of said issues, such as

informed medical choices.

the

feminization

poverty,

the

It is also important to note that, despite

school-to-prison pipeline, and even medical

supporting the continued informing of youths

paternalism, will allow future citizens to be

of the Holocaust, it is also critical to inform

better prepared to be good citizens.

youths of other issues pertaining to their own societies,

forced

sterilization.

emphasis

issues

Employing mechanisms of transitional

The

justice will help strengthen democracy and

discrimination

allow

for

stronger

sense

unity.

happening in the past, but not occurring in the

Transitional justice mechanisms will affect the

present, supports the issue of denialism.

United States differently than other states

Denialism prevents those of the majority from

because the United States is not a state trying

realizing their complicity, albeit it may have

to regain its government or return to normal.

been because of ignorance of the issues, in the

The United States continues to be a fully

problems affecting the country. The lack of

running democracy, so transitional justice

education also allows the United States to

practices will not have the potential for the

continue to view itself as an overseer of

massive political upheaval that will turn into

morality, the protector of the world, by

major violent conflicts as is the concern with

ignoring its own issues.

other nation-states.29 The United States also

To prevent denialism, the updating of

has the ability to prepare a budget to give

civic education courses is imperative, not only

reparations to survivors, if not by using a

in understanding the role that one plays in

method of singular payment, then through

these issues, but also the actions one can take

multiple payments. Multiple payments will

to assist in justice. Studying cases such as

also give victims the potential to save or invest

Madrigal v. Quilligan would inform students

their reparations in methods that a lump sum

about

coercive,

racist

sterilizations,

for 29

Besmel and Alvarez 192

may not afford them, these are all methods of

useful, if imperfect, and can be utilized to

reparations shown in the past to have been

assist in sterilization reparations to victims.

References Besmel, Parwez and Alex Alvarez. “Transitional Justice and the Legacy of Nuremberg: The Promise and Problems of Confronting Atrocity in Post-Conflict Societies.” Genocide Studies International, vol. 11, no. 2, 2017, pp. 182–196. University of Toronto Press Journals, doi:10.3138/gsi.11.2.03. Bryant, Miranda. “Allegations of Unwanted ICE Hysterectomies Recall Grim Time in US History.” The Guardian, 21 Sep. 2020, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/21/unwanted-hysterectomy-allegations-ice-geor gia-immigration. Girelli, Giada. “The Origins of International Criminal Accountability: The Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals.” Understanding Transitional Justice: A Struggle for Peace, Reconciliation, and Rebuilding. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 125–148. Gutiérrez, Elena R., and Liza Fuentes. “Population Control by Sterilization: The Cases of Puerto Rican and Mexican-Origin Women in the United States.” Latino Research Review, vol. 7, no. 3, 2009-2010, pp. 85–100, www.albany.edu/celac/LRR%202010.pdf. “Learn.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/learn. Mooney, Jadwiga E. Pieper. “Revisiting Histories of Modernization, Progress, and (Unequal) Citizenship Rights: Coerced Sterilization in Peru and the United States.” History Compass, vol. 8, no. 9, 2 Sep. 2010, pp. 1036–1054. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00717.x. Reiter, Bernd. “If Germany Atoned for the Holocaust, the US Can Pay Reparations for Slavery.” School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies Faculty Publications vol. 42, 31 Jul. 2019, pp. 1–6. University of South Florida Scholar Commons, scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=sigs_facpub. Schoen, Johanna. “Between Choice and Coercion: Women and the Politics of Sterilization in North Carolina, 1929–1975.” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 13, no. 1, 2001, pp. 132–156. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jowh.2001.0034. Silver, Michael G. “Eugenics and Compulsory Sterilization Laws: Providing Redress for Victims of a Shameful Era in United States History.” George Washington Law Review, vol. 72, no. 4, Apr. 2004, pp. 862–892. National Library of Medicine, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16211742. Van der Auweraert, Peter, and Igor Cvetkovski. Reparations for Wartime Victims in the Former Yugoslavia: In Search of the Way Forward. International Organization for Migration, Jun. 2013. www.iom.int/sites/default/files/migrated_files/What-We-Do/docs/Reparations-for-Wartim e-Victimes-in-the-Former-Yugoslavia-In-Search-of-the-Way-Forward.pdf.

Reaching Critical Mass: Discussing the Impacts of the Françafrique Regime on Nigerien Environmental Sovereignty and the Barriers It Poses to the Effectiveness of Paramilitary Responses Against It Peter Araujo Fair | Australian National University ABSTRACT: The suspicion and disapproval that define many Nigerien attitudes toward French state-owned uranium miner Areva are highly symbolic of the legacy of French colonization and the violations of environmental sovereignty it enabled. This particular experience of French colonization remains underdeveloped amongst post-colonial examinations of Niger. In order to facilitate this discussion, I will establish a foundation by exploring current conceptualizations of environmental sovereignty and their limitations in a lack of attention to the indirect impacts of international regimes, like colonialism, on environmental sovereignty. This informs the construction of a historical account of the French colonial legacy’s transformation into the “Françafrique” international regime; French colonial underinvestment and post-independence political and economic dependence on France enabled far-reaching French control over uranium mining and exports that removed Nigerien control of environmental sovereignty. The politically marginalized, Tuareg-dominated north felt the disproportionate environmental impacts of this regime, and their unsuccessful paramilitary responses through the Mouvement des Nigeriens pour la Justice (MNJ) provoke discussion of the ineffectiveness that violent responses had in producing changes in the international regimes responsible for violations of environmental sovereignty. As a result of the framework of the Françafrique regime, both direct military action and attempts at international norm diffusion were unable to produce tangible changes, offering insights into the processes which harm wider attempts globally to reclaim environmental sovereignty.

Introduction Ali Idrissa, Nigerien human rights

many legacies, one of these being a legacy of

defender and journalist, is wary of the power

environmental degradation in the path of

of France in Niger: “Don’t forget that Niger

state-owned uranium miner Areva. This essay

isn’t just negotiating with a regular company,

seeks to link the post-colonial Françafrique

but with the French state…we cannot ignore

regime to these violations of environmental

our former colonizer.”30 The fraught history

sovereignty and explore how effectively local

between the two states has manifested into

paramilitary responses have engaged in their attempts to create change in the regime. This

Destrijcker and Diouara

will be achieved in three parts—firstly, a conceptualization of international regimes and

Literature Review

environmental sovereignty will be undertaken.

An important starting point for analysis

This will then be used to construct a historical

into international regimes is to define their

account of how the French colonial legacy was

character, which Stephen D. Krasner broadly

transformed into an international regime, as

defines as “principles, norms, rules, and

well as the implications of this regime on

decision-making procedures around which

Niger’s environment. When this has been

actor

achieved, the activities of local militias will be

issue-area.”31 Different views on regimes can

used as a

reference point to promote

be split between neo-realists,32 neoliberals,33

discussion of the effects that violent responses

and constructivists;34 however, it is generally

to violations of environmental sovereignty

agreed that international regimes can influence

have in producing changes in the international

the behavior of states.35 International regimes

regimes that cause them. Through this study, it

on sovereignty are generally fixed around

thus becomes possible to pose questions about

discussions of either empirical sovereignty,

how the barriers posed by the Françafrique

which emphasizes the capacity of a state to

regime have limited the capacity for Nigeriens

distribute political goods to its citizens, or

to reclaim their environmental sovereignty, as

juridical, which is focussed on a state’s shared

evidenced in their unsuccessful paramilitary

legal recognition of statehood amongst the

responses.

international community.36 Some have sought

colonial

Understanding legacies

that

the

complex the

to approach international regimes, particularly

environmental sovereignty of Nigeriens can

for Africa, with an interest in the legacies of

prove to be a starting point that offers further

colonialism—Robert H. Jackson and Carl G.

insights into the mechanisms through which

Rosberg

post-colonial

reference to Africa's colonial history, referring

international

undermine

expectations converge in a given

regimes

have framed

widely deny and dismantle the environmental sovereignty of former colonies.

Krasner, 185–205 See Modelski, 214–35 33 See Keohane, 1-290 34 See Wendt and Duvall, 51-73 35 Tarzi, 23–39 36 Jackson, 13-32 32

this debate with

to juridical sovereignty as a means for

others suggesting it strengthens it.41 However,

preventing

not as much research is invested into the

weakly-institutionalized post-colonial entities

indirect impacts international regimes possess

from civil war and the manifestation of

on the environment. Some of these impacts

continental instability as a result.37 Siba N.

become more apparent in the study of the use

Grovogui takes this approach further with a

of violence as a response to environmental

critical

harm; for instance, international trade regimes

international regimes of sovereignty in the

founded on extractivism are indirectly linked

post-colonial context and the creation of

to environmental degradation.42 It is clear that

power

environmental

the

focus

dynamics

division

the

role

that

played

underpin

such

international regimes. 38

especially

prevalent amongst post-colonial regimes in

However, this prior work on the role colonial

degradation

legacies played

Africa, as regimes founded on violence and

in constructing

coercion themselves tend to face greater

international regimes has been limited in its

environmental challenges.43 Despite the wealth

exploration of the environmental implication

of existing literature, however, the study of

of this relationship—one area of particular

environmental violence in the post-colonial

prevalence

environmental

context remains not only limited to intra-state

produced

factors, but also does little to explore the links

sovereignty.

that

Peter

conceptualization

Penz of

“environmental

between

the

legacies

environmental

sovereignty” which notes that, if transnational

degradation

environmental externalities constitute a threat

international regimes that can continue to

to the welfare of citizens in a country, states

reproduce

are obliged to protect their citizens from these

independence. This is despite the fact that

harms.39 Scholarship is divided

on the

violations of environmental sovereignty are

influence that environmental regimes have on

becoming an increasingly big issue in African

state sovereignty, with some scholars arguing

countries as a response to issues such as

that it undermines state sovereignty40 and

poaching.44

Jackson and Rosberg, 1–24 Grovogui, 315–38 39 Penz, 41–61 40 See French; Fisher, 6

from

colonialism

colonial

structures

See Keohane, Haas and Levy, 397-426 Baechler, 24-44 43 Downey, Bonds and Clark, 417–45 44 Büscher and Ramutsindela, 1–22

and

the

after

transition, where France lent critical support to Defining and Contextualizing the

ensure the election of Hamani Diori as the first

Françafrique Regime and Its Violations of

president of independent Niger.47 In turn,

Environmental Sovereignty

colonization led to the predominance of trade

The linkage between French political and

economic

relationships

with France over domestic capacity-building,

and French

including

the

pre-eminence

French

companies like Areva in Niger's economy. 48

interests in uranium resources frames a relationship between the French influence in

However, Niger was not alone in

constructing Niger and the agency Niger

operating under such conditions—France had

possesses over its environment. This was

similar relationships of economic dependency

originally

derived from Niger’s colonial

with its other West African colonies.49 This

experience—the infrastructure, both political

had been specifically codified in the creation

and economic, that would be necessary for

Niger to build domestic industries was

“Cooperation

generally neglected in African states, as

further cemented a shared dynamic for this

European colonizers like France carried little

relationship, as common French cultural

interest in developing it.45 This was especially

connections

exacerbated in Niger, which was seen as less

conceptualization

worthy of investment in infrastructure and aid

preferential relationship.52 Furthermore, these

by the French who saw its landlocked Sahelian

types of close interactions are especially

geography as economically unproductive.46

curious

This left Niger's economy far behind what was

“incongruities between France’s actual power

needed to support the political institutions and

and its behavior towards these African

economic infrastructure necessary for growth,

countries,” where, despite declining material

particularly post–World War II under French

capabilities post-WWII, France could still

the “French Community”50 and the

Accord”;51

were

that

cultural

emphasized of

their

the

norms

the

“Françafrique”

manner

suggests

withdrawal from the region, becoming very 47

Charlick, “Niger: Personal Rule and Survival in the Sahel.” 2018. 48 Higgott, 43–58 49 Esseks, 1052–75 50 Manning, 146 51 Chafer, 7-23 52 Bovcon, 5–26

dependent on French aid and support. This was 45 46

affirmed

during

the

independence

Herbst, 58-96 Higgott, 43–58

maintain significant influence over much of

percent of its foreign direct investment (FDI)

Francophone-African politics.53 The existence

in 1970 centered around uranium.58

of such a structure in these circumstances

The influences of the regime had

appears indicative of a post-colonial economic

become

“Françafrique regime” between France and its

decision-making of the Diori government,

former

This

where Niger had the most French citizens in

particularly

government advisory roles out of any African

prominent within the uranium-rich states,

state59 and Niger's impoverished economy

where France had further augmented their

became reliant on French uranium investment

regime-building efforts so that the relationship

and development aid.60 This Françafrique

dynamics between France itself and Niger, the

regime had significant impacts on the manner

Central African Republic (CAR), and Gabon

shared similar behavioral expectations.54 These

importantly, set a precedent for the initial

common standards of behavior for this specific

dismantling

regime were codified in the 1961 “Accord de

sovereignty in this issue area—due to this

Défense,” which implored Niger to prioritize

regime, “France maintained near-total control

France in its mining and sale of uranium, as

over

well

production.”61 Much of this control was

West

post-colonial

African regime

as implanting

colonies. was

French advisors

firmly

which

ingrained

mining

decisions

first

and

environmental

exploration

[and]

government and defining expectations for aid

consolidated

distribution.55 Thus, from the time uranium

understanding

was first discovered in 1957,56 this regime had

Company (SOMAÏR, established in 1968) and

transformed Niger's economy to leave it the

the Akokan Mining Company (COMINAK,

most dependent on its former colonizer for

established in 1974), where both agreements

trade out of all African states,57 with 70

possessed

the

proceeded,

Niger's

about

into

forming

memorandums the

clauses

Aïr

associated

Mining

with

environmental standards.62 Over time, this

Bovcon, 9 Martin, 625–40 55 Martin, 625–40 56 World Nuclear Association 57 Esseks, 1052–75

Higgott, 43–58 Higgott and Fuglestad, 383–98 60 Charlick “Niger.”, 1994, 103-24. 61 Robinson 7 62 Lawel, 211-3

regime was maintained through military junta

northerners were traditionally marginalized by

French colonial administrations, who instead

and democracy.64

favored people from the west of the country Distribution of the Impacts of the

for political leadership, and these inequalities

Françafrique Regime

were maintained post-independence.67 This

The environmental impacts of the Françafrique

regime

significant

which from the beginning overwhelmingly

—radiation levels in the community of

employed southerners to the point where even

Akokan were 500 times higher than normal,

the Tuareg population in mining towns like

and air, water, and soil contamination are

Arlit became minorities.68 This left the

leading to illness rates among locals being

northerners

double or more those of the Niger average.65

impacted by the environmental damage caused

Aquifers used by both the local community in

by the mining, but also unable to translate their

the Arlit region and by Areva were found to be

grievances into mainstream political action. It

significantly polluted from radiation and

is critical to note that many of the armed

depleted so flora became unable to grow.

responses in Tuareg-dominated areas do not

These effects, combined with the noise

define

pollution from the mine operations, drove

pro-Tuareg

wildlife and livestock south and intensified

spokesperson

desertification.66 As the pollution from the

Nigeriens pour la Justice (MNJ), Moktar

mining disproportionately affects nomadic

Roman, emphasized that “it is not just a

herders

Touareg movement.”69

amongst

were

became translated into Areva’s operations,

others

the

soils and clean water to survive, the region became the epicenter for resistance against violations

sovereignty.

