Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net - Border Activism

Mute Vol 2 #7 - Show Invisibles? Migration / Data / Work

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:41:01 +0000

We are living through an intensification of citizens’, and non-citizens’, visibility to capital. Database convergence, states of emergency and points-based immigration systems destroy the legal and informational grey zones in which the poor shelter and organise. As black economies and shadow sectors are exposed to the light of networked information in the interests of population management, border enforcement, welfare clamp-downs and, above all, profit, what are the risks and advantages of visibility? What do (political and artistic) representation and rights have to offer the illegal and ‘invisible’?

Editorial Mute 2 #7

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:23:01 +0000

ByJosephine Berry Slater

We are standing on the brink of an immense revelation. The revelation of people to states. In the UK – the surveillance workshop of the world – people are becoming increasingly visible through IT projects like the Electronic Patients Record and the National Identity Register, as well as a forthcoming points-based immigration regime premised on the ability to identify subjects and then track and cross-reference their data as never before. Joining-up data, and hence governance, is the name of the game. What are the implications then of this dangerous regime of identity capture, assessment, and tracking for political demands for representation and rights? What are the risks and advantages of visibility, of joining the demos, when identification by the state triggers joined-up ‘knowledge’, often with punitive results? The bright light of IT in the hands of increasingly authoritarian regimes is chasing away the shadows that once provided the minimum of protection, income and manoeuvrability to people at the edges of society. The basic survival of the poor, undocumented or ‘illegalised’ often depends on the ability to operate without detection, the necessity of ID, or the creation of official records. This grey zone of anonymity is constantly squeezed in the interests of population management, border enforcement, welfare clamp-downs, technocratic convenience and, of course, the economy. This issue of Mute focuses on the exposure of subjects not just to state surveillance and databasing, but to sovereign state power enacted either through the ordinary rule of law or through its suspension in the state of emergency.

As Elizabeth Povinelli writes in these pages, ‘The state of exception and its tethering to moral panic, is a routinised form of state action.’ State/media orchestrated panics, usually presenting a society on the brink of calamity, have become the precondition of the state’s operations. In order to justify massive social change such as ‘managed migration’, in which would-be immigrants to the UK will be subjected to an inhuman assessment based on ‘skills’, the emotive bomb of ‘swamping’ is detonated again and again. In order to roll back hard-won indigenous rights and ‘neoliberate’ communities and their lands in Australia, the bomb of culturally ingrained child sexual abuse amongst Aboriginals is detonated. As Povinelli says, these moral panics are like screaming fire in a movie theatre – no time to think, just act. The time of the here and now privileges those with power, after all, this is the time-frame in which the world’s traders make fortunes.

No One Is Legal

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:40:20 +0000

ByUnterschereber

Where the struggle for migrants’ rights can be risky and divisive, informal organising by ‘illegals’ is a means to ensure survival. But both formal and informal organising can combine to protect an essential buffer zone of invisibility for undocumented workers — writes Unterschreber

Organising in the Dark: Interviews about Migrants’ Struggles

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:30:16 +0000

ByJaya Klara Brekke

Jaya Klara Brekke talks to four UK based groups working to improve conditions for migrants and asks ‘how does one organise in the dark?’

Repression as state strategy

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:02:15 +0000

ByA Murder of Crows

Strong analysis of state repression from A Murder of Crows (http://www.geocities.com/amurderofcrows1/), via libcom.org. Makes the crucial connection between spectacular 'emergency' measures (SWAT teams, anti-terror laws etc) and the racially differentiated class war waged every day as 'community policing'.

The health of the body politic

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:53:18 +0000

ByAngela Mitropoulos
The Australian government is thinking of formalizing its de facto power to close the border to medical undesirables, in this case those with 'HIV or leprosy'. No nation-state seems more determined to demonstrate the literal validity of Agamben's biopower-concentration camp thesis. Here Mute contributor Angela Mitropoulos notes the source of John Howard's theatre of outrage in the 'normal' regulation of labour and its reproduction. More proof if it were needed that bio-identity tracking (eg health profiling) is not a mere 'civil liberties' issue of abstract 'privacy'. The invasive effects of the monitoring are distributed according to race and class, because, as the invention of a statistically nonexistent 'AIDS-immigrant-parasite' crisis goes to show, the policy is about the racial stratification of the labour market.
<http://archive.blogsome.com/2007/06/04/the-health-of-the-body-politic/#more-542>

Neo-Slavery, No Borders and Anarcho-Racism

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 05:52:10 +0000

ByN
http://makebordershistory.org/workspace/Still_in_Chains

STILL IN CHAINS!

