Access, Boundaries and Cooperation: The ABCs of North American Security (ABC Colloquium Agenda, Feb)

Emma R. Norman, Policy Studies Organization
Gaspare Genna, University of Texas at El Paso
David Mayer, CIDE, Mexico

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Sponsors: Carleton University, University of Texas El Paso, FIU School of International and Public Affairs, FIU Latin American and Caribbean Center, Centro de Investigación y Docensia Económicas (CIDE), Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL), FIU Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship Studies, with the assistance of the Government of Canada, avec l’appui du gouvernement du Canada

Abstract

Regional integration promised to open up borders, expand the mobility of persons and resources, institutionalize multilateral cooperation fostering security and prosperity, and multiply arenas of belonging, encouraging more inclusive collective identities. In the North American case that promise has rung increasingly hollow. Unequal relationships between states were built into regional agreements and the priority of national interests, especially security, often confounds cooperation leading to harsh attempts to re-solidify borders. In consequence, large groups remain excluded, are becoming progressively marginalized, or find themselves caught in a web of tensions created by the confrontation between transnational forces and reassertions of local or national sovereignty. Extricating such groups before they fall through the gaps is proving to be extremely difficult for national and transnational institutions. This is exacerbated by the exclusionary policies actively pursued by some national and subnational governments in their efforts to resist the incursions on their sovereignty brought by deterritorial- ization and global restructuring.

A growing literature has highlighted the institutional failures that contribute to such exclusions and continue to obstruct regional cooperation and its inclusive ideals of free movement across boundaries and equal access to resources and rights (see Ayres and MacDonald 2006; Studer and Wise (eds.) 2007; Gabriel and MacDonald 2007; Genna and Mayer-Foulkes (eds.) 2011; Kapling and Nossal 2009; Van Nijnatten 2007; Luccisano 2007). The conceptual confusions underpinning many of those failures are not a strong focus in the literature, however, particularly from the perspective of political philosophy. This is, in part, because the deep connections between the concepts of state, nation, citizen, human rights, and sovereignty make it challenging to discuss one in any depth without implicating all. It is nevertheless a challenge

Emma R. Norman

worth accepting if an appropriate starting point can be found. In this respect, Hannah Arendt’s critique of human rights and the notion of superfluousness emerging from it are invaluable for the additional light they shed on the exclusionary dimensions of immigration laws in North America. I argue that the clash between globalizing forces on one hand, and a reassertion of state sovereignty on the other, provides the conditions for systematic exclusions from the protections that human rights should deliver. In doing so, I consider some of the ways the paradox of rights Arendt theorized in the 1960s continues to beleaguer human rights today.