Anti-imperial autoethnographies of family separation: feminist solidarities against imperial bordering in the UK

Murrey, Amber and Hassan, Wesam ORCID: 0000-0001-6863-1624 (2024) Anti-imperial autoethnographies of family separation: feminist solidarities against imperial bordering in the UK. Antipode. ISSN 0066-4812

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Abstract

Anti-imperial autoethnography is an important practice for critiquing and reflecting upon encounters with imperial bordering and its junctions with the neoliberal-corporate university. In this article, we analyse our children's visa rejections to the UK, where we work and study as immigrant academics. We argue that the Home Office's policy of what constitutes a child's “welfare” produces racialised, gendered, and classist processes through which children are legally estranged from their primary carer when they immigrate for work unaccompanied by the other parent. This heteropatriarchal policy disproportionately impacts working migrant mothers. Academic carers can be further impacted by corporate university practices that eschew institutional agency and responsibility, including by individualising interpretations of visa rejections or presuming to abstain wholesale from matters concerning migrant family welfare. We reflect on how transnational feminist friendships and solidarities challenge imperial bordering and the interfaces of border enforcement with academic institutions and spaces, and acknowledge the importance of ongoing activist work to abolish borders from within the university.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s)
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Date Deposited:	18 Mar 2025 11:06
Last Modified:	08 Apr 2025 17:04
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127588

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