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Lee E, Pratt G, 2012, "The spectacular and the mundane: racialised state violence, Filipino migrant workers, and their families" Environment and Planning A 44(4) 889 – 904
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The spectacular and the mundane: racialised state violence, Filipino migrant workers, and their families

Elizabeth Lee, Geraldine Pratt

Received 24 January 2011; in revised form 8 June 2011

Abstract. We consider two case studies—a US soldier and a domestic worker—with the objective of elaborating spectacular and mundane instances of state violence as they emerge through projects of citizenship. Focused as they are on two very different mechanisms through which the state grants citizenship—military and immigration law—the two figures diversify and proliferate our understandings of the ambiguities of inclusion and exclusion through citizenship. We consider the family as both a regulatory ideal and as a site of the lived experience of racialised citizenship. And although the family is, as Foucault noted, one of the key ‘anchoring points’ for knowledge and power in modern societies, we want to consider what is excessive to the categories of citizen or worker within the intimacy of the family to suggest that this excess offers profound challenges to existing citizenship regimes.

Keywords: citizenship family, Filipino, necro(bio)politics, race, soldiers, state violence, US militarism

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