AGS Graduate Dave Feldman Presents at Conference on Migration Issues, to Publish Papers in Human Rights Journal

On September 2, AGS recent graduate Dave Feldman (M.A. in International Relations and Diplomacy, class of 2012) was invited to present at an international conference called "Brokering Human Security: Access at Times of Hightened Migration Control". This conference was held in Paris and co-organized by Sciences Po/CERI (FrenchResearch Center on International Relations) and the University of Amsterdam.

Dave Feldman opened the onference with a paper entitled "Border Communities are not for Sale! Towards a 'queer' rejection of 'border security' in Southern Arizona?"

"In my article, I argue that a small campaign launched this past June in Tucson, Arizona called "Border Communities are not for Sale!" represents a 'queering' of 'border security' politics for similar reasons as those pointed by anthropologist Nicholas De Genova in his study of the migrant mobilizations in the US during the first half of 2006. He interpreted them as a 'queering' of migration politics in their announcement of presence and refusal to articulate clear political demands other than a rejection of the racist and draconian Sensenbrenner Bill that had passed the House of Representatives in late 2005." explains Feldman. "My paper is very much a continuation of a larger research project that started with my thesis at the American Graduate School in Paris, and I was able to focus more explicitly on Gramsci's concept of common sense and its role in the uncritical acceptance and indeed constant demand for more 'security'--and by extension militarization--in the contemporary United States. By demonstrating that the vague concept of 'border security' translates to abuse and death on the border, and that this is what is actually at the heart of the so-called 'comprehensive immigration reform' recently passed by the US Senate, Border Communities are not for Sale! is--in my estimation--an attack on this hegemonic common sense. I argue that it sidesteps the severe limitations of 'political compromise' and points the way toward exciting forms of critical resistance, possibly even presaging the development of a politics of 'anti-security' as suggested by Mark Neocleous. Indeed, this 'anti-security' angle is an approach that I would like to explore in my further research on the militarization of the US-Mexico borderlands."

Dave Feldman is now enrolled in a Sociology and Political Philosophy program at the French university Paris VII-Diderot. Following his presentation, the discussant of his panel has asked him to write two articles for the prominent French journal on Human Rights La Revue des Droits de l'Homme.