The

environmental Tuareg-dominated

Higgott and Fuglestad, 383–98; Staniland, 51–62 Bovcon; Elischer and Mueller, 392–406 65 Dixon, 6 66 Dixon, 22 64

Schritt, 54 Schritt, 55 69 Roman 68

only

themselves

Tuareg-dominated north who rely on healthy

French

not

movements. for

the

disproportionately

ethno-nationalist In

fact,

the

Mouvement

des

the Nigerien government and France to force a Contextualizing and Discussing the Impacts

change in the Françafrique regime, as well as

of Paramilitary Responses to the

attracting international support for their cause

Françafrique Regime

as a form of norm diffusion implicit in the

Paramilitary efforts to change the

signaling they perform in staging attacks.

Françafrique regime have occurred since the

However,

late 1980s and 1990s. These initial experiences

Françafrique regime have been stifled by

of civil unrest served to encourage the use of

international

paramilitary action as a means of regime

counter-balanced to reinforce the regime.

change. Tuaregs and other northerners, despite

Although the MNJ were able to engage in

a lack of any measurable outcomes, perceived

talks after two years of conflict in 2009,74 the

this action as being successful in demanding

peace agreement’s promises have not been

respect and visibility, and thus environmental

fulfilled, leaving the Françafrique regime

empowerment, from political elites and the

unchanged just as in the last rebellion.

Françafrique

regime.70

These

feelings,

their

First,

efforts

structures

international

change

that

the

have

factors

have

however, began to be replaced by further

contributed to the Nigerien government’s

demands

who

capacity to absorb the costs imposed by the

increasingly saw little translation between this

MNJ, as well as disincentivizing the Nigerien

greater respect and tangible improvements.71

government from cooperating with rebel

The most prominent manifestation of the

groups. The Françafrique regime has changed

resulting rebirth of paramilitary activity has

the costs associated with compliance with

been the MNJ,72 whose leadership emphasizes

demands from paramilitary group actions, thus

how they “want the French…to respect [their]

allowing

environment” and has demanded France be

processes that violate Nigerien environmental

included in future negotiations regarding

sovereignty. One factor is that Niger has

Areva.73 Their attempts to change the regime

incentives to continue working within the

are founded both in directly inflicting costs on

Françafrique regime due to the depth of

for

change

people

France

maintain

extraction

existing economic linkages it currently shares.

Deycard, 56 71 Deycard, 64 72 Lawel, 192-3 73 Acharif, 1

Massalatchi

Higher FDI and economic aid from France, including

Additionally, paramilitary action is

project grants and preferential

borrowing

terms,

are

products

unlikely

the

Nigerien

achieve the reclamation of

environmental

sovereignty

Françafrique regime. This financial support is

inflicting enough costs against the Nigerien

vital for ensuring the short-term survival of the

government to incentivize challenging the

Nigerien government, as Niger relies heavily

Françafrique regime, as the Françafrique

on the regime’s assistance to pay for the

regime itself enables the costs associated with

provision of public goods and manage external

action to be redirected towards the Nigerien

debts.75 Engagement with paramilitary groups

government. Some groups insist that France

to pressure Areva into higher environmental

must be at the negotiating table in order for

standards essentially amounts to attempts to

them to proceed with peace talks.78 Even if not

restrict French

directly asking for French involvement, all

enforce

investment conditions to

Nigerien

sovereignty—this

unattractive

groups

that

have

sought

environmental sovereignty from the French

Nigerien government, as a short-term decrease

seek changes in Areva operations. Given all

undermines public service provision which

changes in operating practice need to be

will

negotiated with

exacerbate

existing

paramilitary

the

likely

environmental

armed

state-owned

Areva, this

movements against the government.76 The

necessitates French involvement in some stage

Nigerien government’s fear that concessions

in the process. France can refuse to participate

will deter future investment can be seen in

fully in these negotiations and thus set the

their muted response of promises of greater

foundations for attacks to be eventually

investment

and

resumed, leaving the Nigerien government to

political involvement for northerners, which

face all the costs of the revival in conflict.

can be assisted with preferential financing

France will import foreign security regardless

from the Françafrique regime, as opposed to

to defend Areva operations, as it did when

efforts

Areva staff were kidnapped in 2008 during the

into

local infrastructure

to promote higher environmental

standards demanded by paramilitary groups.77

conflict, to which they responded by sending special forces79 with no prior consultation with

Robinson, Allum and Anos-Casero, 15 Fjelde and De Soysa, 5–25 77 Bekoe 76

78 79

Acharif, 17067–8 Stratfor

the Nigerien government.80 Regardless, the

community and responsibility that weaken the

government will still have to suffer the

desire for ethnic violence.81 The boundaries of

consequences of attacks on military bases and

“cultural conscience” are often defined beyond

the wider economic impacts of attacks on

only ethnic characteristics toward common

towns, incentivizing them into action against

experiences that may be shared amongst

the paramilitary groups even when it might see

groups (in the MNJ’s case, with Toutou

benefits in making a truce due to regime

peoples amongst others), which dampens

power dynamics favoring France. Thus, they

incentives

are able to preserve their control over Nigerien

towards this particular portrayal may instead

environmental sovereignty in this regime’s

be linked to Western colonial conceptions of

structure and continue violations with relative

intra-African relations.83 These “fixing[s] of

impunity.

meanings” have damaged how effectively

Norm-diffusion approaches have been

for

conflict.82 The propensity

groups like the MNJ are able to gather

similarly ineffective in producing regime

international

change. In fact, international actors have fixed

promote regime change through shifting

negative meanings to the MNJ’s military

international perceptions of the Françafrique

actions, such as their portrayal in media as a

regime. In fact, they have even contributed to

“terrorist force” with illegitimate aims, which

the stability of the Françafrique regime by

has

redirecting focus on the MNJ from their

normative force for regime change. This

environmental sovereignty activism toward

underscores a prevailing “blanket portrayal” of

questions of their legitimacy as representatives

the wider paramilitary actions associated with

of Nigeriens.

undermined

their

legitimacy

support

and

legitimacy

groups like the MNJ as “ethnically motivated,”

The prevalence of protests against

despite the MNJ recruiting many non-Tuareg

Areva, and their association of Areva with the

members. This stems in part from wider

Françafrique regime, suggest the

misunderstandings of Tuareg conceptions of

recognizes the regime as a root cause of the

self-identity, which, given their nomadic roots,

violation of their environmental sovereignty;84

lend them to supra-national conceptions of

Claudot-Hawad, 143-9 Ki-Zerbo, 47-66 83 Lawel, 178-9 84 Schritt, 54-56 82

Lawel, 304-11

public

despite this, the most visible representation of

in the uranium mining of Areva, could be

their

action—has

linked to tangible evidence of environmental

achieved little. This essay has described the

degradation. The paramilitary responses that

ineffectiveness of paramilitary action against

emerged to combat it, including the MNJ,

international

perpetrating

were evaluated for their ability to induce

environmental sovereignty violations by first

change in the Françafrique regime, to which

analyzing the development of the Françafrique

they remained unable due to structural factors

regime. Built from French colonial practice,

inherent in the Françafrique regime, both in

and their construction of legal standards built

direct military action and attempts at norm

from,

diffusion.

concerns—paramilitary

and

regimes

contributing

to,

systemic

inequalities, the regime, when contextualized

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Modelski, George. “The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 20, no. 2, Apr. 1978, pp. 214–235. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/178047. Penz, Peter. “Environmental Victims and State Sovereignty: A Normative Analysis.” Social Justice, vol. 23, no. 4, 1996, pp. 41–61. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/29766974. Robinson, David, Peter Allum, and Paloma Anos-Casero. Niger: Staff Report for the 2016 Article IV Consultation and Request for a Three-Year Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility—Debt Sustainability Analysis. International Monetary Fund, 22 Dec. 2016. Robinson, Pearl T. “Anatomy of a Neotraditional Corporatist State.” Comparative Politics, vol. 24, no. 1, Oct. 1991, pp. 1–20. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/422199. Roman, Moktar. “New Touareg Rebel Group Speaks Out.” The New Humanitarian, 17 May 2007, www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/72223/niger-new-touareg-rebel-group-speaks-out. Schritt, Jannik. “The ‘Protests against Charlie Hebdo’ in Niger: A Background Analysis.” Africa Spectrum, vol. 50, no. 1, 1 Apr. 2015, pp. 49–64. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177%2F000203971505000104. Staniland, Martin. “Francophone Africa: The Enduring French Connection.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 489, Jan. 1987, pp. 51–62. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1045602. Stratfor. “In Niger, Intervention Likely in Potential Tuareg Rebellion.” Stratfor Worldview, 19 Apr. 2012, worldview.stratfor.com/article/niger-intervention-likely-potential-tuareg-rebellion. Tarzi, Shah M. “International Regimes and International Relations Theory: Search for Synthesis.” International Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, Feb. 2003, pp. 23–39. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177%2F002088170304000102. Wendt, Alexander, and Raymond Duvall. “Institutions and International Order.” Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s, edited by Ernst-Otto Zempiel and James N. Rosenau, Lexington Books, 1989. World Nuclear Association. “Uranium in Niger.” World Nuclear Association, updated Oct. 2021. Accessed 9 Nov. 2019. www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/niger.aspx.

Emancipation of the Apocalypse Dream Danika Odell | Occidental College ARTIST’S STATEMENT: For this project, I decided to focus on how photoshop influences my process of building an image. While creating this series, I began to draw connections between my images and themes of architecture, environmental collapse, apocalypse, and anxiety dreams. In my undergraduate courses, Photoshop became a necessary tool for planning out my paintings. In my earlier paintings, this was unintentional, but here I saw it as an opportunity to challenge linear perspective in my images. In my tenth collage, I wanted to emphasize the visual connection between the architecture of teeth and the grid of window panes. Focusing on the outline of gums around teeth, I created overlapping arch shapes that could be thought of as windows in their own way. I had originally included teeth in my photoshop images because I was having recurring dreams of my teeth falling out. This led me to relate the destabilization of perspective in my images to dreaming. My first collage image reappears within a black frame throughout this entire series as a reference to the wildfires on the west coast during the fall of 2020. The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasingly visible effects of climate change have at times turned life into an apocalyptic fever dream. While I use apocalypse as a descriptor for my fears of the present and future, I am also thinking of certain Christian biblical uses of apocalypse as a period of revelation through dreaming. In this way, an apocalypse dream may be a threshold moment of clarity. Inside the dental motif at the base of my eleventh image are different fragments of marigold seeds with daisy petals radiating outward from underneath. Here I wanted to draw two visual connections between flowers and teeth: The black and white strips on marigold seeds reminded me of the root canal and crown of a tooth. Additionally, the ribbed edge of daisy petals are similar to incisors. In my eighth, ninth, and tenth images, I have arcs of marigold flowers from bloom to seed as a way to think of the cyclical changes inherent to plant life. I usually see marigold seeds planted in gardens as a way to keep out slugs. By the time I had completed my eleventh image, these flowers and seeds had morphed into visual affirmations of change and rebirth to ward off the conceptual “slugs” of my apocalypse rumination.

The Kamyab Jawan: Producing Pakistani Youth as Gendered, Islamic and Neoliberal Citizens Vamika Jain | University of Toronto ABSTRACT: Placing schools in urban and contemporary Pakistan as the focal point of its analysis, this paper will critique the alleged objectivity of Pakistani ‘youth.’ In doing so, this paper will examine how ‘youth’ are ideologically produced as ‘gendered’, ‘Islamic’, ‘neoliberal’ citizen-assets for Pakistani ‘national progress.’

In May 2018, as cricketer - turned -

country’s alleged march to ‘progress.' Among

politician Imran Khan campaigned for office

the primary sites for this interpellation is the

under the promise of a #NayaPakistan or

Pakistani education system, an Ideological

“New Pakistan,” newspapers around the

State Apparatus that embodies biopower88 by

country broadcasted a UNDP report stating,

seeking to control the “level of behavioural

“Pakistan currently has the largest population

potentialities”

of young people ever recorded in its history”.85

‘youth’.89 By critiquing the idea that ‘youth’ is

Sweeping into office with ease in July 2018,

a pre-existing and clearly defined category,

Khan quickly placed the country’s youth,

this paper will first situate schools in urban

making up 64% of the population, at the heart

and contemporary Pakistan as institutions

of his policy rhetoric.86 He launched programs

where Pakistani ‘youth’ are ideologically

such as Kamyab Jawan and Hunarmand

realized. It will then explore how this

Pakistan, translating to Successful Youth and

realization produces the power and capacities

Skilled Pakistan, proclaiming that he intended

to properly leverage the “invaluable Pakistani

‘youth,’ isolating them as subjects to control

asset” of youth to “turn around [the] nation’s

and

destiny”.87 Therefore, contemporary political

Moreover, these narratives of ‘productivity’

rhetoric in Pakistan is constantly producing

take place within a gendered discourse of

‘young Pakistani citizens’ as an asset in the

citizenship, proliferating ‘young girls’ with a

Zahra-Malik; “Pakistan Currently” “Pakistan Currently” 87 Kamyab Jawan, n.d.

