The panel “Family Migration Politics as race projects” has been submitted to the IMISCOE Annual Conference which will take place 1-4 July 2025 in Paris, France.
Panel Abstract
Feminist scholars of nationalism and empire have shown that from colonial times to the present day, the politics of intimacy play a crucial role in defining racial and national boundaries and identities. By doing sex, love, family and parenting in a more or less ‘civilized’ manner, people are seen to reveal their belonging to more or less ‘civilized’ races and nations. Critical migration scholars have shown that racialization, both in explicit and implicit forms, plays a key role in migration politics past and present. This panel seeks to explore the intersection of the politics of race and the politics of intimacy by studying family migration politics as ‘race projects’. Racial projects produce what race means through policy creation, interpretation, and implementation in order to reorganize and redistribute resources, rights, and privileges across racialized lines, enforce border control, and uphold the nation’s internal hierarchy along intersecting lines of race, gender, and class. Racialization through family reunification politics may also be contested or affirmed by transnational families, migrant organisations, lawyers, but also by politicians or bureaucrats, journalists or judges, artists and activists. With the resurgence of far-right ideologies across the globe, race projects appear to become more explicit and exclusionary – and resistance more urgent. This panel inquires how state and non-state actors affirm or challenge race-making through family reunification politics. We especially – but not exclusively – welcome work that moves away from state-centered, Western-centered, and/or a-historical representations of migration politics.
Panel chairs: Gina M. Longo & Saskia Bonjour
Panel discussant: Saskia Bonjour
Panel papers
“Decolonizing English as a lingua franca: language, race and power in family migration procedures in Belgium” by Sara Bergen, Frank Brisard and Mieke Vandenbroucke (Universiteit Antwerpen)
“International Marriage as Gendered Racial projects: Vietnamese brides, Korean husbands, and marriage brokers” by Dasom Lee (University of California San Diego)
“The Historical Rhymes and Reasons of Policing U.S. Spousal Reunification: How the Legacy of U.S. Policing Practices Inform Marriage Fraud Investigations” bny Gina Longo & Ian G. Almond (University of Commonwealth Virginia)
“Mixed marriages as a race preservation project: the case of Latin American women in Spain” by Andrea Souto & Laura Oso (Universidade da Coruña)
“Chinese Men-White Women Transnational Families: Unveiling Racial Projects through the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Border” by Gabriella Angelini (Chinese University of Hongkong)
Photo by Daniel K Cheung on Unsplash