Demographic engineering and identity erasure: China's securitization of the Uyghur population

Demographic engineering and identity erasure: China's securitization of the Uyghur population

Kasim, M. (2025) ‘Demographic engineering and identity erasure: China’s securitization of the Uyghur population’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, pp. 1–21. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2025.2580516. Abstract: This article analyses China’s governance of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as a case of demographic engineering, understood as a set of state-directed measures that reshape the reproductive, cultural, and spatial continuity of a population. Drawing on theories of biopolitics (Foucault), necropolitics (Mbembe), and securitization, the paper interprets a coordinated strategy of birth suppression, child separation, linguistic assimilation, and demographic restructuring. Using a qualitative case study design, it triangulates official statistics, state discourse, and international reports to map how these practices operate. The analysis demonstrates that the dismantling of Uyghur group continuity aligns with patterns identified in genocide scholarship, with some measures corresponding to acts listed in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. The article contributes conceptually by showing how modern authoritarian regimes employ technocratic and demographic instruments to preempt resistance and transform social identity, expanding theoretical debates on repression, population management, and slow forms of group destruction. 0 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

‘The dead are coming’: acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders

Lewicki, A. (2017) ‘‘The dead are coming’: acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders’, Citizenship Studies, 21(3), pp. 275–290. doi: 10.1080/13621025.2016.1252717. Abstract: This article combines the research agenda of the acts of citizenship literature with reflections on emancipatory theatre. I examine the Centre for Political Beauty’s activity-based artwork ‘The dead are coming’ which problematizes the cruelties of the European border regime in symbolically charged spaces in the German public. Focusing particularly on the roles available to ‘actors’ and ‘spectators’, and the directionality of the message conveyed through the artwork, I examine how the performance subverts the ‘sites’ and ‘scales’ of citizenship. My analysis indicates that the artwork’s subversive potential emerges not only from the political vision conveyed by the artist collective, but also from the way in which others become involved in the performance. Acts of political beauty thus most extensively challenge instituted citizenship’s orientalist anchoring, reverse status-based role allocations and subvert the structural violence of borders when the performance enables the enactment of novel forms of political agency and solidarity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Unsafe Homecoming: Unraveling Environmental Injustice and Land Dispossession in the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Ghazal Aswad, N. (2024) ‘Unsafe Homecoming: Unraveling Environmental Injustice and Land Dispossession in the Syrian Refugee Crisis’, Environmental Communication, 18(1–2), pp. 35–42. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2023.2296831. Abstract: This paper attends to the Syrian refugee crisis to argue that land dispossession is not only a political and humanitarian phenomenon, but one that cuts to the core of how we inhabit, experience, and belong on the land. Amid the forced repatriation of Syrian refugees to their country, activists used the hashtag #SyriaNotSafe to raise awareness about the detentions, disappearances, and torture of returnees. Beyond the immediate political persecution of refugees, this paper argues for crafting networked cultures of care attentive to the toxic environmental legacies of the Syrian conflict. Cultures of care must be sensitive to the affective relationships of interdependence between Syrians and their local ecosystems forged during the lifetime of revolutionary struggle. By shedding light on the toxicity of war, the weaponization of the environment, and the deliberate land dispossession by the Assad regime, the ability of Syrians to constitute acts of resistance in sympoiesis or “making with” the land is impacted. If we are to unite in acts of care for refugees, we must resist the inclination to imagine the necropolitical cultures in which we live as somehow distinct from the imperative for environmental justice and the ability to survive and thrive with the land. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Bio-necro-biblio-politics? Restaging feminist intersections and queer exceptions

Marchal, J. A. (2014) ‘Bio-necro-biblio-politics? Restaging feminist intersections and queer exceptions’, Culture and Religion, 15(2), pp. 166–176. doi: 10.1080/14755610.2014.911036. Abstract: This response to Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007. Durham, NC: Duke University Press) proposes that, although it might seem a bit far afield for scholars within biblical studies, a range of conceptual interventions from this work could make striking contributions to this sub-discipline. Through further interaction with both exceptionalisms and intersectionalities, this response demonstrates the way that feminist, postcolonial and queer interrogations of biblical argumentation can also intervene, extend or reorient practices within cultural studies. The recurrence of exceptionalism reframes religious groups’ claims to openness, while concerns over the deployment of intersectionality enable critical reflections on interdisciplinary projects such as religious studies and biblical studies as disciplines. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Living in Stand-by Mode While Constructing Lived Citizenship

Scheer, S. et al. (2026) ‘Living in Stand-by Mode While Constructing Lived Citizenship’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, pp. 1–17. doi: 10.1080/15562948.2026.2665108. Abstract: Refugee women can encounter a range of challenges in their new countries, including limited access to health services, education, and employment opportunities, factors that significantly shape and limit everyday lives and opportunities for social participation. This study aims to understand health and social participation in everyday life through dialogue with refugee women and the local organizations addressing applying an intersectional lens. Grounded in an intersectional framework, the study utilized a modified story dialogical method for the workshops. The findings are organized into three key themes: a) Importance of trust and solidarity in the women’s everyday, b) Experiencing othering – the pain of not being welcomed and c) “Stand-by mode”. The findings underscore how multiple intersectional dimensions, including legal status, socioeconomic position, ethnicity, and migration trajectories, interplay to determine whether participation in and access to health, work, and education are possible or not. Solidarity practices, emerge as strategies for navigating and resisting structural and systemic barriers. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]