Democracy and the Foreigner

“It neatly categorizes immigrants into a stereotypical bad other and undermines efforts of immigrant rights groups who attempt to gain resources and improve their treatment (Honig, 2001).”

“Honig (2003) makes a similarly relevant point about the pivotal role that foreigners play in founding political communities.”

“Moreover, aliens have often been implicated in the founding myths of democratic institutions, especially the law (Honig, 2001).”

“In her view, foreignness is not an empirical question that can be answered by determining what it means to be foreign or what counts as foreign in a given context (Honig 2001, 6).”

“Not only are IRCs outside the liberal political frame, into which, by definition, foreigners never quite fit (Honig, 2001), their words imply, but also, more insidiously, these institutions corrode moral responsibility.”

“For example, while it may be the case that migration more generally is praised by lawmakers as a source of cultural and economic rejuvenation to the polity (Honig, 2001), undocumented migration in particular is consistently rendered as a threat by lawmakers.”

“The demand curve, D, represents the quality-elasticity of demand (or the exit response of citizens to a deterioration in the quality of citizenship).”

“…border suggest that border studies have opened up questions about the rationales for understanding borders as institutions, processes and symbols (Honig, 2001; Scott, 2015) as borders emerge through geo and socio-political circumstances (Houtum & Naerssen, 2002; Nelson et al., 2010; Scott, 2011).”

“In disrupting social boundaries and the presumed isomorphism between place, people, and culture, mobility represents a perennial source of insecurity, with foreigners, strangers and outsiders often approached with suspicion and hostility (Honig, 2009).”

“As Honig (2001) describes, ‘‘In classical political thought, foreignness is generally taken to signify a threat of corruption that must be kept out or contained for the sake of the stability and identity of the regime’’ (pp. 1–2).”

“This role is particularly important for settler societies in which foreignness is precisely the feature from which the nation derives its character (Honig, 2001: 76).”

“The third assumption was that those agonal contestations and mobilisations which agonistic theorists place right at the centre of democratic life are driven by identifications with common projects, positions and discourses that citizens feel strongly about (Honig 2001; Mouffe 2005).”

“As a result of immigration, school environments have become increasingly complex, especially in urban areas of Scandinavia, thus creating unique challenges to democratic values, which are put to the test when the majority meets the ‘foreigners’ (Honig 2001; Kymlicka 2001).”

“This also suggests that linguistic experiences of immigrant youth must be understood in the context of the wider politics of the nation-state, cultural, political processes and social inequalities in the host society (Honig 2001): whether it is welcoming or discriminatory, whether it acknowledges youths’ linguistic ha…”

“This is because identity categories used for migrants and minorities can enact the “other,” thus “marking negatively what ‘we' are not” (Honig, 2001, p. 3; cf.”

“…Pride parade despite political and public opposition might be seen as a practice of taking rights rather than asking for them from sovereign power (Honig 2003),22 the organization of Pride parades also relied on the 22 In Democracy and the Foreigner, Bonnie Honig uses the figure of the immigrant…”

“To her, ‘democracy is always about living with strangers under a law that is therefore alien [and] about being mobilized into action periodically with and on behalf of people who are surely opaque to us and often unknown to us’.(21) Thus, the paradox of democratic legitimacy is ‘the condition in which we find ourselve…”

“It is my contention that through recent gateway initiatives, we can identify who is now perceived as an un/desirable subject to Singapore, notably by focusing on the preferable attributes wanted by state authorities in migrant populations (Honig 2001, Ong 2006).”

“In particular, immigration controls aren’t simply instrumental responses to the needs of employers but are important to state legitimacy which is, through immigration policy, linked to ideas of nation building and preservation (Honig, 2001).”

“7 Th e appearance of undesired and unauthorized subjects on the political scene is an act of “taking space” (Nyers 2003) that has the potential for radical democratic politics (Honig 2001).”

“Notions of membership would become imbued with a sense of the ‘terror of belonging, the hope and betrayal that come with the inextricable intertwining of people in one another’s lives across lines of difference and power’ (Honig, 2001, pp. 119–21).”

“Curiously, while the advocates of neoliberal globalisation demand a borderless world, the globalisation of peoples through migration remains resisted (Aleinikoff & Klusmeyer, 2002; Andreas & Snyder, 2000; Brettell & Hollifield, 2000; Castles & Davidson, 2000; Faist, 2000; Honig, 2001; Sassen, 1999).”

“Yet others, (and indeed some undocumented people and former offenders), are harder to deny (Honig, 2001).”

“In the ideology of the liberal nation-state, migrants are considered as both ‘givers’ and ‘takers’ (Honig 2001: 99), and as the source and solution of a problem.”

“Seeing the foreigner or migrant as a ‘refounder’ (Honig 2001), recognising the political potential in her or his power to do what no native would do, recognising her or his ability to inspire, represents a way to disrupt foundationalist policy-making.”

“Cosmopolitanism and conviviality are often invoked as conceptual tools or normative goals for addressing the social anxieties wrought by migration and cultural diversity (e.g. Honig 2001; Sandercock 2006; Amin 2012; Noble 2013).”

“Political theorist Bonnie Honig (2001) proposed rather than asking how to solve the problem of difference or foreignness, instead, we ought to ask what problems might difference solve for us.”

“On the other hand, the hardworking and business-like presentation of the Asian newcomers, to paraphrase Honig (2001), functions to demonstrate the possibility of upward mobility, while disciplining those unsuccessful labourers into believing that the economy fairly rewards dedication and hard work.”

“Honig (2001) argues that the guideline (or slogan) ›if they can do it, anyone can do it‹ underlining this form of promotion and reveals the fact that it not only functions as a way to govern migrants, but also the whole society.”

“Mexico’s north became the US southwest.”

“Immigration is, by definition, important to the national subject formation of an immigrant country (Honig, 2001; Dauvergne, 2005).”

“As Bonnie Honig (2001) contends, nationalist xenophilia produces xenophobia as its partner.”

“Naturalization illustrates the ambivalent attitude of the liberal democratic nation-state towards immigrants who are welcomed as ‘givers’, for example by providing their labor, or rejected as ‘takers’, e.g. by accessing welfare benefits (Honig 2001).”

“See, for instance, Benhabib (2006: 35); Dahl (1989: 207); Habermas (2001: 774); Honig (2001); Mouffe (2000); Näsström (2007); Whelan (1983: 40).”

“…opportunity to maintain the connection with the homeland; others suggest that democracy is in fact enhanced by public recognition and representation of migrants’ multiple identities within and outside the country of residence (Castles, 1998; Vertovec, 1999; Vertovec and Cohen, 1999; Honig, 2003).”

“Thus, immigrants are not merely the external source, or the material referent, of national identity formation in the United States, but also an integral part of the nation’s socioeconomic development (Honig, 2001).”