Guest Editor Introduction: Contesting and Undoing Discriminatory Borders1
| Author | Shreya Atrey,Catherine Briddick,Michelle Foster |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13582291221116613 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Guest Editor Introduction |
Guest Editor Introduction
International Journal of
Discrimination and the Law
2022, Vol. 22(3) 210–223
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13582291221116613
journals.sagepub.com/home/jdi
Guest Editor Introduction:
Contesting and Undoing
Discriminatory Borders
1
Shreya Atrey
1
, Catherine Briddick
2
and Michelle Foster
3
When people ask if we select on the basis of skin colour, then we have to readily admit that.
Somebody’s skin colour is for us the first sign of possible illegality.But, because we select on
the basis of skin colour does not automatically mean that we discriminate.
2
The reduction of unfettered state interests to skill-based or economic selection epitomizes the
contraction of state sovereignty in immigration policy more generally: the state may consider
the individual only for what she does, not for what she is.
3
Demarcating the field of inquiry: migration and discrimination
People migrate for a range of reasons: to work, to join family members, to study,or to seek
international protection. While goods, services and capital can move relatively freely
between countries, the same cannot be said for the movement of people. A ‘global
mobility divide’separates the nationals of comparatively wealthy states in the ‘global
north’, who enjoy a wide range of legal migration options, from those of poorer states in
the ‘global south’.
4
David Owen characterises this distribution of migration opportunities
as a ‘racialized pattern of transnational positional difference’, one in which migration
controls maintain income inequality between states.
5
E. Tendayi Achiume’s forensic
analysis of race and migration law reveals how such controls also produce, and reproduce,
inequalities between people:
….whiteness confers privileges of international mobility and migration. And proximity to
whiteness calibrates these privileges. This racial privilege inheres in the facially race-neutral
legal categories and regimes of territorial and political borders (sovereignty, citizenship,
nationality,passports, and visas). It also inheres in rules and practices of national membership
and international mobility.
6
1
Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law, Faculty of Law, Bonavero Instituteof Human Rights and
Kellogg College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2
Departmental Lecturer in Gender and International Human Rights and Refugee Law, Refugee Studies Centre,
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
3
Professor and the inaugural Director of the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School,
Australia
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