88 89

Pakistani

neoliberal ‘productivity’ within these

improve

85 86

represented

Foucault 57 Althusser 143

into

‘valuable’

citizens.

distinct and greater onus of duties to the

can

‘progress’ of the Pakistani ‘nation.’ In addition

capacities.92 Such proliferation simultaneously

to gendering these young citizens, schools act

generates the notion of the ‘dangerousness’ of

as sites for their production as ‘properly’

subjects failing to appropriately recognize

Islamic participants of the Pakistani economy,

their ideological interpellation and reproduce

constantly surveilling their performance as

the appropriate relations of production.93

good Muslim citizens. Therefore, placing

Pakistani schools in urban areas are an

schools in urban and contemporary Pakistan as

example

the focal point of its analysis, this paper will

Apparatuses. Through these sites of education,

critique the alleged objectivity of Pakistani

private or public, the state can call out to and

‘youth,’ examining how they are ideologically

isolate a seemingly defined category of

produced as ‘gendered’, ‘Islamic’, ‘neoliberal’

subjects between the ages of 5 and 16 as

citizen-assets for Pakistani ‘national progress.’

‘school-going children.’ The individuality and

Louis Althusser defines Ideological

grouping of these subjects are not pre-existing.

State Apparatuses (ISAs) as functions of state

It is their recruitment into ideology through

power, embodied in institution-like forms,

these schools that produces them as individual

such as churches, schools, families, legal

entities that are part of an imagined category

systems, and trade-unions, that proliferate

of ‘youth.’ These subjects are then situated

power primarily by ideology, as opposed to

into specific power relations by the attribution

violence.90

through

of their school education, and transformation

interpellation, or the calling out, recognition,

into “responsible citizens in the country,” as a

and the consequent production of subjects for

“fundamental right and state responsibility”.94

ideology

They

operate

upon.91

‘improve’

have

these

‘better’

Ideological

future

State

Examining

Simultaneously, in acting upon these future

Althusser's approach through the lens of

capabilities, these schools proliferate ideas

Michel

Foucault's discussions on power

about the potential danger of illiteracy and

reveals how these apparatuses are also sites for

undesirability from a lack of proper education

the proliferation of power. These apparatuses

within notions of citizenship. Lending a

use the interpellated subjects as entities that 92 90 91

Foucault 78 Foucault 231 Althusser 154 94 “National Education Policy” 93

Althusser 140, 143, 145 Althusser 170

clearer outline around this produced category

the development of skills such as computer

the

science and English-speaking. These subjects

dangerousness of no education is presented as

are allegedly ‘leverageable’ in the global

threatening to the ‘utility’ of Pakistani ‘youth’

economy.97 In daily school assemblies, the

towards the country’s global standing and

values of hard work, the dignity of labour,

future ‘progress.’ Resisting recruitment into

self-sufficiency, and dedication, are cast as

the ideology of these schools, therefore, is

critical for a greater competitive edge in the

perceived as threatening not only to the

marketplace. These skills are repeatedly

subject’s individual capacities but also to the

reinforced through parables, the celebration of

‘nation’ itself. Therefore, urban schools are a

student achievements, and various forms of

primary site for the ideological realisation of

moral education.98 Being late is penalized and

‘youth’ and ‘young citizens’ in Pakistan.

disciplined while punctuality is rewarded,

‘responsible

young

citizens,’

One of the dominant features of the

proliferating a narrative of undesirability

ideological realization is the production of

around behaviours that do not prescribe to the

these ‘youth’ as economic participants in the

expected marketplace behaviour.99 Thus the

future of neoliberal Pakistan. The National

school situates ‘school-going youth’ within a

Education Policy for Pakistani schools states

constructed framework of ‘progress.’ It also

that “education is the only source of human

consequently makes knowable the regressive

capital

and threatening nature of ‘youth’ that are not

formation,”

this

foundation

for

the

followed

most

rhetoric is the

national

curriculum

school-going. Given that approximately 44%

urban

schools.95

of children aged 5-16 do not attend school, this

Consequently, the school apparatus recruits its

apparatus of state power induces a narrative of

subjects into the neoliberal preparation of

undesirability upon this large spectrum of

becoming more ‘productive’ capital assets and

‘other’

competitive workers for the economy.96 The

disadvantage to ‘educated Pakistani youth’ as

practices of consuming and producing for

competitive

further

economy.100 This productive disadvantage is

‘development’

and

economic

‘progress’ are taught through an early focus on

participants

Ahmad 101 Dean 137 Dean 40 99 Dean 137 Foucault 231 100 UNICEF Pakistan 98

children. This

“National Education Policy” Kadiwal and Durrani 539

puts them

the

at a

global

not attributed only to individually interpellated

Specifically, the school provides a site where

subjects but rather to the very definition of the

these relations are materialized and taught. For

‘nation’ itself. Specifically, the government

example, subjects such as home economics,

deems the illiteracy rates as a “national

arts

emergency” and cause for “national shame”

promoted to the relatively small number of

that necessitates the expansion of the school

girls that attend school.104 The narratives

ISA.101 Thus, the ideological category of

dispersed through textbooks, posters, and other

‘youth’ produced in Pakistani schools is

forms of dissemination, remove women from

realised as consumers and productive assets

central

that

engagement;

can be improved to have greater

and literature, and philosophy, are

roles

history

and

political

instead, confining them

competitive capacity. This process allows the

“caring and nurturing roles of mother and

successful

homemaker [or]…teacher, nurses and social

‘neoliberal’ Pakistan, allegedly advancing the

workers.”105 Furthermore, these roles are

national interest.

supportive

participation

citizens

the

advancement

the

This neoliberal realization of ‘young

productive capacity of solely Pakistani men.

citizens’ is reified within distinctly gendered

With the assignment of these relational values

performances of productivity. The previously

of nurture and morality, these ‘young girls’

discussed National Education Policy includes

turn into sites that allegedly bear the onus of

specific guidance for recognizing, controlling,

the ‘nation’s’ stability and sustainability.

and developing girls as citizens who are

Consequently, their protection is cast as a

“capable of performing their duties in the

predominant national interest and the “lack of

home, as well as community and country,”

infrastructure such as a boundary wall and

with a focus on “spiritual,” “emotional” and

toilet facilities make parents reluctant to send

“social development”.102 This production of

girls to school for fear of their safety”.106

'young girls' situates them as supporters of the

Making urban schools safe from the potential

capital productivity of men and the traditional

dangers

and cultural values of the Pakistani ‘nation’.103

involves

the

101

104

102

105

Khan “National Education Policy” 103 Emerson 294 Althusser 154

106

corruption

and

performance

Emerson 302 Dean 72 Emerson 303 Dean 44

delinquency of

protection

through materializations such as immense

stated goals in the National Education Policy

boundary walls and constant surveillance of all

is “character building on the basis of universal

entrances by chowkidars or gatekeepers.107

Islamic values integrated with ethical values

Such surveillance further proliferates power

relevant,” this reinforces the interpellation of

upon

promoting

Pakistani ‘youth’ as subjects whose practices

narratives of potential dangers from practices

can be improved and developed within the

that do not conform to the taught behaviours

specific ideological discourse of Islam.110 The

of nurturing and producing. In doing so, it

behaviours of “praying, fasting, alms giving,

lends a greater definition to these expected

filial piety and elderly esteem” are frequently

behaviours themselves.108 Therefore, in the

referred to in textbooks as the best practices of

realization

‘productive’

Muslim citizens, teaching students to perform

‘neoliberal’ ‘citizens’ in Pakistani schools,

them as mechanisms to improving themselves.

‘young girls’ are materialized distinctly as

111

supportive of the capital formation of men

practices is identified and promoted as critical

and, subsequently, as sites for the preservation

to the strengthening of Muslim unity in

of the nation’s future, requiring protection.

Pakistani society. It is seen as a prerequisite to

Importantly,

under

the capacity of ‘responsible Pakistani youth

regime

human

these

young

subjects,

‘youth’

the global normative rights

Significantly, the reproduction of these

advancement,

citizens’ in resolving political and economic

marginal shifts in these attitudes are visible in

hurdles to aid national ‘progress’.112 Moreover,

some urban schooling apparatuses. However,

Islam is regularly reified as the “grand

these shifts continue to utilize girls as tools for

unifying theory” of Pakistan in most teaching

the productivity of the Pakistani economy and

materials, thus equating the nation’s existence

spread the ideology of neoliberalism further.109

to its reproduction of appropriate Islamic

Finally, the construction of Pakistani

practices.113 This reification inherently makes

‘youth’ as ‘productive’ citizens occurs within

‘other’ non-Muslim identities and minorities

the discourse of learning to appropriately

in Pakistan knowable as threatening to the

materialize Islam. Among the first of the

unity that underscores the stability of the 110

“National Education Policy” Dean 42 Ahmad 46 112 Ahmed et. al. 4 113 Ahmad 108

107

111

Emerson 298 108 Foucault 2000 109 Khoja-Moolji 116

Pakistani ‘nation’.114 Interpellating ‘young

In conclusion, ‘Pakistani youth’ is not

Pakistanis’ into the appropriately conducted

a pre-existing, objectively defined category.

practices of Islam produces an essential step in

Instead, they are ideologically produced

protecting

through

the

Pakistani

‘nation’

from

the

interpellation

various

dangerous ‘other’ ideologies. Furthermore,

Ideological State Apparatuses, the foremost of

textbooks situate these young citizens into a

which is the school. Within the relational

historiography that depicts them inheriting the

institution of school, 'Pakistani youth' are

weight of immense Muslim suffering at the

imagined as a source of human capital for

hands of Hindus and the British in pre-colonial

developing value in the constructed 'progress'

times. Specifically, this produces a hostile

of 'neoliberal' Pakistan. This production takes

representation of India as the source of

place within highly gendered discourses that

suffering.115 This production of India as a

distinctly

non-Islamic symbol of competitive aggression

supportiveness

reiterates

‘young

productivity of men, their community, and the

as ‘assets’ with improvable,

‘nation.’ These ‘young’ ‘neoliberal’ citizens

‘productive’, and Islamic capacities. This

cast as bearing the onus of Pakistan’s future,

poses ‘Muslim Pakistan’s’ economic, political,

are materialized as Islamic citizens. This

and social standing in competition with ‘Hindu

draws upon their shared Islamic ideology as a

India’ within the global political economy.116

stepping stone for success as competitive

Therefore, the production of ‘Pakistani youth,’

participants in the global economy. Therefore,

within the relational sites of school ISAs,

the Kamyab Jawan of #NayaPakistan are

materializes them as properly performing

interpellated as ‘gendered’, ‘Islamic’, and

Islamic

‘neoliberal’

the

Pakistanis’

proliferation

practices

and

identities

when

produce and

subjects,

girls

nurture

performing towards the

situated within

transforming into productive citizens for

imagined quest for ‘success’ for the Pakistani

‘neoliberal’ Pakistan.

‘nation.’

114

Ibid 105-106, 108 Dean 72 116 Leirvik 151 115

References Ahmad, Iftikhar. 2008. “The Anatomy of an Islamic Model: Citizenship Education in Pakistan.” In Citizenship Curriculum in Asia and the Pacific. Edited by David Grossman, Wing On Lee and Kerry Kennedy, 97-109. Springer Netherlands. Ahmed, S.Q., Q.S. Ahmed, M.H. Shaikh, A.A. Zai, and R.A. Dhanani. 1998. Pakistan Studies for Classes IX – X. Pakistan: Sindh Textbook Board. Althusser, Louis. (1971) 2001. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).” In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster, 127-186. New York: Monthly Review Press. Reprint. Dean, Bernadette. 2005. “Citizenship Education in Pakistani Schools: Problems and Possibilities.” International Journal of Citizenship and Teacher Education 1, no. 2 (December 2005), 35-55. Dean, Bernadette. 2010. “Citizenship Education in Pakistan Changing Policies and Practices in Changing Social-Political Contexts.” In Globalization, the Nation-State and the Citizen: Dilemmas and Directions for Civics and Citizenship Education. Edited by Alan Reid, Judith Gill and Alan Sears, 64-79. New York: Routledge. Dean, Bernadette. 2011.“Citizenship Education in Pakistan: Caught in the Strangle hold of Transmission Pedagogies.” In Citizenship Pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific. Edited by Kerry Kennedy, Wing On Lee and David Grossman, 129-147. Springer Netherlands. Emerson, Ann. 2018. “Educating Pakistan’s Daughters: Girls’ Citizenship Education and the Reproduction of Cultural Violence in Pakistan.” Studies in Social Justice 12, no. 2 (2018): 291-309. Foucault, Michel. (1979) 2000. “Truth and Juridical Forms.” In Power, Vol. 3 of the Essential Works of Foucault. Edited by James Faubion. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: New Press. Reprint. Foucault, Michel. (1975) 1984. “Illegalities and Delinquency.” In The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rainbow, 226-233. New York: Pantheon Books. Reprint. Kamyab Jawan. n.d. “Prime Minister, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Imran Khan’s Message to Youth.” https://kamyabjawan.gov.pk/home/pmmessages. Accessed 10 Dec 2020. Kadiwal, Laila, and Naureen Durrani. 2018. “Youth Negotiation of Citizenship Identities in Pakistan: Implications for Global Citizenship Education in Conflict-Contexts.” British Journal of Educational Studies 66, no. 4 (October 2018): 537–58. Khan, Imran. 2013. “PTI Will Declare a National Emergency to Tackle Illiteracy.” The Express Tribune, 11 April 2013. https://tribune.com.pk/article/16868/pti-will-declare-a-national-emergency-to-tackle-illite racy. Khoja-Moolji, Shenila. 2014. “Producing Neoliberal Citizens: Critical Reflections on Human Rights Education in Pakistan.” Gender and Education 26, no. 2 (February 2014): 103–18. Leirvik, Oddbjørn. 2008. “Religion in School, Interreligious Relations and Citizenship: The Case of Pakistan.” British Journal of Religious Education 30, no. 2 (March 1, 2008): 143–54. “National Education Policy 2017-2025.” 2017. Islamabad: Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training. Government of Pakistan. http://planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/sites/planipolis/files/ressources/pakistan_national_educat ion_policy_2017-2025.pdf. Accessed 10 Dec 2020.

