Ramchand Pakistani,Khamosh Pani and the traumatic evocation of Partition

This article will address the themes of partition, gender and trauma within two independent films from Pakistan, Sabiha Sumar's Khamosh Pani (2003) and Mehreen Jabbar's Ramchand Pakistani (2008). The article will consider how the events of 1947 – partition of India and creation of Pakistan – recur within the films as disruptive trauma. The article will consider what an engagement with the characteristics of trauma such as involuntary recall and disruption can bring to my readings of the films. Connections are established between women's experiences of ethnic tensions within the contemporary settings of the films and the gendered experiences of 1947. These are expressed in distinct ways, however; the prominence of the themes of trauma within both work to create a powerful presentation of women's subjectivity in Pakistan. Further to this, they draw attention to the possible inevitability of trauma being central to identities and locations forged out of a partition that entailed border creation, large-scale disruption, and violence. The article will conclude that close readings of both films highlight the role of the traumatic in the formation of gendered national identities.     

Citizenship gone wrong

This paper examines how and why a deliberate enactment of the state got out of control. It does so by outlining three phases of border management in Tusheti, a highland province of post-Soviet Georgia. In the first phase, control was directly exercised by the local population. At the same time, border transgression for economic and political purposes was encouraged. A second phase of border management was triggered by the Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In order to discredit claims that Chechen ‘terrorists’ were hiding in Georgian territory, the Georgian government, monitored by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, effectively brought border transgression to a standstill. Finally, a third phase was initiated by a mission of the Georgian Orthodox Church sent to Tusheti with the aim of ‘spiritual fortification’. In the end, despite their courageous civic engagement, the locals had fewer entitlements than before. In order to explain what went wrong, I reflect on the downside of performing and incorporating the state and elaborate three different models of citizenship enacted by the key players in each distinct period. Finally, I argue for a temporalisation and hence deconstruction of the notion of ‘post-socialism’.     

Borders of emptiness: gender,migration and belonging

This article argues that we need to consider the question of ‘who belongs’ in terms of individuals' construction as market actors, workers and migrants as well as citizens. Using Hegel's theory of civil society, and Charles Mills' critique of the social contract, it argues for the significance of the process of self-government and the construction of a ‘hard inside’ for understanding migration and its relationship to embodiment, labour and belonging. This approach can take us beyond the distributional framework of the territorial state, and the assumption of stable membership, to interrogate the boundary-setting aspects of the political and the meanings of interdependence and vulnerability.     

Asylum seekers,citizenship and reality TV in the Netherlands: quizzing refugees in jeopardy

This article interrogates a Dutch jeopardy style TV show, Weg van Nederland, featuring young, well-educated asylum seekers about to be deported. The TV program, devised in collaboration with the advocacy group ‘Defense for Children,’ performed the paradoxes resulting from the ‘inclusive exclusion’ of asylum seekers. Yet, its strategy of inscribing the contestants into the space of citizenship by highlighting their ‘rootedness’ through the quiz format also lent support to the exclusivist, essentialist understanding of national belonging that is produced in contemporary Dutch citizenship and integration law. Moreover, the show's focus on successful, thoroughly integrated and career driven young adults, while pragmatic from the perspective of the show's (limited) political objectives, also reproduced the preferred template of neoliberal citizenship, which drives the European migration regime and its policy of selective in/exclusion. These contradictions expose the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of humanitarian appeals working within the contemporary media regime, including reality TV, which imposes its own generic terms (and ideological inflections) on the justice claims launched within its public arena.     

The false premise of partition

Partitions are based on two fundamental assumptions: identity groups exist that can be located, named and categorized, and these categories are attached to distinct territories. Drawing on the Partition of British India, this paper analyses how the differences between the categories “Hindu” and “Muslim” were developed through narratives and events such as the creation of maps and censuses, the emergence of religious revivalist movements, and the use of violence. The article argues that the perception of sharp boundaries between what are termed “territorial groups of meaning” is the result of these events and narratives, not the cause of them.     

