Racial Borders

This Article explores the treatment of race and racial justice in dominant liberal democratic legal discourse and theory concerned with international borders. It advances two analytical claims. The first is that contemporary national borders of the international order- an order that remains structured by imperial inequity- are inherently racial. The default of liberal borders is racialized inclusion and exclusion that privileges whiteness in international mobility and migration. This racial privilege inheres in the facially neutral legal categories and regimes of territorial and political borders and in international legal doctrine. The second is that central to theorizing the system of neocolonial racial borders is understanding race itself as border infrastructure. That is, race operates as a means of enforcing liberal territorial and political borders, and as a result, international migration governance is also a mode of racial governance. Normatively, this Article outlines the specific relational injustices of racial borders.

Automated summary

This Article examines the treatment of race and racial justice in the realm of international borders within dominant liberal democratic legal discourse and theory. It argues that contemporary national borders are inherently racial due to the continuing influence of imperial inequality. The default of liberal borders is racialized inclusion and exclusion that privileges whiteness in international mobility and migration. Furthermore, it asserts that race operates as a means of enforcing liberal territorial and political borders, making international migration governance a mode of racial governance.