Disability’s Circularity: Presence, Absence and Erasure in Australian Settler Colonial Biopolitical Population Regimes

In this paper, I explore the ways in which settler-colonial states utilize the category of disability in immigration and Indigenous population regimes to redress settler-colonial anxieties of white fragility. As well documented within the literature, settler-colonial governance operates a particula...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Karen Soldatic
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Brock University 2021-01-01
Series:Studies in Social Justice
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/2259
Description
Summary:In this paper, I explore the ways in which settler-colonial states utilize the category of disability in immigration and Indigenous population regimes to redress settler-colonial anxieties of white fragility. As well documented within the literature, settler-colonial governance operates a particular logic of population management that aims to replace longstanding Indigenous peoples with settler populations of a particular kind. Focusing on the case of Australia and drawing on a range of historical and current empirical sources, the paper examines the central importance of the category of disability to this settler-colonial political intent. The paper identifies the breadth of techniques of governance to embed, normalize and naturalize white settler-colonial rule. The paper concludes with the suggestion that the state mobilization of the category of disability provides us with a unique way to identify, understand and analyse settler-colonial power and the interrelationship of disability, settler-colonial immigration regimes and Indigenous people under its enterprise.
ISSN:1911-4788