Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times^*

Annual Review of Anthropology

Vol. 40: 213-226 (Volume publication date October 2011)

First published online as a Review in Advance on July 7, 2011

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145847

The governmentality of immigration has become a crucial issue of contemporary societies. Ironically, although globalization meant facilitated circulation of goods, it has also signified increased constraints on the mobility of men and women. This evolution has been characterized by the policing of physical borders and the production of racialized boundaries, primarily studied by the social sciences in North America and Western Europe. Anthropological studies highlight the renewed role of the nation-state to impose a surveillance apparatus of the frontiers and the territories, regimes of exception for the detention and deportation of illegal aliens, and a dramatic decline in the right to asylum, sometimes replaced by forms of discretionary humanitarianism. These logics are embodied in the everyday work of bureaucracies as well as in the experience of immigrants.