Thinking with space invaders: ‘Freed slaves’, ‘asylum seekers’ and social wastelands

Abstract

This article uses Puwar’s concept of ‘space invaders’ as a lens to explore historical responses to people freed from slavery, and contemporary responses to people seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. This lens highlights the fact that in both cases, intense and violent fear was sparked by the idea of bodies that have come to be associated with particular spaces (the social space of slavery, the geographical space of the Global South) moving into spaces marked as belonging to others (propertied white men, ‘British people’). The article argues that this allows us to explain commonalities between two sets of discourses and practices adopted both in relation to emancipated people historically, and asylum seekers today. The first involves efforts to rid the body politic of ‘space invaders’ by physically transporting unwanted bodies elsewhere. The second set of practices, adopted in relation to those who cannot be physically removed, entails the creation of legal, social and spatial ‘no man’s lands’ or ‘wastelands’ that make it possible to hold these bodies simultaneously in and apart from society.