The year 2007's commemoration of the bicentenary of the parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the British empire is an insult to the Africans who continue to be virtually in chains as slaves of Europe and the West, and physically in shackles across British and European detention camps built specifically for the foreigner and making millions of profits for multinationals. Deja-vu!

Riot in Harmondsworth Immigration Prison.. Again

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 12:52:20 +0000

ByAnon
Below is a short report on the most recent incident in the ongoing struggle of detainees of Harmondsworth against incarceration in conditions characterized in their own words as 'advance slavery' [http://www.barbedwirebritain.org.uk/articles/2006/jan/002.shtml].

Harmondsworth detention centre is coyly described by its operators, Kalyx, 'a social business with strong underlying ethical standards', as an Immigration Removal Centre : removal that is, for the inmates, from fresh air, decent food, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, legal representation and in general their own humanity.

An antibushist future for Europe: DEMORADICAL VS DEMOLIBERAL REGULATION

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 12:46:58 +0000

ByAlex Foti
The answer to the party form conundrum seemed, for a while, to lie in the network. Now it looks like the network is being shoe-horned back into the party form. Here Alex Foti, former organiser of the ChainWorkers, advocates a pink, green and wobbly extension of the mayday network into a card-carrying transeuropean syndicate whose methods are majoritarian and vote-based and whose target is the production of a radical constitution for the EU formulated from below. Seems like the idea of a socialist supra-national state has never been so popular.

Breaking Through the Stereotypes: Art and Media Activism from Tijuana

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 10:41:52 +0000

ByArmin Medosch
Tijuana Organic – a show that profiles contemporary artists and media activists from the Mexican border town made notorious by its maquiladoras, immigration struggles and crime – steers a course between depicting Tijuana's harsh realities and avoiding a sensationalist treatment of its social complexities. Reviewed by Armin Medosch

Si, se puede! - Chicago Witnesses Massive Protest for Immigrant Rights

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:09:28 +0000

ByAnon
Belated news of a large march by immigrant workers in Chicago, this passed me by and I haven't heard many people talking about this, but it is interesting news if this is the sign of the beginning of large-scale mobilisation by immigrant workers in the US. Reposted from www.indymedia.org

Si, se puede! - Chicago Witnesses Massive Protest for Immigrant Rights

Desert Crossroads (Rising Resistance to Corporate Globalisation and Deadly Borders)

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:06:22 +0000

Byo.r.g.a.n.i.c.
As xenophobic border regimes around the world rigidify, activist groups
are joining forces to denounce them and the neoliberal economics on
which they stand. Amidst a worsening climate of vigilantism, San Diego
based anarchist collective o.r.g.a.n.i.c. report on recent antiborder
actions in the towns, desert wastelands and graveyards along the
US/Mexico border

What Money Can't Buy

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 14:32:36 +0000

BySebastian Hacher
Benetton’s corporate PR campaign against the Mapuche people in Argentina has broken up on the wave of independent media activism. Sebastian Hacher reports

The region called Patagonia reaches from the center of Argentina to where the continent touches the South Pole, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Andes mountain range. Patagonia is 30 percent of the territory of Argentina, about 780,000 km2 where 80 percent of the oil reserves of the country are concentrated, as well as great water resources and some surviving areas of virgin land.

Tour de Fence

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 13:34:58 +0000

BySimon Worthington
This summer, artist Heath Bunting is embarking on a project to cross all 28 borders within the EU. As he will be avoiding conventional checkpoints, this will involve a lot of unusual climbing activity. In late April, in the West Coast city of Bristol, a large group of urban climbers met for the prelude to this project: a weekend of what was initially referred to as ‘fence climbing.’