There is a deep history of exclusionary state policies and laws in regards to immigrants in general, which profoundly inform the sentiment towards asylum seekers today. The United States for example had the Chinese Exclusion Act from 1875 to 1882, and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act which limited the total number of immigrants per year (Rose-Redwood, The United States: Historical and Contemporary Migration, 2016). These two examples show the racialized and restrictive immigration policies of the United States, which no longer exist but the ideology behind them still does.
Framing the asylum seeker Recently, anti-immigration sentiment has re-emerged as a salient discourse in Western politics. The language and vocabulary of this discourse acts …show more content…
‘Othering’ is a way of reinforcing an individual or a group’s own identity, it is focusing on the differences between people and framing those who are different as less worthy. The migrant identity is reinforced through acts of othering, which are part of performing exclusion (Rose-Redwood, Migrant Ethnicity and Britishness, 2016). State borders are a prominent example of performativity theory, as they are reproduced daily; physically through border guards and also ideologically by reinforcing the nation as needing protection from ‘others’. National identity is based on exclusion and performing the exclusion of the ‘other’, which creates dangerous divides in humanity that serve to criminalize asylum seekers. Performing exclusion is also strongly illustrated by the securitization of migration and the …show more content…
- Frank Tannerbaum, Crime and the Community, 1938 The shift in discourse of how asylum-seekers are framed and the securitization of the boarder have resulted in states attempting to deter asylum claims and making the process difficult. This shift has occurred concurrently with a shift in the area of crime and punishment. Since the late 1980s, the United States has surpassed other countries in having the highest incarceration rates in the developed world. The growth in prison populations was accompanied by a growth in militarized policing, an emphasis on management, classification, profiling and a rise in enforcement budgets despite a general economic downsizing in other areas (Story, 2005). This context is relevant in analyzing the criminalization of asylum seekers as the technologies, tactics and language used in relation to the criminal is very similar to how the asylum seeker is
Framing the asylum seeker Recently, anti-immigration sentiment has re-emerged as a salient discourse in Western politics. The language and vocabulary of this discourse acts …show more content…
‘Othering’ is a way of reinforcing an individual or a group’s own identity, it is focusing on the differences between people and framing those who are different as less worthy. The migrant identity is reinforced through acts of othering, which are part of performing exclusion (Rose-Redwood, Migrant Ethnicity and Britishness, 2016). State borders are a prominent example of performativity theory, as they are reproduced daily; physically through border guards and also ideologically by reinforcing the nation as needing protection from ‘others’. National identity is based on exclusion and performing the exclusion of the ‘other’, which creates dangerous divides in humanity that serve to criminalize asylum seekers. Performing exclusion is also strongly illustrated by the securitization of migration and the …show more content…
- Frank Tannerbaum, Crime and the Community, 1938 The shift in discourse of how asylum-seekers are framed and the securitization of the boarder have resulted in states attempting to deter asylum claims and making the process difficult. This shift has occurred concurrently with a shift in the area of crime and punishment. Since the late 1980s, the United States has surpassed other countries in having the highest incarceration rates in the developed world. The growth in prison populations was accompanied by a growth in militarized policing, an emphasis on management, classification, profiling and a rise in enforcement budgets despite a general economic downsizing in other areas (Story, 2005). This context is relevant in analyzing the criminalization of asylum seekers as the technologies, tactics and language used in relation to the criminal is very similar to how the asylum seeker is