Today we sent our third issue of 2017 to press. Antipode 49(3) is a brilliant snapshot of critical geography today, offering contributions on gentrification and cinema; energy politics and the state; alternative food economies; activism and affect; gender and citizenship; global climate politics; poverty and the practice of philanthropy; Brutalist architecture; mining and conservation; the asylum-seeking body; suburbs and capital accumulation; urban food justice; post-democratic international relations; and “care-full” social justice.

There’s also a great essay by Mark Boyle and Elaine Ho, “Sovereign Power, Biopower, and the Reach of the West in an Age of Diaspora-Centred Development”, introduced here by the authors in a video abstract. Their paper’s point of departure, they explain, is that:

…research on migration policy has focused almost entirely on migrant receiving states and the problematics of immigration. The question of how migrant sending states might deal with emigration and its consequences has been largely overlooked until a recent surge of interest in diaspora-centred development. Many migrant sending states have actively sought to scale and fortify relationships between emigrants and countries of origin, creating new emigrant facing institutions and diaspora engagement strategies.

In this paper we argue that this development cannot be separated from world-historical events and in particular the West’s approach to governing international spaces. Referring to Giorgio Agamben’s insights on the genealogy of governance, we locate diaspora-centred development at the nexus between Western sovereign power and the West’s globalising governmentalities that seek to influence diaspora-centred development in the global South.

We argue that current “diaspora strategies” degrade the idea of “diaspora” to a governmental category, comprising particular kinds of consumers, active citizens, and market actors. The paper raises crucial questions of whether Western sovereign states and international organisations should be involved in the diaspora-homeland relationships of countries in the global South, and if so what ought to guide this involvement?

We suggest in conclusion that inasmuch as the resources afforded by Western power give greater traction to diaspora-centred development, their biopolitical projects of governing from afar entrenches global power inequalities. As an alternative, we argue that acts of profanation by migrants might prove to be progressive and we urge for a new generation of diaspora strategies that is guided by care ethics.

Mark Boyle is a Professor of Geography and the Director of the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis at Maynooth University in Ireland. His research interests include the politics of urban and regional development, migration and development, and colonial and postcolonial geographies. As well as Antipode, you can read his work in Political Geography, Geoforum, Space and Polity, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, and Society and Space.

Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho is a Professor of Geography at the National University of Singapore. Her work on transnational migration and citizenship, diaspora strategies and extraterritorial citizenship, Asian forced migration, emotional geographies, and the politics of cosmopolitanism can be found in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Geopolitics, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Modern Asian Studies.

All of the papers included in Antipode 49(3) are available online now…

Landscape and Gentrification: The Picturesque and Pastoral in 1980s New York Cinema – Johan Andersson

Towards an Energy Politics In-Against-and-Beyond the State: Berlin’s Struggle for Energy Democracy – James Angel

Sovereign Power, Biopower, and the Reach of the West in an Age of Diaspora-Centred Development – Mark Boyle and Elaine Ho

Alternative Food Economies and Transformative Politics in Times of Crisis: Insights from the Basque Country and Greece – Rita Calvário and Giorgos Kallis

Hope in Hebron: The Political Affects of Activism in a Strangled City – Mark Griffiths

Feminism from the Margin: Challenging the Paris/Banlieues Divide – Claire Hancock

Multi-Scalar Practices of the Korean State in Global Climate Politics: The Case of the Global Green Growth Institute – Jin-Tae Hwang, Sang-Hun Lee and Detlef Müller-Mahn

The Presentation of Self in Philanthropic Life: The Political Negotiations of the Foundation Program Officer – Erica Kohl-Arenas

Brutalism Redux: Relational Monumentality and the Urban Politics of Brutalist Architecture – Oli Mould

Shared Social License: Mining and Conservation in the Peruvian Andes – Timothy Norris

Bodies That Walk, Bodies That Talk, Bodies That Love: Palestinian Women Refugees, Affectivity, and the Politics of the Ordinary – Ruba Salih

The Suburb as a Space of Capital Accumulation: The Development of New Towns in Shanghai, China – Jie Shen and Fulong Wu

Urban Agriculture in the Food-disabling City: (Re)defining Urban Food Justice, Reimagining a Politics of Empowerment – Chiara Tornaghi

No Place for the Political: Micro-Geographies of the Paris Climate Conference 2015 – Florian Weisser and Detlef Müller-Mahn

Care-full Justice in the City – Miriam J. Williams