Human race tend to hold fear towards people who are foreign or unfamiliar to them. This sense of xenophobia is prevalent across world history, often characterized by implementation of racialized discriminatory immigration practices. In this essay, I am going to compare and contrast the history of the Japanese internment in the United States during WWII with recent European Union processes.
In 1942, President Roosevelt executed an enforced relocation of Japanese citizens and immigrants, which lasted for four years. It was officially declared as an authorized evacuation of all “enemy aliens” from designated areas within US including entire West Coast. These so-called, “enemy aliens” included Germans, Italians, and Japanese; however, the order was enforced only against Japanese-origin people: “within 6 months, federal government ordered arrest of 120,000 persons of Japanese descent, which 70,000 of them were US citizens by birth” (). Furthermore, the internees consisted of “30 University of California faculty and research assistants, and 400 undergraduate students” (). These internment camps were dispersed throughout the rural areas of the country: “California, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho” (). It was difficult for the Americans to escape a conviction that their plight is due more to racial discrimination, economic motivations, and wartime prejudices than to any real necessity from the military point of view for evacuation from the West Coast: “Japanese immigrant is far more dangerous to the country than the Chinese” (). This signified the emergence of anti-Japanese racism. The current EU processes, on the other hand, described by Di Giorgi, shows the simultaneous process of de-bordering of the western world under the impulse of economic globalization and re-bordering of late-capitalist societies against global migration. This context of re-bordering emerged in mid-1970s with the emergence of new regime of punitive regulation against labor migrations. This emerging regime articulates itself around two levels. First level unfolds at the border, and witnesses the deployment of prohibitionist strategies aimed at narrowing the channels of legal access to the societies of destination, with the result of creating a population of individuals whose illegality is in fact defined by the selective functioning of the borders. When exploring this level, it is crucial to consider two fundamental factors: immigrant’s ‘legality’ & ‘illegality’ are institutionally constructed conditions, and these conditions are neither as clearly distinguishable nor mutually exclusive as the widespread anti-immigration rhetoric would have them. Second level materializes once the labor has been crossed, and contributes to the subordinate inclusion of migrants whose illegalized status invites further policies of selective control and criminalization. …show more content…
Here, limited access to civil, social, and political rights, hyper-criminalization, hyper-incarceration, and the constant threat of deportation contribute to the creation of a grey area of legal vulnerability – or ‘eternal probation’, as Daniel Kanstroom has defined it – which in turn constrains the socioeconomic opportunities of migrant workers and contributes to their insertion in the most precarious and insecure sectors of the post-Fordist economy, as well as in the lower regions of the illegal economies. While inside the EU national borders have been abolished in favor of a unified economic and financial area of free circulation, the external borders of the EU (beginning with the Schengen Agreement of 1985, but with increased intensity after 9/11 and the terrorist attacks of 2004 in Madrid and 2005 in London) operate as militarized gateways to the circulation of specific
In 1942, President Roosevelt executed an enforced relocation of Japanese citizens and immigrants, which lasted for four years. It was officially declared as an authorized evacuation of all “enemy aliens” from designated areas within US including entire West Coast. These so-called, “enemy aliens” included Germans, Italians, and Japanese; however, the order was enforced only against Japanese-origin people: “within 6 months, federal government ordered arrest of 120,000 persons of Japanese descent, which 70,000 of them were US citizens by birth” (). Furthermore, the internees consisted of “30 University of California faculty and research assistants, and 400 undergraduate students” (). These internment camps were dispersed throughout the rural areas of the country: “California, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho” (). It was difficult for the Americans to escape a conviction that their plight is due more to racial discrimination, economic motivations, and wartime prejudices than to any real necessity from the military point of view for evacuation from the West Coast: “Japanese immigrant is far more dangerous to the country than the Chinese” (). This signified the emergence of anti-Japanese racism. The current EU processes, on the other hand, described by Di Giorgi, shows the simultaneous process of de-bordering of the western world under the impulse of economic globalization and re-bordering of late-capitalist societies against global migration. This context of re-bordering emerged in mid-1970s with the emergence of new regime of punitive regulation against labor migrations. This emerging regime articulates itself around two levels. First level unfolds at the border, and witnesses the deployment of prohibitionist strategies aimed at narrowing the channels of legal access to the societies of destination, with the result of creating a population of individuals whose illegality is in fact defined by the selective functioning of the borders. When exploring this level, it is crucial to consider two fundamental factors: immigrant’s ‘legality’ & ‘illegality’ are institutionally constructed conditions, and these conditions are neither as clearly distinguishable nor mutually exclusive as the widespread anti-immigration rhetoric would have them. Second level materializes once the labor has been crossed, and contributes to the subordinate inclusion of migrants whose illegalized status invites further policies of selective control and criminalization. …show more content…
Here, limited access to civil, social, and political rights, hyper-criminalization, hyper-incarceration, and the constant threat of deportation contribute to the creation of a grey area of legal vulnerability – or ‘eternal probation’, as Daniel Kanstroom has defined it – which in turn constrains the socioeconomic opportunities of migrant workers and contributes to their insertion in the most precarious and insecure sectors of the post-Fordist economy, as well as in the lower regions of the illegal economies. While inside the EU national borders have been abolished in favor of a unified economic and financial area of free circulation, the external borders of the EU (beginning with the Schengen Agreement of 1985, but with increased intensity after 9/11 and the terrorist attacks of 2004 in Madrid and 2005 in London) operate as militarized gateways to the circulation of specific