Continuations of Cruelty: Migration, Citizenship and the Inhumane

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will expose the dark realities and horror of migration. It uncovers the complex and poignant relationship between cruelty, migration, and citizenship. By exploring the trials and tribulations faced by people on the move as they embark on treacherous journeys, hoping for a better life, it brings issues of cruelty and citizenship into sharp focus. From the harsh realities of human trafficking, racism, and xenophobia to the inhumane conditions at detention centres, this Special Issue will shed light on the myriad ways cruelty intertwines with the migration experience. Ultimately, it calls for compassion, empathy, and collective action to dismantle the barriers that perpetuate cruelty and reshape the narrative of migration into one of hope and solidarity.

Cruelty is the deliberate infliction of pain, suffering, harm, or mistreatment upon living beings, physically, emotionally, or psychologically. In recent times, notions of “cruelty” in relation to migrant narratives, bordering processes, and an increase in deterrence policies within the Global North have proliferated significantly. Cruelty is observed in the treatment of people on the move at different stages of their journey, including the crossing of borders and upon arrival in their destination countries. The philosopher Étienne Balibar argues that conceptualisations of cruelty involve “forms of extreme violence, either intentional or systemic, physical or moral” that appear to be “worse than death” (Balibar 2001). Much of the literature on migrants and citizenship ignores the ontological cruelty, suffering, and murder or ‘onticide’ at the heart of Global North postcolonial strategies.

Contemporary examples of this include Europe’s “cruel migration policies at sea” that have been blamed for recent deaths in the Mediterranean as numerous tragedies’ in boat crossings have led to the deaths of many in search of safety, including children (Tranchina 2023). In the UK, the Illegal Migration Act has been criticised for failing to uphold obligations under international human rights and refuge law (UNHRC 2023). By denying access to protection and increasing detention powers for those arriving irregularly, including unaccompanied children, human rights organizations have dubbed this a “senselessly cruel Act” that abandons moral and legal obligations (Liberty 2023). The example in the US of flying Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, despicable and dehumanising though it is, should remind us that there is indeed a connection between unprecedented concentrations of wealth and the rise of fascist politicians in the west. Similarly, 2018 family separation policy in the US impacted those arriving at the US–Mexico border and was described as an “extraordinary act of cruelty”, with children held in cages in inhuman conditions, violating international protections (Goetze 2022). Furthermore, consistent reports highlight the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” that people experience with Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy regarding indefinite detention in immigration removal centres (Barnes 2022).

In this context, theorisations regarding the concept of ‘cruelty’ and ‘onticide’ have gained importance within the wider literature. Critical attention has been paid to violent border practices as “strategic cruelty”, far from incidental, but deliberate and intentional (Peterie 2022; Sajjad 2022). Others have argued that “technologies of cruelty” are enacted through the minimisation and erasure of violence that asylum seekers experience (Aradau and Canzutti 2022) and are produced and reproduced through banal “everyday cruelties”, rather than within exceptional spaces (Bashovski 2022). Therefore, this Special Issue aims to examine the contemporary context of migration, citizenship, and social rights through the lens of “cruelty”, suffering, and onticide. The goal is to produce a high-quality multidisciplinary space with contributions from scholars interested in critically analysing this context. We invite submissions that explore topics that include but are not limited to:

• Relationships between cruelty, suffering, and onticide in relation to environmental and geopolitical migration.
• How are notions of cruelty, suffering, and onticide entangled within migration and community?
• Feminist methodologies or practices that seek to disrupt violence, suffering, and cruelty within the context of migration, citizenship, and the inhumane.
• Reflections of the cruelties of racism, xenophobia, and discrimination within international migration and from host communities due to fear of the “other”.
• Movement, borders, and bordering processes from a feminist and biopolitical perspective.
• How forms of materiality and ontologies of technology address migration and citizenship from a human and more-than-human perspective.
• The realities of forced migration in relation to human trafficking and smuggling, particularly how criminal activities involve cruelty, exploitation, and abuse that profit from the desperation of people on the move.
• The cruelties of the global immigration industrial complex regarding deterrence and detention policies, family separation, and border control measures that result in exclusion and physical and psychological harm.
• Interrogating the violence of unsafe journeys within irregular and undocumented migration due to an absence and erasure of legal routes, exposing many to arduous and dangerous conditions.
• The removal of human rights and the criminalisation of people on the move, such as the denial of fundamental rights, healthcare, education, housing, and employment opportunities, leading to exclusion, exploitation, and vulnerable environments.
• The impact of exploitative labour practices, including modern slavery, low wages, and unsafe and abusive work conditions.
• Forced species migration, people and sex trafficking, and cruelty to human and non-human species.