“Pakistan Currently has Largest Youth Population of its History: UNDP Report.” 2018. The News International, 3 May 2018. https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/311910-pakistan-currently-has-largest-youth-populati on-of-its-history-undp-report. UNICEF Pakistan. n.d. “Education: Giving Every Child the Right to Education.” https://www.unicef.org/pakistan/education. Accessed 10 Dec 2020. Zahra-Malik, Mehreen. 2018. “Pakistan's Likely New Leader is Fiery Speaker with Conspiratorial Instincts.” The Guardian, 26 July 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/26/pakistans-new-leader-imran-khan-fiery-s peaker-authoritarian-instincts.

Are You Hungry? The Role of the Food Industry in China’s Rising Economy Wenqi Huang | Marymount Manhattan College ABSTRACT: As one of the leading industries in China’s recent economic success, the massive food delivery industry has reached almost half of the Chinese population and has become a major aspect of mainstream Chinese lifestyle. This paper aims to explore the industry’s prevailing commercial philosophy on management, labor power, and consumption from a sociological aspect, as well as to unpack the relationships between the stakeholders and experiences from their perspectives through surveys and interviews. Furthermore, this study strives to investigate the visibility of workers in social consciousness in this specific ecological system.

Introduction During the summer of 2019, I was

These two deliverymen presented a

working for a top venture capital firm in the

microcosm of a large group of people in

core business district of Beijing, China. One

China. There are currently around 8 million

afternoon,

food

people who are tasked as food deliverymen,

the building’s luxurious

which is roughly 0.57% of the entire Chinese

elevator; both of them were struggling with

population.117 A majority of the deliveryman

sacks containing six or seven lunch boxes in

population

their arms. Their faces were slick with

hard-working

perspiration and they had sweat stains on their

demographics, 77% of deliverymen come

shirts near their neck and underarms, but what

from rural areas of China118; 87.1% of

really struck me was that one of the men was

deliverymen’s highest level of education is

sobbing. I learned that he had received two

high school graduate or below; 64.7% of

urgent

customer

deliverymen work 8 to 10 hours per day and

demanding to know where their food was. The

the remaining 35.3% work more than ten

deliverymen

calls

encountered in

from

two

angry

other deliveryman appeared to be comforting

117

lives in

under-privileged but

communities.

Regarding

Shidi, Deliveryman. Directed Guanzhong Qiu. 2018. ShenZhen, China. Bilibili. Documentary, 2018; National Sharing Economy Info Research Center. Sharing Economy Report. Beijing: China., 2019. 118 Fang Song. “Study On Behavioral Factors of Public Participation in Crowdsourcing Logistics Based On Take-Away O2O” Master’s thesis, ZheJiang Industrial University, 2016.

him to the best of his ability. Unfortunately, his attempts were in vain, and neither of them had a free hand to wipe away the tears on his face.

hours per day.119 The food delivery platforms

internet access have utilized food delivery

themselves are the ones who design and

services.125

control the line of work.120 They are essentially

Ordering

gig food delivery is a

high-tech, big data-based companies whose

common part of the daily routine of young

main strength is logistics. They have a vast

professionals in China; it is used as a

knowledge

networking

distribution

automation

tool

amongst

colleagues,

processes121 and carry out the delivery service

facilitating the process of socializing over a

as their form of a product.

meal.

All

mainstream

social

media

In China, there are currently two food

applications are connected to the ordering

delivery companies that control a majority of

page of food delivery services in China. The

the industry. One is Meituan, accounting for

order, purchase, and delivery are executed

approximately 60% of the market, and the

within minutes. Colleagues can conveniently

other is Are You Hungry, taking up 33%.122

remain in a work setting or in their current

The food delivery industry overall has attained

location to work and fraternize.

a steady 115% annual growth rate on a well-maintained

business

strategy

I began to grasp the complexity of the

costs of food delivery services by asking two

profit-taking since 2015,123 and it has been

questions:

very successful in its process of expansion. As

relationships constructed in the social ecology

of June 2019, the industry is worth over 260

of the food delivery service?” and “What role

billion

RMB,124

and

40%

Chinese

“How

are

the

stakeholders’

does the deliveryman play in this social

restaurants and 49% of the population with

ecology?”

this

paper,

the

term

“deliveryman” refers to the occupation created by and for only the gig food delivery service.

119

Li Zhao, Mi Wang. “Young Rural Workers’ Social Adoption On Urban Emerging Occupations: On A Study Case of Food Deliveryman” Chinese Youth Social Science 36, no. 2 (2017). 50. 120 Li Zhao, Mi Wang. “Young Rural Workers’ Social Adoption On Urban Emerging Occupations” 56 121 Li Zhao, Mi Wang. “Young Rural Workers’ Social Adoption On Urban Emerging Occupations” 56. 122 Meituan Research Lab. Food Delivery Service Industry Report. Beijing: China., 2019 123 National Sharing Economy Info Research Center. Sharing Economy Report. Beijing: China., 2019. 124 Meituan Research Lab. Food Delivery Service Industry Report. Beijing: China., 2019

My interest rests in the typical deliveryman’s sociological

circumstances

and

their

relationships with both the platforms they work for and the customers they serve.

125

Ibid.

I decided to collect data from locations

Deliveryman. In the documentary, he and his

where the food delivery industry has had its

team followed

largest and longest influence, also where a

deliverymen in the city of Shenzhen, detailing

majority of customers reside: China’s four

their

first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen,

conversation was built on the premise of my

and Guangzhou. Quantitative and qualitative

previous knowledge of his documentary.

surveys are designed based on Putnam’s

Therefore, I was given consent to use data

three-pillared concept of social capital to

from Shidi, Deliveryman in this research.

examine deliverymen’s relationships with their

Lastly, I conducted four separate interviews

customers. As a result, I collected data from

with four randomly selected customers who

481 participants with a 70% completion rate

left contact information on their submitted

from recipients. Out of the 481 surveys, I

surveys. In interest of maintaining the privacy

deemed 133 invalids because they were from

of the four subjects, they are hereby referred

participants who reside outside of China’s

by Customers A, B, C, and D. Conversations

first-tier cities, leaving me with 348 valid data

with these participants were based on their

samples. In addition to the surveys, I also

survey responses and the reasoning behind

conducted 6 interviews, totaling 120 minutes,

their answers, allowing me to piece together

with representatives from major stakeholders

an in-depth view of customers’ perceptions of

in the food delivery industry to examine the

the food delivery services.

gig

five different groups of

delivering

experiences.

This

relationships between the companies and the

Through a series of investigations, I

deliverymen. I conducted a thirty-minute

found a significant disconnect between the

interview with Mr. Jianguang Liu, the product

food delivery industry and society itself.

manager of Meituan, in which he explained

Businesses promise customer satisfaction via

the platform’s current state, policies, the

convenience, and the platform’s level of

gig-tasking system, and his justification for the

convenience is paramount to its competitive

reasoning behind the company’s decisions that

power, regardless of the cost on society.

have increased its value. I conducted another

Australian scholar Thomas Klikauer described

thirty-minute interview with Mr. Guanzhong

similar phenomena in his article “What Is

Qiu, the director of the documentary Shidi,

Managerialism?”, writing that managerialism

developed from neo-liberal political capitalism

be gradually and unconsciously manipulated

theories such as Thatcherism, Reaganism, and

by the businesses behind mass production in

Taylorism from Frederick Winslow Taylor. A

an imperceptible manner.129

free-market economy, competition, efficiency,

Unlike their claimed win-win scenario,

and privatization are said to be the core

at the end of the day, only the food delivery

principles that lead a business to success.126

platforms

Martin Parker points out in his popular article

capital–the

“Why We Should Bulldoze the Business

partners–are the winners of the game. All

School '' that neo-liberal capitalism uses

other participants, from the deliverymen to the

managerialism in its underlying curriculum,

customers, are trapped within the shadow of

and

neo-liberal expansionism and the success of

their

leaders

attempt

equalize

managerialism to science, or at least have an

and

their

investors

owners

and

corporate

the food delivery business is not sustainable.

effect on the economy.127 Furthermore, Ian Glover pins down managerialism as “a new,

How is the Game Played?

powerful, international caste system with its ideology.”128 The

The gig food delivery system builds on

food delivery industry

a solid managerialism ideology. At the end of

features the superstructure of managerialism

my interview with Mr. Liu, I asked him why

with an additional aspect of consumerism to

companies like the one he works for build

lure customers to their side. In the eyes of

technology to strive for convenience. He

sociologists, consumerism is an ideology that

answered:

securely binds people to the mass production

Because convenience is what pushes

system and channels people’s wants, needs,

the

desires,

and values into the action of

creating cars, airplanes, mobile phones,

consuming. However, people’s mindsets will

or back to the point of humanity’s first

world

forward,

humans

use of fire. The desire for a more convenient

126

Thomas Klikauer.“What Is Managerialism?” Critical Sociology 41, no. 7-8 (2015). 1103-1107. 127 Martine Parker. “Why We Should Bulldoze the Business School,” The Guardian. April 27, 2019. 128 Ian Glover. “Bleak House: Pessimism and Prescription About Management, Responsibility and Society in the Early 21st Century” Work, Employment and Society 27, no. 2 (2013). 363.

life

drives

human

civilization forward. (Liu, 2019)

129

Nicki Lisa Cole. “What Does Consumerism Means” Thought Co. Dec 22, 2018.

It may seem that the food platforms are simply

common good. Its creation is motivated by

focused on technological innovation to be used

capital and profit, and the power structure in

for the common good of humanity. However,

its operational process is for the absolute

Mr.

interest of its innovators and rulers who

Liu’s

following

comments

brought

controversy to this argument: Also,

believe

ultimately shape the game. Mr. Liu minds the online

payment

distribution system with its uneven benefits

platforms (such as Alipay and Wechat

shifting toward the side of the online payment

Pay) are giving a big impetus to

platforms because deep down, Meituan knows

businesses like us. The logic is the

a fairer benefit distribution system would

greater the number of businesses

equalize pay-and-gain. They avoid admitting

covered by online payments, the more

the fact they reap extreme financial benefits

money flows through them. Food

with the “for the common good” argument to

delivery was operating at a very

camouflage their action of robbing the least

limited scale before they showed up.

privileged.

Online payment helped us to operate at

The high-tech platforms that garner the

a large scale, therefore I cannot say

profit

Meituan earned the biggest benefit

responsibilities, however, it is not clear as to

because we are striving to compete but

what can be done. The platforms’ management

online payment platforms benefited

without any cost. (Liu, 2019)

problematic. Mr. Liu mentioned their training

As the concept of managerialism states:

cannot

deliverymen

excused

from ethical

dehumanizing

and

methods in the interview:

innovators and tech companies carry little to

The goal of the training is to make sure

no ethical responsibility for the negative

they (the deliverymen) can deliver

consequences of the introduction of new

orders within 30 minutes. We have an

technology, as it is technically a socially

AI backstage system which calculates

independent sector, intended for the use of a

precisely how much time is needed for

general audience.130 But the problem is that

each order. Time is calculated for every

such technology is never created for the

step from walking up stairs to crossing the street in traffic. It is like letting the

130

Thomas Klikauer.“What Is Managerialism?” Critical Sociology 41, no. 7-8 (2015). 1106

machine control the men, but the men

deliveryman,

each

triggering

have to cooperate with the machine,

punishment equivalent to being late

and the training is to teach deliverymen

and all three urgent reminder messages

how to use it step by step. (Liu, 2019)

can be sent on the same order.

The platforms use high-pressure tactics to

Complaints filed against deliverymen

manage all aspects of the problems a

result in a significantly more serious

deliveryman faces. The management model

punishment. The first complaint they

devalues deliverymen to nothing more than

received within the week will be a fine

lifeless components of the production process.

equivalent to 10 times the value of an

The model shifts power, sense of control, and

order’s commission

decision-making away from the hands of

second complaint will be a fine

deliverymen and brings it into the hands of AI,

equivalent to 40 times of their order’s

of which the platforms have complete control.

commission payment, and the third

Klikauer points out that companies are

complaint

“justifying

its

equivalent to 80 times. Any more

one-dimensional managerial techniques to all

complaints following that will result in

areas of work.”131 From the documentary

suspension. (Shidi, Deliveryman, 2018)

the

application

Shidi, Deliveryman:

result

fine

Platforms set up this harsh punishment system

Deliverymen are paid 3 to 4 RMB per

to ensure food can be delivered in thirty

order to be completed within 30

minutes regardless of weather conditions or

minutes. The first late delivery of the

any

day will result in deduction equivalent

platform

to half the order’s earnings. The second

experiences132 and collect the data for which

incident of lateness is a full deduction

the platform uses to increase its competitive

on the order’s earnings, and the third

power against other platforms. Similar actions

late order results in punishment with an

are taken for other purposes: In 2017 and

extra fine. Customers are allowed to

2018, there was a massive increase in traffic

send

accidents caused by deliverymen (Liu Feng,

urgent

messages

the

132 131

will

payment. The

other

inhibiting circumstances. strives

perfect

The

customers’

Liu, J,G. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 8, 2019.

