Description
In this paper I explore humanitarianism’s relationship to what WEB DuBois called ‘whiteness’ or what we might today call, white supremacy. I explore humanitarianism’s historic and contemporary role in the (re)production of racialised geographies with a specific focus on the work of humanitarian sentiments and practices in (re)producing the global colour line and unequal racialised regimes of mobility. Through this exploration I bring both a historical focus and a sensitivity to the politics of race to bear on my earlier research on humanitarian borderwork which focused on the contemporary period. To explore humanitarianism’s role in the historic and contemporary (re)production of racialised geographies I focus on ameliorative practices in plantation economies and settler colonies and their ‘imperial duress’ in modern practices of European ‘Hotspots’ and externalisation efforts. In making visible these entanglements of humanitarianism, white supremacy, and regimes of (im)mobility across time and space I draw on the work of British colonial administrator George Arthur in Honduras and Van Diemen’s Land and the current European Union’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.