Eastern Enlargements and EU Defence Ambitions

ABSTRACT

Despite their common history, Central Europeans have never had a coordinated or consistent position on the issue of European defence and are now, in fact, drifting further apart. Today, some states consider themselves exposed to a threat from Russia while others do not have the same perception and are even moving towards closer cooperation with Moscow. However, the most important factor shaping the positions of Central Europeans is the current, still very loose state of the European Union’s defence policy. As long as the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) remains focused on providing security and stability to other parts of the world and weak on defending the EU area, Central Europeans will refrain from truly committing to it.     

On David Miller on immigration control

David Miller offers a liberal realist defence of immigration control grounded in cosmopolitan ideals of self-determination, fairness and integration. But a commitment to liberal values requires a commitment to more open borders than he admits. A part of the problem is that the notion of open borders Miller criticises is under-theorised. A deeper problem is that immigration control itself is inconsistent with important liberal values – notably the values of freedom and equality. This is a concern because it is the freedom and equality not only of immigrants but also of citizens that is threatened by the closing of borders.     

Pammer and Hotel Alpenhof - ECJ decision creates further uncertainty about when e-businesses “direct activities” to a consumer’s state under the Brussels I Regulation

The European Court of Justice’s recent judgement in the joined cases C-585/08 and C-144/09 will have substantial long-term implications for European e-businesses and e-consumers trading across borders.The key question considered was whether the fact that a website can be consulted on the Internet in the Member State of the consumer’s domicile is sufficient to justify a finding that commercial or professional activities are being directed to that Member State within the meaning of Article 15(1)(c) of the Brussels I Regulation.     

From princely fiefdoms to Soviet nations: interethnic border conflicts in the North Caucasus and the village of Lesken

This article examines interethnic border conflicts that accompanied the Soviet division of the North Caucasus into ethno-territorial autonomous districts after the Civil War. It traces the tumultuous, and often violent, events that led to the transfer of the ethnically Ossetian village of Lesken from the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Oblast to the North-Ossetian Autonomous Oblast. The essay shows how the Soviet-sponsored ethnicization of territory exacerbated interethnic tensions in a multiethnic region that defied neat delimitation into coherent ethno-national administrative units. It highlights the ‘dual-assimilation’ that accompanied the introduction of the national principle and the delimitation of national borders. Ethno-national mobilization of populations in defence of their ‘national’ territory from neighbouring ethnic groups, though achieved for reasons of daily survival, represented an initial lesson in the importance of national identity in the modernizing Soviet state, as villagers learned to speak national and Bolshevik. In concluding, this paper seeks to understand the larger significance of Soviet border making in the North Caucasus by exploring issues of continuity and change, both in terms of imperial governance and the lived experience of ethnicity.     

China–Africa Exports: Governance Through Mobility and Sojourning

ABSTRACT

A centre for Asian and intercontinental immigration and export-oriented production, Guangzhou city is at the forefront of China’s global interactions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines informal governance mechanisms that co-ordinate the circulation of goods and capital between China and Africa. The question addressed is: What roles do mobility and sojourning play in governing trade relations? The analysis is informed by research from three fields: economics scholarship on the trade–migration nexus, ethnographic studies of informal trans-border trade, and historical accounts of long-distance trade in pre-colonial and colonial eras. These traditions point to different ways in which the mobility of people and goods are interlinked. In the case of China–Africa interactions, the flow of goods has increased in tandem with the number of visits by African itinerant traders. The empirical discussion demonstrates that the emergence of intercontinental movements of goods and people between China and Africa was predicated on the brokering role played by African sojourners in Guangzhou. Of particular importance was informal hospitality and logistics infrastructure set up by Africans in the late 1990s, which subsequently evolved and adapted. This infrastructure has facilitated the mobility of people and goods and increased the pace at which trading capital circulates.