Thomas Klikauer.“What Is Managerialism?” 1108

Zhan, 78) and public opinion was scathing. To

punishment. Deliverymen still break traffic

overturn the chaos, platforms took two actions:

rules regardless of the traffic fine, only they

First, they added traffic rule education to the

are now more cautious to avoid being caught

training and made it mandatory to wear safety

by traffic police. An effective solution to

gear including protective equipment and GPS

prevent deliverymen from breaking traffic

tracking systems;133 Second, they initiated

laws is to lower the pressure on the workers

punishment on deliverymen who were caught

rather than increase it.

breaking traffic rules by law enforcement. Deliverymen

are

now

fined

Due to the simplicity and speed of

200

ordering gig food delivery service, 77.3% of

RMB–equivalent to 8 hours work–for their

customers from the survey reported that they

first infraction, double the fine for a second

prefer using food delivery services to eating

infraction, followed by suspension on the

out and cooking.136 However, if we dive

third.134 Some may think the reinforcement

deeper into what exactly is being delivered, we

mechanism is reasonable that the strict

would find that the enjoyment does not

repercussions will enforce deliverymen to

necessarily depend on the taste of the food, but

follow traffic rules. Unfortunately, this ignores

rather the overall experience of having your

the fact that the acceptance of absolute

choice of food delivered in a short time and at

authority by the managerial class is the root of

a low cost; the satisfaction is related to its

managerialism.135

convenience.

Supported by both the documentary

In terms of each platform’s highly

Shidi, Deliveryman and six customers–aside

valued users' experience as mentioned by Mr.

from the interviewed four–who voluntarily left

Liu, the model design is based on the ideology

additional comments on the survey, the

of consumerism. According to him, the food

primary reason as to why the deliverymen

delivery service industry is made to harmonize

broke

with the popular “homebody” lifestyle; the

traffic

thirty-minute

rules delivery

was

time

meet to

the avoid

young

urban

demographic

able

accomplish daily tasks on their laptops, so they are more likely to spend time inside their

133

Liu, J,G. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 8, 2019. 134 Liu, J,G. Personal Interview. 2019. 135 Thomas Klikauer.“What Is Managerialism?” Critical Sociology 41, no. 7-8 (2015). 1111

136

Wenqi Huang, Delivery Service Customer Experience Survey. Dec 27, 2019.

home, having little reason to leave.137 The

deliverymen, the following conditions are

platforms did not bother to learn the reasoning

signed as part of a legally binding contract:

behind the popularity of the homebody

“Smile to customers, eyes straight,

lifestyle, nor did they go through an ethical

mouth up, show 6 to 8 teeth,” “Address

decision-making process; instead, they merely

the customer with respect, use words

adapted to it to their advantage. According to

such as ‘please,’ ‘Mister,’ ‘Missus,’

Mr. Liu:

and ‘excuse me,’” and “To ring the

A concept that is very popular is called

bell: Push the button 2 to 3 times, wait

“homebody,” or indoor man, who likes

5 seconds, then ring the bell 2 to 3

to stay in their own room and have as

times more, knock the door 3 times,

little interaction with the outside as

wait 5 seconds, then knock 3 more

possible. We recognize it as a lifestyle

times.”139

or culture, and the food delivery is

The companies are selling the feeling of being

indeed doing them a favor.138

in control, the feeling of honor, and the feeling

Due to the dramatic increase in this homebody

of privilege. But who are the people who

lifestyle, the number of users of food delivery

provide the privilege for the customers? They

services

are the deliverymen, who are systematically

interviewees–except for Customer D, who

designed to be invisible by their employers.

seldom orders food online–admitted to having

Approximately 96% of customers reported that

some degree of dependency on the service.

they do not know any of their deliverymen and

has

soared.

All

Of course, while the food is customers’

78.5% of customers report that they cannot

original motivation for ordering through a

recall any memory of a specific deliveryman.

delivery service, that is far from what the

140

platform

agreement

of being in control is an illusion that seduces

(semi-contract) that the platform signs with

them and causes them to fall subject to

selling.

the

Drawing in customers by using the feeling

managerialism.

137

Dennis Normile. “Will Homebody Researchers Turn Japan Into a Scientific Backwater?” Scientific Community 330, no. 4 (2010). 1475. 138 Liu, J,G. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 8, 2019.

139

Meituan. Deliveryman Agreement. Beijing: China, 2019. 140 Wenqi Huang. Delivery Service Customer Experience. Survey. Dec 27, 2019.

Managerialism and consumerism go

To deconstruct a deliveryman’s role

hand-in-hand in the case of take-out delivery

within the hidden managerialism aspect of

services. The only true beneficiary is the

capitalism, we follow Fromm and unfold his

company that exploits tremendous market

theory of labor alienation in his review of

resources. As a result, they create a toxic

Marx’s

partnership that entraps all stakeholders.

relationship with the product.142

Concept

Man:

worker’s

Competition as a tool for efficiency is a Negative Effects on the Deliverymen Working

preferred means to reduce cost in a capitalist

as a

deliveryman is a

system, but the final goal of this competition is

physically demanding

job. However, its

to become a monopoly.143 The gig take-out

essential difficulty lies within the job’s innate

delivery service is an example of platforms

conflicts. One of these is that the job requires

outsourcing cheap labor and allowing them to

workers to exercise all of their passion and

lower business costs and use both the money

care into the tasks, even though the job itself

saved and excess profit to expand into other

may not be very fulfilling. The other challenge

Chinese cities.144 Driving out competitors and

satisfaction

monopolizing the market is the ultimate goal

yield dramatic results in job

of food delivery platforms, but it is not done as

that

outcomes

differing

performance

customer

evaluation.

The

joy

that

a necessity of development. The gig platforms

deliverymen bring to customers has little

craftily

positive impact on his or her job evaluation,

system to put the deliverymen and their

but displeased customers result in a significant

service in a relationship with a negative

negative impact on deliverymen’s income.141

correlation.145

In the end, the only criteria for fair evaluation

competition unknowingly, as the platform has

is whether or not they complete delivery

already set up a competition system to grind

within

their labor by separating them into categories

the

thirty-minute

time

range.

designed a spurring competition

Deliverymen

join

the

Deliverymen are only looked at as the transportation tool for food and are considered

142

Erich Fromm. Marx’s Concept of Man. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1961:98 143 Ibid. 144 Liu, J,G. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 8, 2019. 145 Erich Fromm. Marx’s Concept of Man. 93-101

the least important part of the business chain. 141

Wenqi Huang. Delivery Service Customer Experience. 2019.

like those of a caste system, reinforcing top

after three systematic accelerated updates,

tiers by allowing them to choose orders first

deliverymen were left with only thirty minutes

and penalizing low tiers by deducting their

to deliver any order in late 2019 with only 3 to

earnings. As the labor pool of deliverymen

4 RMB earning per order. Deliverymen were

expands, the less they are paid individually as

left with no choice but to compete with other

the result of competition. To use an example

deliverymen by riding faster and delivering

from the documentary Shidi, Deliveryman to

more orders to sustain their living.147 The

express

the

system’s only goal is to spur on deliverymen

deliverymen, “in 2015 when the platform first

to work and use up workers’ surplus value

entered the cities, deliverymen get paid 10

regardless of any cost. Some may argue this

RMB per kilometer to attract delivery labor,

phenomenon is the industry’s optimization

but the price dropped in late 2016 and is now

process, but the industry’s oppression lies

only about 3 to 4 RMB.”146 Workers are

within the system’s blind and one-direction

clearly valued by a calculation of delivery

adjustment–the

performance in this system and are removed

pressure on its tight thirty minutes delivery

from their own humanity. Both voluntary and

rule, even when plenty of evidence shows

involuntary participants of this rat race are

related safety concerns:

the

monetary

losses

for

system

never

loosened

only left with one concept: survival. In order

Let alone countless complaints filed

to avoid the harsh late punishment, many

by deliverymen claiming the pressure

deliverymen try to deliver orders a few

of being late forced them to ride

minutes before the deadline, but platforms

unsafely. In 2017 Shanghai, on average

shorten the allowed delivery time when its AI

three

algorithm

minutes

seriously injured during work every

deliverymen fought for in order to guarantee a

week. In 2018, Chengdu traffic police

successful delivery. In 2017, the average

station

delivery time span was 45 minutes and

responsibility in about 10k traffic

detects

the

extra

deliverymen

reported

died

were

deliverymen’s

deliverymen were paid 10 to 14 RMB per order depending on the delivery distance, but

147

Shi Jin. “Take-Out Deliverymen, Trapped By the System''. Chinese People Magazine. Sept. 8, 2020. ISBN 9771001663006. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Mes1RqIOdp48CMw4pXT wXw

146

Shidi, Deliveryman. Directed Guanzhong Qiu. 2018. ShenZhen, China. Bilibili. Documentary, 2018.

violations, 196 car accidents, and 115

Documentary

director

Mr.

Qiu

injuries and death within only 7

mentioned in his interview that despite the fact

months.148

that being a deliveryman earns a good income

Once deliverymen conform to game rules set

(twice as much as factory workers) it is still

up by platform, the harder deliverymen work,

never the first choice for young workers. Their

the more internal competition they accelerate,

first intention is to be a small merchant and

and the less bargaining power they have

own a micro-business; being a deliveryman is

against

the

the choice of no one. However, once they

deliverymen simultaneously become more

become deliverymen, many become addicted

essential and less valuable, and the service

to this type of temporary job.152 Mr. Qiu

deliverymen provide becomes an independent

describes the phenomenon as so: Many young

power from its producers.149

freelancers work for one day. They then spend

the

platform.

Therefore,

Classic psychology recognizes people’s

their income on cheap entertainment for two or

basic needs as food and shelter, but sociology

three days until they run out of money, at

takes human economic-sociological factors

which point they work for another day. Once

into concern, recognizing “materialistic” or

the routine establishes and the cycle repeats,

“economic” needs as fundamental factors that

the workers lose their ability to work on other

drive a man’s economic behavior, which in

long-term jobs.153 So what are the reasons that

turn drives the need to produce.150 Alienation

drive them to marginalize themselves?

results in specific feelings of powerlessness

The University of Wisconsin and the

such as lack of control over one's own

University of Alabama did research on the

economic status, anxiety from questioning

alienation of temporary workers in 2010.

one's purpose, and social isolation,151 all of

Based on their findings, the transitional nature

which are recognized as people’s morbid

of temporary work does not encourage a

psychological beliefs in capitalist society.

regular connection, nor does it encourage a relationship between temporary workers and the institution in the first place. Workers

148

Shi Jin. “Take-Out Deliverymen, Trapped By the System''. Chinese People Magazine. Sept. 8, 2020 149 Erich Fromm. Marx’s Concept of Man.102 150 Erich Fromm. Marx’s Concept of Man. 97 151 Ibid. 96-109

152

Qiu, G,Z. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 10, 2019. 153 Qiu, G,Z. Personal Interview. Nov 10, 2019.

struggle to establish a steady identity as they

when using take-out delivery service, and

are expected to adapt to the continuously

within that 17.5% of customers express

changing job.154

extreme safety concerns.155 Jane Jacob pins the

Alienation

people’s

safety of an urban community on a clear social

self-worth, and entertainment is one of many

distinction between private residents and the

ways to escape it. The platform penalizes

public.156 However, the overall idea of safety

deliverymen for the bad ratings they receive

only

but does not reward them for a good rating.

acknowledges the concepts of private and

The workers can only rely on customers to tip

public but does not physically distinguish

them as a reward for their performance. For

between those two. Even if there is no gate in

those who work in countries that do not have a

between a “public” sidewalk and “private”

tipping culture, there is a lack of a valid

stairs in front of townhouses, people would

rewarding system. Alienation is a major

occupy sidewalks without hesitation but would

consequence of the delivery industry and

not

societies only notice the issue when it is the

counterargument to this concept is the city of

main

Los Angeles where properties are physically

reason for

threatening

the

depletion of the

workforce.

appears

invade

when

the

“private”

community

staircase.

spread out and have a fair amount of privacy. Yet the crime rate and rape figures are eight times higher than those of New York City. 157

Barriers for Customers Customers use the delivery service in the shadow

fear.

Taking Jane Jacob’s theory further into

Female customers

the internet community that even more people

experience the possibility of a crime being

participate in, some feel unsafe because there

committed against them on top of general

lacks a clear distinction on the privacy of one’s

fears.

personal information in today’s high-tech According to my survey data, 79% of

society. When it comes to the action of

customers express some concerns over safety 155

Wenqi Huang. Delivery Service Customer Experience. Survey. Dec 27, 2019. 156 Jane Jacobs, The Death And Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. 157 Jane Jacobs, The Death And Life of Great American Cities,1961.

154

Sara K Clark. Jonathon R. B Halbesleben. Scott W.Lester and Robert Heintz. “Temporary Worker Alienation and Job Performance: The Impact of Rating Source.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 17, no. 3 (2010). 287–297.

receiving a delivery, physical closeness is

and have designed technology to protect

taken into account, and hence there is a gender

people’s privacy by launching virtual number

bias regarding personal delivery. Having said

services. This technology allows the customer

that, both men and women share concerns

to call a deliveryman or driver through the

about their informational safety and the fear of

application (or vice versa), causing a different

being harassed online. In Customer A's

phone number to appear on the opposite end,

interview, he mentioned receiving a phone call

offering protection for both the caller and the

harassing him for leaving a negative review on

service provider.

an online product. Due to this experience, he

Jane Jacobs’ other dimension aside

fears that a deliveryman could also harass him,

from privacy exposure, is that the industry’s

given they have his personal information.

