Zero Humanity [chapter]

Jacqueline Bhabha
2021 Beyond Borders  
Many months have passed since the Trump administration's initial ruthless separation of more than 4,300 babies and children from their parents at the United States' southern border. 1 Since that time, partly under the guise of public health concerns prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration has continued to impose draconian rights-violative policies on migrant childrennot just family separation but summary deportation. 2 Irrespective of changing circumstances, the underlying
more » ... rative philosophythat deterrence is the solution to humanitarian emergencies that drive forced migrationremains in place. This philosophy subordinates American constitutional values and international obligations to non-citizens to the instrumental goal of reducing access to US soil for people fleeing life-threatening violence, however strong their claim to protection. By doggedly implementing policies that block, detain, deport, and humiliate humanitarian migrants, the United States is participating in what the authors of Chapter 6 in this volume have usefully termed "a system of global apartheid." Moreover, just as South African apartheid encouraged the development of a movement to overthrow racist state oppression, local and underground at first but global over time, so is global apartheid encouraging the development of alternatives to racist migration exclusion. Smuggling networks, caravans, global migration compacts, trafficking rings, Facebook-mediated migration itineraries, and heroic
doi:10.1017/9781108914994.004 fatcat:z4hrbfn7jrggrg42fnf7rwl7t4