Black Interdictions: Haitian Refugees and Antiblack Racism on the High Seas

Haiti is the first, and only, modern nation-state to be created as the result of a successful slave revolution. However, since its emancipation, the Haitian state has been forced to pay Western states compensation for the loss of the enslaved people, contended with a chronically unstable and authoritarian state system, and has been ranked as the poorest economy in the Western hemisphere. Black Interdictions exposes the antiblack racism latent in the US government's Haitian refugee policies of the 1980s and 1990s that set the tone for the criminalization of migrants and refugees in the new millennium and lead to the migration and refugee policies of the Trump era. Within this experience of controlled mobility many Haitians find themselves in a devastating catch-22, unable to survive in their home nation and unable to find a better way of life elsewhere due to border enforcement strategies, strict immigration policies, and unprecedented measures to prevent asylum claims. This type of radical exclusion is singular to the black experience and the black/nonblack binary must be factored into an analysis of the US migration regime. It shows how techniques of control applied to black populations, whether free or slave, migrant, or native-born, have been precursors for policies and practices applied to nonblack migrants and refugees. It is not possible to work together for equity and justice if we are not prepared to grapple with this divisive history and the instinct to avoid dealing with the singularity of the black experience participates in the orders of knowledge and power that have been fostered by antiblack racism. This book will be of interest to scholars of migration and refugee studies, black studies, legal studies, public policy and international relations, and many others.