“game rules'' place the deliveryman in a

Therefore, he avoids leaving comments and

stranger-like position, and the social distance

making any connection or contact with

loads the customer with more safety concerns.

deliverymen.158

Two interviewees confirmed that deliverymen

Different communities established

from

where with

door-to-door

boundaries

physical

can

objects

would repeatedly deliver orders within the

same district

blocks

which theoretically

created a relationship of familiarity between

staircases, the internet community does not

repeated customers and the deliveryman.159

have clear boundaries and the public sharing

Having said that, the survey feedback showed

of information crosses the line in some

that 96% of customers do not know their

people’s mindsets. Personal information such

deliveryman; they are only strangers who

as full name, payment information, private

repeatedly meet.160 In these circumstances, the

social media accounts, phone number, address,

individual moral quality of the deliveryman

apartment number, and gender are private and

does not matter in regard to safety concerns. It

people believe access to that information can

is the idea of having someone know your

be abused. Take-out delivery service platforms and Uber-like transportation services have

159

Customer D. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 13, 2019. & Liu, J,G. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 8, 2019. 160 Wenqi Huang. Delivery Service Customer Experience. Survey. Dec 27, 2019.

begun to acknowledge these reasonable fears 158

Customer A. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 12, 2019.

whereabouts and schedule that creates a

deliveryman. The companies that deliverymen

climate of fear. But what exactly is stopping

work for strictly set a thirty-minute maximum

customers from knowing their deliveryman?

delivery time (with a heavy punishment if that

In cross-examination of the survey

time is exceeded) on top of a heavy workload

data, the results show that 94.4% of customers

consisting of five to six orders simultaneously.

who use a take-out delivery service one to

This leaves deliverymen with no opportunity

three times per week, 94.8% of customers who

for being community participants. This rule

use the service three to seven times per week,

not only dehumanizes the deliverymen but

and 96.4% of customers who use the service

also

seven to fourteen times a week have less than

acquaintances away from the customers. The

one-minute-long

other barrier is the separation of community

conversations

deliverymen.161 For

with their

takes

the soft power

of making

the same group of

mechanisms.

customers: 96.4% of customers who use a

Deliveryman

and

take-out delivery service one to three times per

Customers B and D, it was determined that

week, 96.1% of customers who use the service

cities try to separate the work of deliverymen

three to seven times per week, and 96.4% of

from the surface of people’s daily lives. Many

customers who use the service seven to

luxury buildings do not allow deliverymen to

fourteen times per week responded that they

use the residential elevator, restaurants open a

have not known any deliveryman in person.162

separate counter by the back door for delivery

Such a high correlation between knowing the

orders,

deliveryman

their

unfriendly to deliverymen while receiving

conversation, or lack thereof, suggests that

their orders or when they park their electric

being able to have a conversation is essential

bikes.163 Cities as a collective have conflicting

to the customer-deliveryman relationship, and

attitudes on delivery services. On one hand,

two major barriers stand in between. First and

they believe that the work of delivery service

most importantly are the rigorous time

workers is not glamorous or structured enough

requirement and heavy workload placed on the

to boast about, but on the other hand, they are

and

the

length

and

the documentary my

security

interviews

guards

are

Shidi, with

often

161

Wenqi Huang. Delivery Service Customer Experience. 2019. 162 Ibid.

163

Shidi, Deliveryman. Directed Guanzhong Qiu. 2018. ShenZhen, China. Bilibili. Documentary, 2018.

proud of how large the industry is and use the

they just would not leave the door. So

service themselves.

many women would be careful about it.164

Gender, however, adds on a more interesting aspect to customers’ fear of

All the female interviewees express the same

strangers. Women express more significant

concern to different degrees. Be that as it may,

concern over safety than men, and their main

according to the 2016 Sexual Crime Report

concern is the fear of assault. Customer C said

filed by the China Justice Big Data Service

in her interview:

Platform, one of the few available studies on

Now in China, many women worry

Chinese female victimization, the level of

about their safety in exposing their

concern of the safety of female users of food

privacy to the public, so in the first

delivery service does not necessarily overlap

place, many women would use a fake

with the court data which says that sexual

name on the platform. The platform

crime has dropped about 17.57% from 2014 to

would automatically give each party a

the first three quarters of 2016. Of these sexual

virtual number in use of contact during

crimes, 66% of those convicted committed the

the service… Instead of exposing their

crimes after the use of alcohol, 61.3% of

apartment number, they would ask the

crimes occurred in hotel rooms, and almost all

deliveryman to put the food in a

crimes were committed by a person the victim

specific spot outside of their apartment,

knows.165

for example, putting the bike basket in

So where does female customers’ fear

the garage. Especially at night if you

of deliverymen come from? Similar studies

order dessert, many women would stay

conducted by Hanna Scott, a researcher from

behind the door and see through the

the University of Memphis, point out that the

cat-eye to make sure the deliveryman

nature of women’s fear is formless; while both

leaves. A few years back, there was a

men and women report the same level of fear

popular internet forum full of women

of non-violent crimes, women have more fear

sharing their creepy experiences with

of violent crimes, and this is related to their

the deliveryman, like the deliveryman

164

Customer C. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 12, 2019. 165 China Justice Big Data Service Platform. Assault Crime Report. Beijing: China., 2016.

insists on delivering face to face, or

likelihood of victimization at an individual

attention of women’s bodies is potentially

level.166 The fear women face while using a

supported by Chinese tradition and society,

food delivery service is not necessarily related

and the food delivery service is indeed a

to the man who delivers her food; rather it is

male-dominated

related to a female individual’s likelihood of

research done by Li Zhao and Mi Wang, more

being victimized due to her gender. That

than 98% of deliverymen are male. Females

feeling of fear puts women in a vulnerable

are not generally welcomed in the job market

circumstance

because being a deliveryman is seen as

matter

what

social

atmosphere they are in.

too weak to carry out the vigor of the job.168

Tennessee provide an explanation for the

Objectification

danger” theory

According to

physically intensive and women are viewed as

Researchers from the University of

“stranger

workforce.

Again, the physical and emotional

phenomenon. describes

intensity created by a combination of rigorous

the

time limitations and low pay illustrates that the

phenomenon that regardless of social status,

deliveryman system affects more than just the

women are dehumanized and looked at as

individual deliveryman, it also indirectly

sexual objects with their bodies meant to be

affects

used by others which, over time, leads to

strangers places not only innocent deliverymen

women who are born and raised in this

into the position of potential criminals, but

environment seeing themselves in the eyes of a

also places female customers into the position

man.167 This results in self-objectification, and

of potential victims.

customers.

Consumers'

fear

women as individuals create a common fear of being victimized. Researchers extend this

Conclusion

theory to build a model of a Sexually Objectifying

Environment

(SOE).

The food delivery industry continues to

The

expand in Chinese cities, as does the

approval of the male gaze and high sexual

neo-convenience lifestyle to its residents. However, the success of this industry is not

166

Hannah Scott. “Stranger Danger: Explaining Women’s Fear of Crime.” Western Criminology Review 4, no. 3 (2003). 203-210. 167 Dawn M. Szymanski. Lauren B Moffitt. and Erika R Carr. “Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research” The Counseling Psychologist 39, no. 1 (2011). 6-11.

168

Li Zhao. Mi Wang. “Young Rural Workers’s Social Adoption On Urban Emerging Occupations: On A Study Case of Food Deliveryman” Chinese Youth Social Science 36, no. 2 (2017). 50-57.

sustainable; it lacks a supportive ecological

participants, turning them from potential

system that considers stakeholders’ interests.

fellow members of a similar community into

For the deliverymen on whom the industry

permanent strangers. This research does not

heavily relies for profit, their productivity and

take market competition or interest between

personality

capitals

are

deteriorating.

When

into

consideration.

From

performing the duty of a deliveryman, the

sociological point of view, companies and

platform, customers, and the deliverymen

their supported capitals are the only true

themselves do not see a long-term successful

winners of the game, while everyone else is

path to the future. The customers, who directly

trapped within its shadow. The abandonment

bring in profit for the industry are stripped of

of the majority results in its lack of a healthy

their chance to form personal relationships.

social ecology.

The

food

delivery

system isolates

the

References China Justice Big Data Service Platform. Assault Crime Report. Beijing: China., 2016. Clark, Sara K. Halbesleben, Jonathon R. B. Lester, Scott W. and Heintz, Robert. “Temporary Worker Alienation and Job Performance: The Impact of Rating Source.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 17, no. 3 (2010). 287–297. Customer A. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 12, 2019. Customer B. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 12, 2019. Customer C. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 12, 2019. Customer D. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 13, 2019. Feng, Xiangnan. Zhan, Jing. “Labor Process On Internet Platform In Era of AI: A Study Case of Food Deliveryman” PhD diss., National Social Science Fund, 2017. Fromm, Erich. Marx’s Concept of Man. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1961. Gibson-Graham, J. K. “An Economic Ethics for the Anthropocene.” Antipode 41, no. 1 (2009). 320–346. Glover, Ian. “Bleak House: Pessimism and Prescription About Management, Responsibility and Society in the Early 21st Century” Work, Employment and Society 27, no. 2 (2013). 360-367. Normile, Dennis. “Will Homebody Researchers Turn Japan Into a Scientific Backwater?” Scientific Community 330, no. 4 (2010). 1475 Huang,Wenqi. Delivery Service Customer Experience. Survey. Dec 27, 2019. Huang, Ailin. “Immigrates’ Social Adoption and Its Impact In ShangHai City, A Study Case of Food Deliveryman” PhD diss., Zhejiang Normal University, 2017. Jacobs, Jane. The Death And Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. Jin, Shi. “Take-Out Deliverymen, Trapped By the System''. Chinese People Magazine. Sept. 8, 2020. ISBN 9771001663006. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Mes1RqIOdp48CMw4pXTwXw Klikauer, Thomas. “What Is Managerialism?” Critical Sociology 41, no. 7-8 (2015). 1103–1119. Liu, J,G. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 8, 2019. Meituan. Deliveryman Agreement. Beijing: China, 2019 Meituan Research Lab. Food Delivery Service Industry Report. Beijing: China., 2019 National Sharing Economy Info Research Center. Sharing Economy Report. Beijing: China.,2019. Parker, Martine. “Why We Should Bulldoze the Business School,” The Guardian. April 27,2019. Putnam, R. D. “The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public life.” American Prospect, no.13(1993): 35-42. Qiu, G,Z. Interviewed by Wenqi Huang. Personal Interview. Online, Nov 10, 2019. Scott, Hannah. “Stranger Danger: Explaining Women’s Fear of Crime.” Western Criminology Review 4, no. 3 (2003). 203-214.

Song, Fang. “Study On Behavioral Factors of Public Participation in Crowdsourcing Logistics Based On Take-Away O2O” Master’s thesis, ZheJiang Industrial University, 2016. Shidi, Deliveryman. Directed Guanzhong Qiu. 2018. ShenZhen, China. Bilibili. Documentary, 2018. Szymanski, Dawn M. Moffitt, Lauren B. and Carr, Erika R. “Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research” The Counseling Psychologist 39, no. 1 (2011). 6-38. Zhao, Li. Wang, Mi. “Young Rural Workers’ Social Adoption On Urban Emerging Occupations: On A Study Case of Food Deliveryman” Chinese Youth Social Science 36, no. 2 (2017). 50-57.

Sunday Morning in the Tenderloin Maggie Lajoie | University of California, Irvine ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Taken soon after the cessation of the George Floyd protests, this photograph embodies the mourning of the Tenderloin District in San Francisco. A district that is called the most dangerous neighborhood in the city is mainly home to People of Color. The steamy streets, empty sidewalks, and recently painted murals are all that is left behind from vibrant protests, representing the disappointment of those who live in a poverty ridden district that is adjacent to some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country.

Noon Routine in China Town Maggie Lajoie | University of California, Irvine ARTIST’S STATEMENT: The streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown are usually full of both natives and tourists shopping at markets and eating at restaurants. However, the pandemic has changed this dynamic, as now the streets are only filled with Chinese locals, making trips from their apartments to gather food for the week. This is because unlike other neighborhoods that are still heavily trafficked by tourists, visitors are completely unseen in a neighborhood of a population blamed for the creation of COVID-19. Chinatown habitants live with the repercussions of racism, losing business from visitors and isolating themselves from the rest of the city.

Illegible Subjects, Impossible Borders: Transgender Latina Women as Subjects of State Violence Grace Vedock | Middlebury College ABSTRACT: How do borders function in the modern world? How do marginalized groups – namely, transgender Latina women seeking asylum in the United States – experience border violence? This piece contextualizes state violence within the field of critical border, policing, and surveillance studies. By doing so, it situates modern approaches to border studies within broader discourses about how borders facilitate violence, how state apparatuses replicate marginalization on the basis of race and gender, and how the U.S. immigration system has developed since the late nineteenth century. Drawing on a multidisciplinary combination of contemporary political theory, Foucauldian analysis, and interviews of subjects who have experienced border violence, I argue that transgender women arouse a dual anxiety in the modern state, as they simultaneously transgress the imposed borders of the gender binary and physically cross a heavily militarized border between two sovereign nations.

