Dislodged from History, Confronted by Walls : Picturing Migration as a Global Emergency

Abstract

This essay examines select visual representations of refugees and migrants as embodied subjects in photography, art, and video. It focuses on American asylum politics and explores the questions of free movement, the right to have rights, and the ethics and efficacy of border walls. It argues that the catastrophe of global forced displacement makes the elimination of national borders and the nation state itself a revolutionary necessity.