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Border, Theory, Contract: An Interview with Angela Mitropoulos

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Abstract

This interview with Angela Mitropoulos explores contemporary questions of migration, border control, financial speculation, critical theory and political practice. Mitropoulos is a political theorist, academic and activist based in Sydney, Australia, whose work has examined shifts to post-Fordism and neoliberalism through a critical history of the contract and in relation to the shifting politics of the household. The interview also addresses her recent work, in her capacities as both an academic and an activist, which continues to confront the complex and evolving relationships between political economy, border control, and critical theory.

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... 12 The violence and neglect of the spectacle of border control toward asylum seekers and refugees, one geared toward the maintenance of the border as a filter and as an insulator, is sustained and reproduced through various technologies of distancing (Dickson, 2015) and deflection. As Mitropoulos suggests, borders 'are conducive to ensuring that people on either side of a border do not feel affection toward one another, or are repelled, distanced from being affected' (O'Brien and Mitropoulos, 2017). The outsourcing and privatization of immigration detention, then, does not simply function to relieve the government of the budgetary and operational responsibilities associated with border control; it also enables the government to deflect responsibility for the abuses and breaches of human rights onto the private operators with which it enters into contracts (Menz, 2011: 118). ...
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