Week 2: Day 2

TW: Migrant Violence at the Border

Through reading both Eithne Luibhéid’s “Entry Denied: A History of U.S. Immigration Control” and the piece written by both Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai, I was able to learn more about the history regarding immigration and women’s autonomy in the United States and heteronormative patriotism in the war on/of terrorism. Through these readings, I was able to expand my personal knowledge on the ways that heteropatriarchal systems impact migrants of color through race, class, gender, and ethnic backgrounds. Puar and Rai’s work introduced me to the concept of heterosexual patriotism and the “terrorist monster”, both concepts that I would appreciate expanding more on in class as I have never been exposed to them before this reading. Luibhéid helped establish a timeline of the treatment of women, and their sexual and reproductive autonomy, through the immigration laws, practices, and official departments in the United States. 

In Luibhéid’s first chapter, we’re introduced to the way that women’s reproduction and sexuality have been and continue to be controlled when immigrating to and being excluded from the United States. The author provides us with multiple examples, beginning with the pregnant Irish woman, Catherine Dolan, who was denied entry due to a familial/reproductive situation and pregnancy with a married man. As time goes on, the intersections of race, class, and gender begin to deepen as “poor, immigrant, and minority people'' become more and more affected and targeted by the policies and acts being passed in the US. In the text, Luibhéid elaborates that, “Discourses including scientific racism, gender, economics, public health and criminology provided tools to describe the threat represented by these “undesirable” women and to craft techniques for identifying and expelling them,” (Luibhéid 29). As I was reading this, I couldn’t help but think of the recent news that some women in ICE detention centers were forced/manipulated into undergoing hysterectomies while in detainment (NPR). ICE and detention centers utilize these tools to expel the volition and sexual power that women have in these centers through extremely dehumanizing practices and treatment. “According to the complaint, a detained immigrant told Project South that she talked to five women at the facility who received hysterectomies between October and December 2019 and said they ‘reacted confused when explaining why they had one done.’” These women were placed/coerced into situations where their reproductive autonomy and bodies were controlled by immigration forces, continuing the long history of the ways in which the federal government establishes its power over the women who migrate across the borders. While the text focused on policies that regulated the women who were allowed to enter, the text also sheds light on the regulatory practices that were conducted to the women who entered the US as well. These hysterectomies are an extension of the power and authority that the federal government forces over the bodies of these migrants and show the continued removal and regulation of women’s sexuality and reproductive freedom, and in this extremely horrific case, through a physical manner. 

An aspect of Amit S. Rai and Jasbir K. Puar’s academic text that caught my attention was the discussion of symbolism, the racist manipulation of certain articles or aspects of people of color’s culture or religion, and homophobic imagery through the American lens. Specifically, for Sikh men, the treatment of the turban in America became a form of “otherness”. The authors elaborate that, “To the average uninterested American eye, however, a turban is just a turban. And it symbolizes the revived, erect, and violent patriarchy of the East, of Islam, and of the Taliban; the oppression of Afghan women; the castration and the penetration of white Western phallic power by bad brown dick and its turban. (Lest one think that the backlash is “over'' and that Americans are now educated about Sikhs, a gurudwara (temple) in upstate New York that was burned to the ground a few days before Thanksgiving was declared to be arson.)” (Puar & Rai 137). This violent transformation of what a turban represented in the United States by the American perspective led to multiple Sikh men and the Sikh community facing racist and discriminatory treatment, forcing a few to abandon their use of the religious garment for survival. This adaptation through means of survival due to the “American eye” reminded me of how queer people, especially those who are of color, were exposed to violent and homophobic treatment due to the imagery and symbolism used in the United States through depictions of Osama Bin Laden. “And indeed, there have been reports from community-based organizations throughout  New York City that violent incidents against queers of color have increased,” (Puar & Rai 126). This use of heteronormative patriotism helped establish the creation of the “other”, singling out and demonizing minority groups in the US. 

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913398383/whistleblower-alleges-medical-neglect-questionable-hysterectomies-of-ice-detaine