Description
The divisive ideologies underpinning the so-called War on Terror and the criminalisation and vilification of refugees draw on and have sedimented a polarised West vs the Rest logic. In this interconnected yet divided world, selected racialized Others are recruited into mediating roles by hegemonic powers. This paper focusses on the rising demand for and role of racialized others who are recruited as cultural and linguistic brokers in the interfaces created by neo-imperial wars and migration. The paper connects historical work on the political demand for brokers in emerging settler and colonial bureaucracies with contemporary research data on brokers’ recruitment into migration management and the recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Drawing on interviews with locally employed interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan and with migrants recruited into Western migration sectors, it argues that marginalized (and reified) identities and skills find themselves in sudden demand, to support projects of domination through governance. I argue that while this demand provides opportunities for some actors, their role often remains confined to that of native informants, providing access to ‘the Other’ rather than challenging the imperial centre. I finally suggest that racial and gender logics also contribute to making the market for brokerage volatile and the labour of many brokers invisible, underpaid and precarious.
