Law and Life
Immigrant and Refugee Acts Amid White Nationalism
Guest Editors: Monisha Das Gupta (University of Hawai‘I at Mānoa) and Lynn Fujiwara (University of Oregon)
Publication Date: Planned for Spring 2020
Submission Requirements: 5,000-6,000 words (not including endnotes), due July 1, 2019
In her 1996 publication, Immigrant Acts, Lisa Lowe states, “In the last century and a half the American citizen has been defined over against the Asian immigrant, legally, economically, and culturally.” The year the book was published, anti-immigrant policies ranged from California’s Save-Our-State Proposition 187 to the federal Illegal Immigration Immigrant Responsibility Act. Since 9/11, mass removals have become the order of the day, and Donald Trump rode to the White House in 2016 on an anti-immigrant platform. During Trump’s presidency, white nationalism has overtly fueled hate crimes and calls for restricting immigration, including a taxpayer-funded wall on the southern border.
Thinking back to Lisa Lowe’s conceptualization of the Asian immigrant in relation to American citizenship, we ask how scholars, artists, and activists can conceptualize immigrant acts in the context of the surge in anti-immigration movements and white nationalist racial politics. What continuities and departures can be traced when we place this moment in the long history of Asian American cultural and political assertions against their exclusion, ejection, and expedient inclusion? This issue of Amerasia Journal seeks submissions that offer historical or contemporary examinations of Asian immigration and migrant life-making in the face of anti-immigrant movements and policies. Immigration and refugee laws and policies have differential impacts for Pacific Islanders even though they are interpellated into these frameworks. We invite submissions focusing on the specificities of colonialism, dispossession, and sovereignty for Pacific Islanders negotiating immigration and citizenship laws, which operate unevenly across the indigenous Pacific and its diaspora within and beyond the U.S. settler state. Examples of topics (which may overlap) include:
Comparative Racial Formations: How do we think about Asian immigrant and refugee politics in relation to white supremacist anti-Latinx and anti-Black constructions of criminality and illegality? How does the backlash against migration relate to ongoing settler colonial violence against Pacific Islanders and Native Americans?
Documentation and Immigration Status: How do Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences with documentation for immigration purposes illuminate the white nationalist structures underlying the demand for papers? What are the distinct experiences of those who are undocumented or DACA recipients in these groups, and what kind of advocacy and organizing efforts address their situations?
Cultural Politics: What kinds of cultural productions, expressive arts, memory work, and documentation capture Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders speaking out and speaking back? Creative work on these topics is encouraged.
Queer Migration: How has queer immigration reshaped assumptions of heteronormativity, heteropatriarchy, and family in migration policies and politics? How have Asian immigration and refugee studies engaged queer of color critiques?
Immigrant Rights Movements: How have immigrants and refugees challenged enforcement, the neoliberal technologies of citizenship, and national, state, and local presumptions of foreignness? What are examples of existing or emerging coalitions that put migration justice in dialog with anti-racist and Indigenous decolonial struggles?
Anti-Muslim politics: What shifts does the Muslim ban mark in refugee policy and politics? How can we theorize religion, racialization, racism, and U.S. immigration controls? How are Muslim communities developing resistance and survival strategies?
Deportations/Mass Removals: How do Asians and Pacific Islanders subject to deportation offer broader and more complex understanding of mass removals in the United States? We are interested in diverse experiences with detention and removals.
Sanctuary: What types of sanctuary spaces have communities created to shield their members from white supremist assaults and enforcement? How have these communities responded locally, nationally, and transnationally to the desecration of sanctuary spaces?
Submission Guidelines and Review Process
To submit your paper for consideration, please visit: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ramj/default.aspx. There, you can find author instructions for uploading your submission, which requires a user account.
The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editorial staff and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
• Initial review of submitted papers by guest editors and Amerasia Journal editorial staff
• Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review
• Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission
Please contact Arnold Pan, Associate Editor, with any questions regarding your submission: arnoldpan@ucla.edu.
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