Luibheid and Fassin in Discussion with Foucault’s Intro to Sexuality

 Rakel Tanibajeva

WGSS Blog 2

Luibheid and Fassin in Discussion with Foucault’s History of Sexuality

Over the last century, international migration and related globalization trends have dramatically changed the social, political, economic, and cultural life in the United States. Although there has been extensive research into the causes and implications of migration, Thursday's readings contribute to how sexual arrangements, ideologies, and systems of regulation affect migration to and integration into the United States. I will be focusing on the Luibheid and Fassin readings.

Entry Denied examines how the United States’ immigration control system restricted the entrance of foreign women based on their sexuality, drawing on and reinforcing existing systems of sexual regulation directed at the population already within national boundaries. For instance, while wives were accepted into the US, unmarried pregnant women and women suspected of being prostitutes or lesbians were not. According to Luibheid, this selective process of immigration control has contributed to the establishment of patriarchal heterosexuality as the nation's norm. She explores the relationship of female sexuality and entry into the United States in a manner that illuminates the existing hierarchical and exclusionary immigration system by weaving a broad historical narrative with particular case studies to support her argument that "sexual control at the border articulates sexual control within the country" (xxi). Public Culture illustrates that sexuality has risen to the forefront of the public discourse on gender, and the underlying conflict between the European (or Western) Self and the Muslim Other has become increasingly expressed as a sexual battle of civilizations. Although “culture” encompasses a wide range of norms, values, and conduct, this conflict is primarily dictated by gender and sexuality. Whereas sexual equality and tolerance for the individual's sexual self-determination are regarded as key aspects of the liberal Self, the tight regulation of female sexuality, as well as the rejection or persecution of homosexuality, are the reality of the national Other. 

In addition, the Fassin reading underscores the racialized characteristics of Europeanness that have been inextricably linked with sexuality and gender politics. Historically, changing conceptions of normative sexuality, masculinity, and femininity, masculinity have been utilized to establish colonial differences between Europeanness and othered non-Europeanness, or, in this context, between the notion of American and “other.” Luibheid’s reading provides an overview of how immigration laws have regulated women's sexuality since the late nineteenth century, from the Page Law of 1875, which barred the entry of Asian prostitutes, to the implementation of mandatory HIV testing and the exclusion of HIV-positive petitioners for resident status in 1987. The chapter emphasises how early immigration restrictions targeted women (who were typically non-white and lower class) in an attempt to establish a very distinct American population in the face of the apparent dangers from such individuals beyond the borders. 

Entry Denied opens with a discussion of Foucault's theory on sexuality, indicating Luibheid’s concern with the discursive construction of exclusionary forms of nationhood. In other words, building upon Michel Foucault's theoretical work, she contends that immigration control is one important feature of the "calculated management of life," which Foucault describes as the characteristic of modernity in The History of Sexuality. Although Luibhied uses the same discourse as Foucault, Foucault however, did not seem concerned with imperialism or racialization processes. Thus, Entry Denied offers a view of the history of racism, imperialism, and immigration through a Foucauldian lens that is attentive to issues of gender and sexuality. Something that particularly intrigued me was the concept of the “carceral archipelago.” According to Luibheid (quoting Michel Foucault), border policing becomes an opportunity to punish and supervise women by linking them into contemporary society's “carceral archipelago” (xv). To elaborate, we may better comprehend the changes revealed by transit dynamics by going outside the state's sovereignty, a symptom of which may be an extension of its walling, coercive, punishing, and restricting powers. Being in transit necessitates examining overlapping liminal configurations of power, the changes of which influence society as a whole. According to Foucault, the same punitive tactics have various roles in various regimes. The contemporary regime of neoliberal sovereignty expands state and nonstate violence to all areas of life, frequently pitting subaltern communities against one another. Legislation addressing the criteria for admission to the United States, such as the Page Law and the McCreary Amendment, has frequently specified limitations without providing clear instructions for implementing or enforcing those limitations. As a result, immigration officers were obligated to reject admission to anybody who looked to be indecent or to be seeking admission to the United States for "immoral motives," despite the fact that they usually got little or no training on how to detect or assess these traits. Thus, the border became a place of incarnation as well as implementation; that is, immigration officials established rules, tests, and procedures to designate (and, consequently, interpellate) particular bodies as suitable or unsuitable. 

More than two decades have elapsed since the first edition of Foucault's History of Sexuality was published in 1976. Foucault's work has long had a significant position in the canon of critical debate on the intersections of sexuality, power, and nationalism (Monogamy and its Discontents class). Given the depth and range of this body of work, as well as the critical discussion that followed it, it is tempting to conclude that there is little more to add to the conversation. However, Luibheid's Entry Denied challenges this assumption due to her detailed and compelling investigation of the policing of sexuality by U.S. immigration. Luibheid’s work serves as a valuable corrective to studies of immigration policy that exclude sexuality, as well as literature concerning sexuality that fails to examine how sexual practices and identities are interwoven in nation-building and immigration policy systems.The future of the nation-state is heavily debated today. Some believe that globalization would lead to the weakening and eventual collapse of the state; others point to the war on terrorism and the ongoing influence of American corporations as evidence of governments' and nations' resilience. Whatever one's stance is in this argument, Luibheid demonstrates that sexuality has always been and will always be essential to comprehending nationhood.