A (4:23)
Can everyone hear me? Am I speaking to the mic? Yes. Fine. So hello everyone. It's really nice to return to the lse. After a month and a half after I left it realized there's so many new faces around. So my Talk today. Should I get used to click? I guess. Oh, it's already here. Okay, so my talk Today is part of a broader book manuscript that is currently under review. So overall, this book seeks to rethink the links between borders, whiteness and colonialism in the Global north, specifically with a focus on Europe. So today my main argument will be that global north borders have historically and continued to function as settler colonial tools, not just to police mobility, but also to settle whiteness as native. So there won't be much time though to substantiate much of my points. So I apologize in advance and I hope you can ask me questions during the Q and A. Okay, so I think this is too fine. So since the beginning of the so called migrant crisis in Europe, we have seen the proliferation of a certain invasion narrative on the part of politicians, state leaders, far right campaigners, their very you, et cetera. So this portrayal of the crisis often frames migrants as settler colonial threats, that is Potential colonizers who threaten to invade, occupy and settle Europe, replacing its native population. Whiteness here becomes the very key marker of European nativeness, a shared identity that seems to cut across national lines. So what is certainly striking here, however, that there is a certain use of an anti colonial vocabulary to to justify anti immigration sentiments and policies. After all, it has become widespread to use Europe's settler colonial invasions and genocides in the past as a way to defend the idea that contemporary Europe is merely protecting its native land from outsiders. So the rationale is very clear. If you are against Europe's past colonial invasions, you should now oppose the invasion of Europe itself. In this move, anti migration becomes ironically rebranded as anti colonialism, a defense against colonial occupation and settlement. So what we seem to be saying in Europe, this is what I call here an attempt to frame global south immigration as a process of settler colonialism in reverse, where whiteness is now the native under attack. This framing also appears clearly in everyday speech. As one on time migration campaign put it during last year's so called race riots in the uk it is our country and we are getting pushed out. Now I understand how the native Indians felt in America because that's what the white man did when we pushed them out, only it's the white man now getting pushed in this country. So if in the past then white people invaded other spaces, now white people's spaces have been invaded, occupied and settled. In this reversal, whiteness appears now as the very dispossessed native under threat of displacement. This narrative, however, is not confined to Europe, but also widespread in other states such as the U.S. australia, Canada and so forth. Trump's first executive order on migration after returning to power, for instance, which was titled Protecting the American People against Invasion. This inflammatory narrative about invasion and replacement is not just a rhetoric. It has been directly linked to an increase in border violence and policing in these spaces, leading to migrant deaths, incarceration, of course, overall suffering. But what I find particularly interesting here is that this transnational framing of migration seems to be based on the racialized understanding of nativeness and ownership over the state. There is here, in other words, a certain assumption of whiteness as both the rightful owner of and native to the nation state. So I would like to pose two questions today. The first one is what explains current claims of whiteness, state ownership over Europe? What explains white nativeness across European countries? And second, what does this dynamic reveal about the intimate links between borders, whiteness and colonialism? Or perhaps more specifically today, settler colonialism in the global North. Right. So when we think about the idea of white nativeness in places like the U.S. australia and Canada, we, we of course start with settler colonialism. As many scholars have argued, settler colonial structures of domination, subjugation and occupation have historically constructed in the settler colony an imaginary of whiteness as the rightful native to and possessor of the land. This political construction of course relied on racialized dynamics of exclusion that produced the black indigenous and non white migrants overall as racial outsiders in the land. So this process of constructing white people, the outsiders as native in the settler Colony is obviously not only in the past. Settler colonialism is an unfinished structure of occupation and settlement that continues to operate to date. The settling of whiteness, in other words, is never final. And it is this very structural incompleteness of settler colonialism in scholars of argued that generates what we can call a stage of siege, the idea that occupation is always under attack. To put it simply, because occupation is never final, it is a process. There is always a fear. The whiteness ownership over the state is under threat by internal and external outsiders. So migrants, indigenous populations, racialized others are continually framed as threats to the settlement of whiteness in the settler colonies. In summary, settler colonial scholars argue that the idea of white dominance in settler colonial spaces is not simply historical fact, but the outcome of a violent settler colonial structure that naturalizes whiteness as native through the erasure of indigenous presence. But the question we rarely ask, and this is a very central question for today, is how does whiteness become native in Europe, the former metropole? There seems to be a tendency to simply take whiteness in Europe for granted, as if Europe were naturally white, a space defined by the true white native. So what my book does is through both historical and conceptual work, to show that a similar process of white settling takes place in Europe too. In other words, I'll argue that whiteness also had to be settled as native in Europe, just as it did in the settler colonial