“The Affective Production of “Concern”: Gendered Surveillance and Humanitarianism at the U.S. Northern Border”

This project examines the relationship between law and emotions at the Northern U.S. border, focusing on the affective production of “concern” produced by federally funded and state managed caller hotlines that propose to simultaneously punish unauthorized border crossing and protect the gendered migrant subject from severe forms of human trafficking. Who calls, what kind of information is provided, and whose lives become intentionally or unintentionally marked as objects of a call? While anyone can call a hotline to report suspicion or identify who they perceive to be a trafficked victim, the average caller is not knowledgeable about the complex social, economic, legal and political conditions that impact noncitizen lives.

The project focuses on non-profit organizations and immigration enforcement agencies in Washington State serving the Northern U.S./Canadian border often narrated as the more “friendly” and “cooperative” crossing. Overall, the aim is to theorize the conditions of race and gender that prefigure border surveillance through a critical exploration of affective “concern” which may aid us in understanding militarized humanitarianism in the current moment. Because hotlines deputize public participation over purported abnormal activity and migrant behaviors, they represent a site where affective expressions of “concern” are seemingly differentiated from “care.” For such reasons, the racial and gendered terms of surveillance must be interrogated between the good or bad immigrant, concern versus care, and the broader context of the caller hotline in relationship to the intersections between policing, campaigns to address human trafficking, and immigration enforcement.