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Roehampton Conference Abstracts

2. Nitasha Kaul (University of the West of England, UK):
Working through and resisting the (b)orders of difference

Nitasha Kaul is a Lecturer at the School of Economics. She has written several scholarly papers in economic theory and philosophy, and feminist postcolonial studies – often with an interdisciplinary bent.

Border crossings are often celebrated in academic and popular discourse as being a symbol of resistance leading toward a progressive future. The transgressing creativity of border-crossers is the contemporary text of hybridity and is seen as challenging the hierarchical orders of difference. This is especially the case in feminist theory, border crossing has been the source of much creative intervention and debate (witness the metaphors of Anzaldua’s Mestizaje, Haraway’s cyborg, and so on).

However, this emancipatory implication of border crossing is brought to a standstill when the issue is one of national borders or when it involves economic migration. When it comes to the subject of nation-state and citizenship, even in a ‘globalizing’ world, borders assume a mythical significance, and challenges on the ground are largely seen as unwelcome transgressions.

In this paper, I intend to pursue two lines of enquiry. The first relates specifically to what determines views on economic migration, and the second takes up the question of border crossing more generally investigating the links with identity and epistemology.

Following the first theme, I intend to explore the views on migration from the political economic perspective. It is ironic that the free-market neoclassicals with their faith in the identity-less consumer and producer of capitalism, argue in favour of migrant workers. Even more surprising is the stance of the liberal left on this issue, especially within the (post) industrial societies. They argue that migration imposes a cost upon the welfare states and for this and many other reasons (including some arguing that difference itself imposes a cost in interaction) it should be restricted. For example, recently there has been a lot of discussion of the advantages and otherwise of commodification from a feminist perspective. Within feminist economics, there is suggestion that in specific cases relating to women and the labour market, the way to ensure a higher valuation for non-remunerative productive activities is to restrict immigration within specific nation-states. The resulting scarcity and changing preferences would ensure that these activities become productively remunerated on favourable terms within the marketplace. This is especially remarkable for the way in which these feminist and socialist transformatory and emancipatory projects choose to bridge difference, by making certain identities worthy of ethical concern at the expense of others.

This topics of ethics and difference is quite important since it points to the way in which ethical concern for wider humanity has since the Enlightenment been presented as universal while at the same time it is actually construed as a limited store of sympathy which is available in line with identity, and diminishes with geographical distance and otherness. This links to the second theme of my investigation which is an exploration of the epistemology of difference. How are the orders of difference constructed through the discourses and politics of migration, and what impact does this have (to adopt from Spivak, the irony of a capitalist society where individuals sees upward class mobility as resistance)? I will examine at the cultural politics of the construction of difference in many diverse contemporary texts from disciplinary academic to other popular discourse.

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