states. Specifically, I show that settler colonial dynamics of belonging, possession, and violence have traveled or boomeranged back to Europe, shaping the former metropole's own sense of nativeness. So in doing so, I reassessed Europe's white nativeness as a racial construction that continually re articulates sensitive settler colonial rationalities of violence. In particular, I show that the settler colonial boomerang creates in Europe its very state of siege, a similar fear that occupation is also continually under threat. To understand this phenomenon, though, we need to go back to the border. We tend to think about borders as these territorial entities that are foundationally connected to the idea of sovereignty. Borders, in other words, are often seen as raised neutral truth to help delimit and protect the sovereign state. Critical border studies, however, have shown us that borders go way beyond lines on the map, to cite our title today, encompassing a set of practices, technologies, and imaginaries that organize mobility, belonging, and exclusion. But what is really the history of the modern border? Right. So more, the borders were, from their very inception, part of a racial colonial project. They emerged specifically in the settler colony in the 19th century as an instrument to police and restrict the arrival and settlement of racialized bodies, specifically from Asian Africa, while facilitating white immigration from Europe. So by disproportionately targeting, barring and policing the mobility of racialized populations, borders were therefore central to the settler colonial project. Consolidation, the construction of whiteness in the settler colony as the rightful native. In short, what my work shows is that the modern border emerges as a tool to consolidate white ownership over land while policing the mobility of racialized populations. However, these structures of bordering have also traveled to Europe over the course of the 19th and 20th century. And fomenti a very similar settling process in the previous metropole. As also, like Nandita Sharma explained, with decolonization and the dismantling of the empires, specifically after the end of World War II, previous metropoles begin a dramatic change in their migration policies. If movement across the empire was allowed and facilitated for the imperial subjects beforehand, now previous metropoles start closing their borders to the previous column colonies. And here, just like in the settler colonial states, we will see a similar use of the emerging borders and migration regimes to restrict, police and or bar racialized populations, specifically those from the previous colonies. At the same time, ideas of white nativeness start to strengthen across Europe, with racialized migrants being routinely cast as invaders replacers and as a result a threat to whiteness. This becomes particularly evident in Enoch Powell's infamous reverse of blood speech in 1968. There, anxieties over white replacement and racialized invasion show simultaneously the belief that Britain is naturally white, and also the fear that racialized migration poses a threat to white Britain. To sum up then, because I don't have much time today, the argument here is that with the consolidation of migration regimes of governance and security in Europe, we also see the emergence of a similar process of white settling. This process not only formates similar logics of nativeness, but also similar anxieties about racial occupation and settlement. Right, so what am I trying to say here about borders, colonialism and whiteness? If we can just summarize here. So overall, my main argument in this book is that borders and border violence in the global north are essentially living legacies of settler colonial structures of domination. Specifically, my point here is that borders have operated in the global north from their very inception as tools to settle whiteness. Obviously, once again, what do I mean by settling whiteness here? By that I mean the borders, as we understand today, have been primarily designed as instruments to materialize a certain imaginary of the nation state as a white possession in both white settler colonies and in Europe. This bordering project thus has an inch link with settler colonialism and perpetuates settler colonial dynamics of belonging, nativeness, and subjugation, not only in the settler colony, but also in Europe. So, like in the settler colonial statistics, borders have been central for a process of settling of whiteness that creates and reinforces a certain image of whiteness as native to an owner of the nation state. All this is almost a preamble for perhaps the final and most important message. So how does this allow us to rethink Europe's migrant crisis? Are the increasing framing of migration as a settler menace to whiteness? Here we first need to bear in mind that like in the settler colonies, whiteness is not naturally Europe's native or owner. Whiteness is a racial construction that is obviously historical and political. Specifically, in our case, white nativeness is a result of a historical and unfinished process of settling that continually nativizes whiteness. This process, argued, undergirds a broader dynamic of white anxiety, or a certain stage of siege, if you will, that projects onto racialized migrants this fear of losing its own nativeness. The migrant crisis, in other words, can be seen as the very results of settler colonial anxieties that shape Europe's understanding of whiteness. The current panic over invasion and replacement in Europe is not simply a certain response to recent migration flows, but part of a much longer colonial history of how whiteness constructs itself as native, both in the settler colony and in Europe itself. So far from a natural inheritance, white nativeness is a fragile and anxious project that relies on bordering practices to secure its claims to ownership and belonging. From Kyiv, Starmer's warning that the UK could become an island of strangers to Viktor Orban's insistence on keeping Hungary makes ways free. What we see here is not simply the defense of Europe's territorial integrity, the defense of Europe's borders, if you will, but an attempt to preserve a racial colonial order still centered around whiteness. Well, thank you very much. I think that's a moment.