Addressing the connections between cruelty and migration requires a comprehensive approach that includes international cooperation, compassionate immigration policies, human rights protections, and efforts to combat human trafficking and smuggling. Providing humanitarian aid, support, and opportunities for integration can contribute to reducing the cruelty experienced by people on the move during their journey and in their host communities.

References 

(Aradau and Lucrezia 2022) Aradau, Claudia and Canzutti,  Lucrezia. 2022. Asylum, borders, and the politics of violence: from suspicion to cruelty. Global Studies Quarterly 2.

(Balibar 2001) Balibar, Etienne. 2001. Outlines of a topography of cruelty: Citizenship and civility in the era of global violence. Constellations 8: 15–29.

(Barnes 2022) Barnes, Jamal. 2022. Suffering to save lives: Torture, cruelty, and moral disengagement in Australia’s offshore detention centres. Journal of Refugee Studies 35: 1508–1529.

(Barnes 2022) Barnes, Jamal. 2022. Torturous journeys: Cruelty, international law, and pushbacks and pullbacks over the Mediterranean Sea. Review of International Studies 48: 441–460.

(Bashovski 2022) Bashovski, Marta. 2022. Everyday cruelties: Political economies of migration and indifference. Global Studies Quarterly 2.

(Beltrán 2020) Beltrán, Cristina. 2020. Cruelty as citizenship: How migrant suffering sustains white democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

(Goetze 2022) Goetze, Catherine. 2022. When the state shatters families. The US family separation policy of 2018, cruelty and patrimonial sovereignty. Global Studies Quarterly 2.

(Warren 2018) Warren, Calvin L. 2018. Ontological terror: Blackness, nihilism and emancipation. Durham: Duke University Press.

(Liberty 2023) Liberty. 2023. Joint Civil Society Statement on the Passage of the Illegal Migration Act. Liberty. Available online: https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/joint-civil-society-statement-on-the-passage-of-the-illegal-migration-act/ (accessed on 21 July 2023).

(Peterie 2022) Peterie, Michelle. 2022. Visiting Immigration Detention: Care and Cruelty in Australia’s Asylum Seeker Prisons. Bristol: Policy Press.

(Sajjad 2022) Sajjad, Tazreena. 2022. Strategic Cruelty: Legitimizing Violence in the European Union's Border Regime. Global Studies Quarterly 2.

(UNHCR 2023) The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). 2023. UK Illegal Migration Bill: UN Refugee Agency and UN Juman Rights Office warn of profound impact on human rights and international refugee protection system. Available online: https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/speeches-and-statements/uk-illegal-migration-bill-un-refugee-agency-and-un-human-rights-office#:~:text=The%20Bill%20extinguishes%20access%20to,matter%20how%20compelling%20their%20circumstances (accessed on 21 July 2023).

(Tranchina 2023) Tranchina, Giulia. 2023. More Migrant Deaths in the Mediterranean. Italy and EU Ignore Lessons from Crotone Shipwreck Tragedy. Human Rights Watch. Available online: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/15/more-migrant-deaths-mediterranean (accessed on 21 July 2023).

Prof. Stephen Webb
Dr. Natalia Farmer
Guest Editors

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• cruelty
• onticide
• migration
• borders
• citizenship
• asylum seekers
• community
• environmental migration
• unforced species migration
• the inhumane