Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Nirmal Puwar’s Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of Place is a classic treatise on embodiment and institutions, in which the author explicates the white masculinist somatic norm of most political and professional institutions in the West, the long histories of imperialism that led to such a norm and the experiences of racialized and gendered people in these spaces. I reflect on how taking seriously Puwar’s invitation for reflexivity in Space Invaders and being attentive to aspects of embodiment, such as dress, speech, comportment, et cetera, is crucial for scholars studying institutions related to immigration in the US empire-state. My experiences of conducting 2 years of ethnography at the US immigration court in Boston brought into sharp relief my own ontological complicities with academia and the empire, while at the same time teaching me to strategically deploy my insider habits of speech, expressions, and clothing to intervene on behalf of immigrant respondents who were systematically intimidated and silenced. While these interventions were not enough to dismantle or transform the institution, it brought those immigrants temporary relief and comfort and further cemented my relationship of solidarity with them. As Trump promises to deport more immigrants than ever in his current term as President, heeding Puwar’s call to be mindful of our own and our research subjects’ embodiment, complicities and strategies for resistance has become all the more important and can only enrich future research on immigration.

Keywords

Immigration embodiment race gender empire

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Beardall

Edwards

(2021) Abolition, settler colonialism, and the persistent threat of Indian Child Welfare. Columbia Journal of Race and Law 11(3): 3533–3574.

Boero

Mason

(eds) (2020) The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Body and Embodiment (1st edn). New York: Oxford University Press.

Freeman

(2018) Unmothering black women: Formula feeding as an incident of slavery. UC Law Journal 69(6): 1545–1606.

Frymer

(2014) ‘A rush and a push and the land is ours’: Territorial expansion, land policy, and U.S. state formation. Perspectives on Politics 12(1): 119–144.

Hall

(2021) Selected Writings on Race and Difference (eds Gilroy

Gilmore

). Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.

Hoang

(2015) Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Jordan

(2003) Report from the Bahamas, 1982. Meridians 3(2): 6–16.

Jung

M-K

(2015) Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy: Denaturalizing U.S. Racisms Past and Present. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kristeva

(1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

10.

Nakano Glenn

(2015) Settler colonialism as structure: A framework for comparative studies of U.S. race and gender formation. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1): 52–72.

11.

Nash

(2021) Birthing Black Mothers. Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press Books.

12.

Peck

(2022) Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts (1st edn). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

13.

Puwar

(2004a) Fish in and out of water: A theoretical framework for race and the space of academia. In: Law

Phillips

Turney

(eds) Institutional Racism in Higher Education. Stoke on Trent; Sterling, VA: Trentham Books, pp.49–58.

14.

Puwar

(2004b) Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place (1st edn). Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers.

15.

Quisumbing King

(2022) The structural sources of ambiguity in the modern state: Race, empire, and conflicts over membership. American Journal of Sociology 128(3): 768–819.

16.

Roberts

(1998) Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage Books.

17.

Roberts

(2022) Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families–and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World. New York: Basic Books.

18.

Strings

(2019) Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. New York: New York University Press. Available at: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/nyu/9781479891788.001.0001/html (accessed 7 December 2024).

19.

Stumpf

(2006) The crimmigration crisis: Immigrants, crime, and sovereign power. American University Law Review 56: 367.

20.

Watson

(2018) Family ideation, immigration, and the racial state: Explaining divergent family reunification policies in Britain and the US. Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(2): 324–342.

21.

Zolberg

(2008) A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. New York: Harvard University Press.

Space invaders in US immigration courts: Reflections on embodiment,complicities,and the possibility and limits of resistance

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References