In “What is a Border?” Etienne Balibar

causes the state to simplify and consequently

proposed that borders are heterogeneous –

regulate individuals, extending citizenship and

they are not constrained to the discourse of

recognition to those which it deems legible

geopolitics, nor are they easily simplified or

and easily administered.170

succinctly

distilled

into

transcendent

Nowhere

is this

formation

definition of what comprises them.169 This

impeccably

revolutionary envisioning of borders can be

contemporary

easily extrapolated to evaluate the innumerable

transgender asylum-seekers in US immigration

formations of borders in the modern world.

detention.171 Trans women arouse dual anxiety

embodied crisis

than of

abuse

the against

Physical and metaphysical borders exemplify 170

Scott 80-82. A note on language: I use “transgender” and “trans” to signify non-compliance with the assumed stability of and relationship between biological sex, gender expression, gender identity, sexuality, and the gender binary. These identities include a range of non-normative gender practices and expressions, most commonly reduced to a rejection of sex assigned at birth. For a detailed discussion of sex/gender distinctions, and the assumed congruence between them, see: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, (Routledge Books: New York and London, 1990).

the modern state’s fixation on rationalizing,

171

standardizing, and refashioning human beings to facilitate administration. As James Scott argues in Seeing Like a State, the movement of people across, between, and beyond borders produces anxiety on behalf of the state. This 169

Balibar 75.

the

modern

state

they

immigrants are trans-gender and trans-border

simultaneously transgress the imposed borders

subjects – precisely the converse of the legible

of the gender binary and physically cross a

and stable subject which James Scott posits as

heavily

desirable by the state.173

militarized

because

border between

two

sovereign nations. The security apparatuses

I will explore how U.S. government

overseeing the detainment and surveillance of

entities, specifically Immigration and Customs

trans immigrants represent a concerted effort

Enforcement (ICE), have administered the

on behalf of the state to simplify and define

dehumanization of trans women immigrants

people which they refuse to read as legible.

by producing their detainment as a violent

The most prominent example of the

spectacle174 and their “illegal” status as

state’s inability – arguably, its dogged refusal –

anxiety-provoking. To do so, I draw heavily on

to read trans subjects as legible is that trans

Adam McKeown’s socio-historical account of

women often are detained in men’s facilities,

U.S immigration policy, Wendy Brown’s

denied access to vital hormone treatment, and

theory of walls and modern sovereignty,

disproportionately put in solitary confinement.

critical trans studies scholars’ research on

172

that

securitization in the post-9/11 United States,

corresponds with the sex designation on an

and contemporary accounts of immigration

individual’s passport; the state can neither

detention. By melding gender and trans studies

fathom nor accept trans immigrants. This lack

scholars’ work with historical and theoretical

people’s

work on borders and violence, I hope to

legible)

produce an analysis of the contemporary crisis

citizenship. Trans women seeking asylum are

that expands on the extensive cache of

hyper-exposed to violence within the border

research on immigration at the US-Mexico

and demanded by the state, which inscribes

border. With this analysis, I consider the

illegibility and otherness onto trans women of

unique anxiety that trans women’s gender,

Absent

gender

acceptance

incompatibility

targets with

expression

trans

proper (or

color. The state purports that the illegality, illegibility, and instability of their being is the natural

opposite

citizenship.

Trans

173

Scott 80. By claiming that detainment is produced as “spectacle,” I am referring to the prolonged and artificial performance that, akin to gender itself, is exhibitionist in nature. 174

172

“‘Do You See How Much I’m Suffering Here?’” 19-25, 32-38.

race, class, and immigration status produces in

“sovereign nation-states no longer exclusively

the US government.

define the field of global political relations or monopolize many of the powers organizing

Borders, Violence, and Liminality

that field, yet states remain significant actors

From whence does border violence

in that field, as well as symbols of national

arise? This question is fraught with historical,

identification.”178 Rather than articulations of

racial, and spatial violence that, according to

state power, walls express the diminishing of

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, originated with “the

state power179 in an era marked by political and

first person who, having enclosed a plot of

economic

globalization.180

land, took it into his head to say this is mine

emblematic

and found people simple enough to believe

navigate a post-Westphalian global political

him.”175 In reality, the concept of borders is

landscape in which states are navigating

amorphous, contested, and ever-changing. It is

increasingly

impossible to enumerate how much border

sovereignty. The anxiety states feel about

violence is constituted by the very presence of

“sovereign impotence,” as Brown puts it,

borders themselves; however, Reece Jones

functions theatrically, producing walls that

succinctly explains this phenomenon as such:

project power and efficiency even when there

“the existence of the border itself produces the

is evidence to the contrary.181 Drawing on

violence that surrounds it.”176

Machiavelli’s claim that politics is heavily

anxious

contentious

Walls

are

states trying to

bouts

over

Sovereignty plays a key role in

theatrical, Brown claims that walls are

justifying the presence of borders and border

“spectacular screens for fantasies of restored

fortifications in the modern world. In Walled

sovereign potency and national purity” in an

States, Waning Sovereignty, political theorist

increasingly unstable and mobile world.182

Wendy Brown writes, walls “deepen the crises

Particularly in the post-Cold War Western

of sovereignty to which they also respond.”177

world, walls are icons of the supposed triumph

of liberal politics, despite the marked surge in

world

increasingly

constituted by

neoliberalism and transnational migration, 178

Ibid 36. Ibid 36. 180 Ibid 39. 181 Ibid 37. 182 Ibid 9. 179

175

Rousseau 44. Jones 5. 177 Brown 10. 176

nationalism, xenophobia, secessionism, and

U.S.-Mexico War coincided with westward

migration-related violence.183

expansion,

Walls are “unsuccessful, expensive, and

ineffective

ventures”

that

American

displacement

generate

infrastructural

Native

imperialism, peoples,

development.

and

Territorial

imaginary stability and homogeneity that

expansion and control played a key role in

bolster nationalism and encourage vigilantism

establishing the border; in fact, a border

in border spaces.184 Border fortifications

dispute was “the premise upon which the

consist of massive and expensive surveillance,

United States declared war on Mexico in

law enforcement, and physical infrastructure,

1846.”187 Codified in Article V of the Treaty of

such as that seen along the U.S.-Mexico

Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, the border was

border, become spaces in which state violence

first mapped by a team of land surveyors from

accompanies waning sovereignty and the

both parties in the wake of the U.S.-Mexico

suspension of the rule of law. Though the

War and the signing of the Treaty. Between

U.S.-Mexico border wall appears distinctive in

1891 and 1896, the final mapping of the

purpose and function, it is indicative of a

borderline was completed, producing the

well-documented

cartographic line that persists to this day.188

pattern

alleged

democratic countries - such as Israel and

The origins of border control in

European Union (EU) members - erecting

Mexico are intricately tied to developments in

such fortifications.185

American

immigration

policy.

Adam

McKeown writes in Melancholy Order: the The U.S.-Mexico Border and the American

“enormous legal, political, and administrative

Model

effort” put into enforcing America’s earliest The border between the now United

immigration laws, including the Chinese

States and Mexico was established on the

Exclusion laws of 1882, catalyzed experiments

Comanches,

native

in border control.189 After the idea of “free”

American tribes’ land that they occupied for

migration was replaced with migration as

over 10,000 years.186 American victory in the

commerce, the nation became the sole

Apaches,

and

other

183

Ibid., 9. Ibid., 9. 185 Ibid., 46; 50. 186 Alvarez 2

187

Ibid 3 Ibid 3 189 McKeown 122-123

184

188

authority

identification.190

States

military, and police entities, and restricting

accumulated the power to define, identify,

immigration under the auspices of threat

monitor, and restrict populations based on the

reduction.

Restrictions

Chinese

productivity.191

immigration to America in the late 19th

Though McKeown writes exclusively of

century were informed by a newfound focus

restricting

desirability

capitalist

immigration

from

Asia,

the

migration

control

and

subsequently

American tradition of population control

facilitated the creation of a security state to

began long before the Chinese Exclusion

“properly police [the nation] against threats.”

Laws. Forcible relocation and extermination of

194

Native Americans, the Transatlantic Slave

sovereign nations, begets further divisions

Trade, and the exclusion of poor, nonwhite,

between Western and non-Western; legal and

and

illegal; documented and undocumented.

non-male

persons

from

citizenship

catalyzed the American tradition of defining

The border, a dichotomy between two

That

border

control

became

subjects and assigning rights based on race,

“precondition of sovereignty” speaks to the

ethnicity, gender, national origin, and status.

entrenched American belief in violence as a

Gradually,

border

control

was

means of control, codified in immigration law

envisioned as an integral part of modern

and processes that McKeown deems the

statehood, manifesting the American desire to

“American

preserve an imaginary, racialized homogeneity.

obscured the racist origins of American

192

immigration

Increased attention paid to migration

model.”195

law,

Proceduralization

recasting

invasive

control became, as McKeown writes, the

procedures and racial exclusion as “the

“unilateral sovereign prerogative” of the

impartial

modern state.193 At the border, the state

process of transforming migration and border

possesses the power to assert its authority

control into a heavily militarized, expensive,

through exclusion and restriction. This creates

and

notions of acceptable citizenship, producing

dichotomies at the origins of American

violence, bolstering the ties between political,

immigration law. The rationalization and

bureaucratic

190

Ibid 90 Ibid 96 192 Ibid 123 193 Ibid 149 191

194

Ibid 150 Ibid 214 196 Ibid 240 195

administration

process

law.”196 The

reinforced the

scientific fixation on procedure bolstered the

administration’s harsh immigration policies by

image of America as lawful and civilized,

claiming: “You cannot conceive of a nation

whereas immigrants - particularly nonwhite

without

and poor - comprised an illegal, uncivilized

fundamental and essential to the idea of

counterweight.197

This

sovereignty and national survival to have

institutionalized

rigorous

American

model

exclusion

strong,

secure border.

It is

control over who enters and doesn’t enter the country.”200

‘undesirable’ immigrants, concentrating power in the hands of immigration authorities and

Immigrants’ exclusion from the state

border control and facilitating the obsessive

invokes a justification for maintaining waning

documentation of immigrants that persists into

sovereignty beyond the border. Political scare

the present day.198 Abstract legal categories

tactics that conjure the spectre of the “illegal

buttress new immigration procedures, making

alien”

border

agents the arbiters of migrants’

allocated to immigrants, whether “legal” or

identities and livelihoods. Officials had the

“illegal” in the eyes of the state. Though

power to define “people and activities that

documented and undocumented immigrants

were outside of the law” and consequently

alike are necessary to the function of the

decide how to compartmentalize, monitor, and

nation, they nonetheless remain defined by

punish categories of people deemed ‘illegal,’

their border status.201 Though they may have

outside

the

law.199

undermine

the

sub-citizen

rights

Bureaucratic

moved across the border, the border - and its

immigration procedure possesses immense

terminology - moves with them. The Biden

symbolic power through the process of

Administration, for example, recently moved

admission, exclusion, and policing at the

to replace the term “alien” with “noncitizen”

border.

in The notion that nationhood inherently

U.S.

immigration

laws.202

Though

proponents have called the move progressive,

constitutes exclusion prevails in contemporary discourse on immigration. Senior White House 200

It should be noted that Miller has come under fire for harboring white nationalist beliefs, though at the time of writing he remains a senior advisor for immigration policy. See: “Stephen Miller’s Affinity for White Nationalism Revealed in Leaked Emails” 201 Rivera-Servera and Young 1-2 202 Acevedo

advisor Stephen Miller justified the Trump

197

Ibid 240-241 Ibid 250-251 199 Ibid 250 198

203

the

change

obscures

the

relatively

purposely funneled migrants away from urban

dehumanizing circumstances that immigrants

centers and into the harsh Sonoran Desert in

continue to face. A report by The Invisible

southern Arizona.205 By forcing migrants into

Wall found that the Biden Administration’s

more hostile terrain, deterrence could be

Department of Homeland Security deported

achieved, in theory, without the erection of an

more Haitians under summary expulsions

entire

between its inception and March 2021 than the

acknowledged in a 1997 memo that the death

Trump Administration had in the entire

of ‘aliens’ would be a “success” of prevention

previous year.204

through deterrence.206 Migrant life, in this

wall.

The

federal

government

memo and consequent administrations’ harsh U.S. Policy at the Border The modern

immigration enforcement and continuation of

detainment

of trans

Prevention through Deterrence, is constructed

immigrants and the overwhelming denial of

as expendable: the outcome of shunting border

trans asylum claims simultaneously occur with

enforcement

the militarization of the southern border under

environment of the Sonoran Desert.

onto

the

already

fatal

President Trump, increased media attention to

Roxanne Doty described crossing the

the prolonged detainment of migrants, and

U.S.-Mexico border as a process of reducing

racist attacks articulated by the President

the migrant subject to “bare life” - that is,

against Latinx immigrants. However, the

whose death has little or no consequence.207

detainment, mistreatment, mass deportation,

Migrant death was never an unintended

and criminalization of immigrants are not

consequence of border enforcement; the very

unique to the Republican Party. Through a

articulation of the desert as an apt venue for

policy called “Prevention through Deterrence,”

crossing posits migrants as worthy of death for

implemented

Clinton

attempting the brutal journey.208 The journey

Administration, the U.S. federal government

and costs of crossing through the desert are

during

the

immense and almost always fatal. Data shows 203

Johnson Borger The report focused only on those immigrants that were expelled under Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act, which allows the government to justify deportation based on identified threats to public health. The Trump Administration previously used the rule to extend to COVID-19. 204

205

de Leon 28-35 de Leon, “The Land of Open Graves,” Lecture at Middlebury College, October 3, 2019. 207 Doty 599-601 208 Jimenez 21. 206

that, in the years since the 1997 memo,

of public outcry over the thousands of migrant

migrant deaths in the Sonoran Desert have

deaths occurring on U.S. soil.210

more than quadrupled - from less than fifty per

The construction of migrant life as

year to nearly 200. This trend is even more

expendable is crucial to understanding the

pronounced in deportations, which have

detainment and abuse of trans-asylum-seekers

increased from approximately 70,000 to nearly

450,00 per year.

marginalized gender identity subjects trans

ICE

custody.

particular,

their

Building on Doty’s conception of “bare

women to additional danger not experienced

life,” anthropologist Jason de Leon argued that

by other migrants. Often fleeing sexual

the deaths of migrants in the Sonoran Desert

violence

are rendered invisible by the focus on Trump’s

trans-asylum-seekers face additional barriers

wall as an exclusive site of border policing. By

to entry while being reduced to a different kind

solely focusing on Trump, there is a lack of

of “bare life.”211 This reduction is one in which

historical engagement with bipartisan US

sexual violence, denial of access to hormone

policies enacted to deter migration through the

treatment,

Southern

facilities that correspond to an incorrect

Deterrence,

border.

Prevention

through

de Leon claims, should be

understood

the

dehumanization.

normalization

Furthermore,

version

their

home

countries,

and purposeful detainment in

their

gender

identity

are

commonplace.

the

foundation upon which other dehumanizing

Trans Visibility, Backlash, and State

regimes, such as deportation and detainment,

Violence

must be understood.209 These phenomena are

Michel Foucault writes in Discipline

inherently symbiotic. The entire border space

and Punish: “visibility is a trap.”212 Trans

is suspended in a state of permanent exception.

bodies, because of their non-normativity, are

In this space, migrant death and detainment

inherently hyper-visible. Noted trans studies

are encouraged by increasing funds for

scholar Aren Aizura notes that, within a

border-related

society that privileges capitalist modes of

law

enforcement,

rising

xenophobia, nationalist vigilantism, and lack 210

de Leon 28. Doty 599-601. 212 Foucault 187. 211

209

de Leon and Garcia

extraction and value produced by labor and

the highly militarized, hostile, and xenophobic

resource extraction, “being a somebody means

space of the US-Mexico border.

visibility: becoming a population, becoming

In Terrorizing Gender: Transgender

(part of) a class, becoming clockable.”213214

Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the

This

U.S. Security State, Mia Fischer argues that

techniques of biopolitical management, such

increased media visibility of transgender

as state surveillance, documentation, and

individuals does not only coincide with a

self-monitoring. Surveillance practices of the

documented rise in violence against trans

U.S. state and intelligence apparatuses are

communities. Visibility, and attempts to gain

profoundly gendered, as evidenced by decades

political and social capital via visibility

of trans scholarship citing the contentious

politics,

relationship trans bodies have with state

surveillance and regulation of trans people by

power.215 Portrayals

bodies as

the security state.”218 Fischer challenges the

deceptive, untruthful, and incomprehensible

progress narrative, often invoked to prove

renders trans people as not easily identifiable,

rising equality, acceptance, and civil rights for

which produces anxiety on behalf of the state.

LGBT

216

Compounding the state’s anxiety about

material realities of trans livelihoods are

trans bodies is racialized surveillance and

inscribed on the body through state violence

detainment

America’s

and surveillance.219 Being recognized as a

borders.217 Specifically, Trans Latina migrants

trans subject creates a “double bind,” where

live at the nexus of multiple oppressions. They

visibility seemingly produces protection and

experience racial and gender violence within

safety while generating violence and increased

hyper-visibility

facilitated

of trans

procedures

around

actually

result

Americans, by

“increased

highlighting how

surveillance.220 Trans studies scholar Toby Beauchamp concurs, writing in his critique of state

213

Fischer 3. See also Dan Irving’s critique of political economy in “Normalized Transgressions: Legitimizing the Transsexual Body as Productive,” in The Transgender Studies Reader 2, Routledge, 2013: 15-29. 215 See, for example, The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, Routledge: New York and London, 2006. 216 Scott 76-82. 217 Beauchamp 46-55 214

surveillance:

“transgender

and

gender-nonconforming bodies are bound up in surveillance practices. . . that underpin U.S.

218

Fischer 5-6 Ibid 6 220 Ibid 14 219

military and government constructions of

identities to reinforce hegemonic ideas about

safety.”221

medico-biological gender.227

In a post-9/11 political environment marked

Passports

represent

another

increasing securitization and

problematic site of illegibility for trans

militarization of law enforcement, the gender

subjects. Their identities often do not match or

normalization at borders intensifies.222 This

directly contradict the information provided on

surveillance marks the trans body as deviant

official

and

political

Passports and other forms of identification

advocacy efforts that increase visibility of

have become notorious within transgender

trans bodies in the media.223 The failure to

advocacy movements as evidence of state

conform to a medicalized understanding of

refusal to acknowledge gender nonconformity.

gender marks the trans body as illegible and a

228

security threat.224 The U.S. Department of

recognized markers of identity - combined

Homeland Security emphasized in its 2003

with the increase in state authority over

advisory to security personnel that “terrorists

migration and mobility control - set a

will employ novel methods to artfully conceal

dangerous precedent for trans subjects long

suicide devices. Male bombers may dress as

before trans migrants were visibly subjected to

scrutiny.”225

state power.229 As an indicator of legality and

dangerous,

females

contradicting

discourage

passports

Passports

and

becoming

internationally

Surveillance procedures at borders and airports

citizenship,

alike are well-documented sites of biopolitical

aforementioned

management.226 Post-9/11 surveillance and

impossible and illegible trans subjects on

security

paper while facilitating state violence and

procedures

intensify

gendered

scrutiny. Trans identities inherently disrupt

passports

documentation.

double

replicate bind,

the

creating

surveillance of trans bodies.

state reliance on legibility. In response, the state problematizes non-conforming gender

227

Curray and Mulqueen 559-560 Responding to an abrupt change in State Department language regarding sex/gender markers on U.S. passports, an executive from the National Center for Transgender Equality said, “this move seems designed to frighten, confuse and keep transgender people from exercising their full rights under the current policy — the same policy we fought for and won in 2010.” Dancyger 229 McKeown 102 228

221

Beauchamp 47 Ibid 50-53 223 Ibid 46-47 224 Ibid 47 225 Beauchamp 46 226 Lyon 291. 222

Do You See How Much I’m Suffering Here?

and Honduras, respectfully, due to sexual

There are similarities among many trans

accounts

border-related reveal

the

detainment

violence. disturbing

These extent

assault,

and

violence

narratives to

harassment, they

gang violence, and

experienced

for

being

transgender, only to find the same abuse

which

replicated in immigration detention. Nicoll

detainment facilitates state violence, often in

explains to the interviewer in Spanish that “I

the forms of sexual violence and denial of

came here seeking asylum in this country

medical care. Deaths of asylum-seeking trans

because I didn’t want to suffer anymore, and

women in U.S. custody have raised the profile

here I am going through it all again.”232

of these issues. In

According to the American Civil

2016,

Rights

Watch

Liberties Union (ACLU), transgender women

eighty-eight-page

report

in ICE custody are generally detained with

documenting mistreatment of trans Latina

men. Additionally, thirteen percent of all trans

asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border and

people in ICE custody were held in solitary

revealing the scope of these similarities.230 All

confinement in 2017.233 Sexual assault of trans

twenty-eight

Latina

produced

Human

interviewees

had

direct

asylum-seekers

disturbingly

experience in detention facilities along the

common, due in large part to their extended

US-Mexico

exposure

border;

some

were

seeking

law

enforcement

officials,

asylum, and some were granted asylum.231

mishandling of asylum claims, and indefinite

Nicoll Hernandez-Polanco and Monserrath

detention in a men’s facility. Both women

Lopez, who were held in detention facilities by

were placed in a men’s detention center,

US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and

putting them at higher risk of sexual assault;

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

both women note that immigration officials

between 2014 and 2015 upon seeking asylum

failed to protect them or intervene when they

in the United States, relay stories to HRW that

were

are now typical within news reports and

assaulted, even though such intervention is

narratives about immigration detention. Both

required under the Prison Rape Elimination

repeatedly

sexually

harassed

and

women fled their native countries, Guatemala 232

“US: Transgender Women Abused in Immigration Detention” 233 Congresswoman Kathleen M. Rice et al. 1.

230

“‘Do You See How Much I’m Suffering Here?’” 1-2. 231 Ibid 4.

Act of 2003 (PREA), enacted to deter sexual

gender as a visual threat, reinforcing the state’s

assault in prisons and detention.234

inability to read trans subjects as legible.

One of the most common justifications

Compounding the disturbing pattern of

given for the disproportionate use of solitary

solitary confinement and abuse of trans

confinement for trans detainees and prisoners

women in ICE detention is that federal agents

is that solitary confinement - or “protective

often punish women who report sexual

custody” - is enacted for the subject’s

harassment and assault by placing them in

protection.235 This excuse ignores the higher

solitary

risk of sexual assault trans immigrants face

discourage

when detained in facilities not matching their

confinement is used as a retaliatory measure,

gender expression.236 It also gives credence to

in both ICE custody and in U.S. prisons. For

the hegemonic construction of trans subjects

victims of sexual abuse, solitary confinement

as inherently threatening. Andrea Albutt,

can compound trauma and render the detainee

President of the UK Prisoners Association,

vulnerable to abuse by guards.240 Monserrath

made this assumption clear in a 2018

describes a sexual assault that occurred while

interview, during which she claimed: “to put

she was in ICE custody, which she reported to

all men who declare they are women into

authorities. “I asked them to help me and no

women’s prisons would be very damaging.

one listened,” she explains to the interviewer.

You do get trans prisoners who are going

241

through the [transition] process who still look

for the assault which occurred in a men’s

very masculine.”237238 This assertion constructs

detention facility: “they said I was also

confinement with the intent to further

reports.239

Solitary

Authorities ultimately found her responsible

responsible for pretending to be a woman, because I was seducing him.”242 Assault

234

“PREA: Overview”: On the ICE.gov webpage, the agency maintains that, in compliance with PREA, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of sexual abuse or assault.” 235 “Still Worse Than Second-Class: Solitary Confinement of Women in the United States” 13 236 Kulak 2 237 Lamble 7-12 Sarah Lamble, “Why context matters in the trans prisoner policy debates,” Harm and Evidence Research Collaborative. 238 Sarah Lamble, “Why context matters in the trans prisoner policy debates,” Harm and Evidence Research Collaborative.

against transgender women is often used to justify solitary confinement as protection from sexual abuse. Nicoll, however, disputes this 239

Dart 15 “Still Worse Than Second-Class” 9; 14. 241 “US: Transgender Women Abused in Immigration Detention.” 242 Ibid 240

claim, noting that she should not have been

claim was eventually granted, she insists that

placed in a men’s facility and that her

the trauma she endured in detention remains

experiences with abuse came directly from

with her. Further, it is indicative of the

guards.243 The Department of Homeland

experience many transgender women have in

Security’s Office of the Inspector General

detention facilities along the US-Mexico

(OIG) expressed concern about the lack of

border.

transparency regarding the use of solitary

Sexual assault and detainment in men’s

confinement in ICE custody.244245 Despite a

facilities are common experiences among trans

2013 ICE policy promising to limit solitary

Latina asylum-seekers. So, too, is the denial of

confinement,246 the OIG found that ICE did

access to medical care - specifically, hormone

not adequately document or provide a reason

treatment. Nicoll explains that she was denied

for the continued confinement of certain

access to hormone therapy while in detention;

detainees.247

without the intervention of her lawyer, she

Detainment in prison-like facilities

would be unable to access these medications.

produces violence that increased border patrol

At this point in the video, Flor explains:

is allegedly supposed to reduce. Both Nicoll

“another one of the problems transgender

and Monserrath were eventually granted

women in immigration face is the lack of

asylum after experiencing extensive sexual

access to medical care as well as access to

abuse in detainment facilities. Nicoll notes that

HIV medication and hormone replacement

she was treated like a prisoner while seeking

therapy. We see many [transgender women]

asylum despite being the victim - not the

waiting for month and months without

perpetrator – of a crime. Monserrath echoed

continuation of their hormone treatment,”

the frustration with the punitive and violent

which can lead to painful and fatal side effects.

detainment process. Even though her asylum

248

One of the solutions which Human Rights

Watch proposes asks ICE to “provide prompt

243

Ibid 244 “Still Worse Than Second-Class” 14. 245 “ICE Field Offices Need to Improve Compliance with Oversight Requirements for Segregation of Detainees with Mental Health Conditions” 4-5. 246 “Review of the Use of Segregation for ICE Detainees” 2. 247 “ICE Field Offices Need to Improve Compliance with Oversight Requirements” 1.

and

uninterrupted

treatment

access

and hormone

HIV/AIDS

therapy for all

individuals in immigration detention who

248

Ibid

require it, and barring ICE from detaining

and resisted border violence against queer and

individuals in facilities that are unable to meet

trans subjects. Mexican artist Julio Salgado’s

these requirements.”249

“I Am Undocuqueer!” project envisions a

HRW’s video and corresponding report

politics of resistance which elevates queer and

are parts of a larger activist campaign to stop

trans

the detention and abuse of transgender

history-telling, and community organizing

immigrants. Since the video was posted in

(See Figures 1.3-1.4).252 A self-proclaimed

2016, it does not account for the changes in

“artivist,” Salgado reclaims the pejorative

immigration policy enacted by the Trump

“undocumented”

Administration, which have notably lead to

marginalization

outrage

interlocking

over the deaths of transgender

undocumented bodies through

art,

making

collective

and

exposing

visible

oppressions

race/ethnicity,

asylum-seekers in US detention centers. Many

gender,

of these deaths – including the high-profile

documentation

deaths of Roxsana Hernandez Rodriquez250

Salgado is one of many “artivists” working at

and Johana “Joa” Medina Leon251– have been

the intersection of art, immigration advocacy,

a result of denied access to medical care, a

and queer activism. In his latest work We Got

primary problem highlighted in the video. The

Each Other’s Back, commissioned by the San

continuing cause of concern and outrage for

Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Colombian

trans women's health and safety indicates the

artist Carlos Motta pays homage to artists and

significance and persistence of the problem.

activists who are deconstructing binaries of gender

Engendering Resistance through ‘Artivism’ Human

Rights

Watch

and

sexuality,

and

nationality,

status -

nationality

and

as superficial.253

through

queer

immigration advocacy (See Figures 1.5-1.6).

the

These modes of creative resistance reveal a

American Civil Liberties Union have played

small but growing constituency of ‘illegible’

key roles in raising awareness, performing

state subjects that reject the artificial, colonial

research, and documenting the experiences of

imposition of borders and the structural

trans asylum-seekers. Art has been another

violence that inevitably constitutes them.

medium through which activists have depicted

252

“'Undocu-Queer' Artist Julio Salgado on Creative Resistance” 253 “The Artivism of Julio Salgado’s I Am Undocuqueer! Series”

249

Ibid 250 Critchfield 251 Moore

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