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Safe Space

  
  

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We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:39 / 24.09.02
It occurred to me just now that a 'safe space' is a place to treasure one's own illusions, and not have someone who disagrees come an assail them.

I was thinking about religions, but I realised it could be broadened.

Does that make 'safe space' a bad thing, or is it useful to have a place where you can believe what you want to, whatever that is - and does that help or hinder your chances of changing if you're confronted with mistakes in your belief outside?
 
 
sleazenation
10:36 / 24.09.02
The problem i see with 'safe spaces' is that no space is truly safe and the assertion can be a magnet for vulnerable people and abusers (most of whom would not see themselves as such) alike.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:43 / 24.09.02
Funy you should bring this up. I've been thinking about 'safe space' ever since I read the following in Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is my god's interview thread:

Fuck the anarchist lesbian pub. Go to a human pub.

Now, I think there are all kinds of problems with this statement (well, instruction technically), but the relevant one here is the assumption that drinking in the anarchist lesbian pub (cue Jonathan Richman) is little more than a lifestyle choice with political/activist pretensions - a luxury, in other words.

Sadly, a 'safe space' may well be a *necessary* thing for many people, that is if the freedom to express key elements of one's identity without the risk of verbal or physical abuse is considered a necessity ("o reason not the need!", etc, or indeed even The Need, regulars on all good anarchist lesbian pub jukeboxes...).

To deal more specifically with your questions, Nick: I don't agree that a safe space is necessarily a place to "treasure one's own illusions", because as stated above, it may be simply a place to treasure the shape of one's own face and not wish it to be assailed by someone who disagrees with it. However, I think safe spaces *can* serve this purpose, especially what we might call intellectual safe spaces... eg, a messageboard, textbook, newsfeed, or any form of entertainment in which you know that certain parameters are going to be kept - including ideological/doctrinal parameters. And in this respect, I'd agree that they can be both useful and limiting. But I need to think about this a little more.

On a related note: there was a thread a while ago in which I seem to recall that it was generally agreed that Barbelith *isn't* a safe space, and in fact shouldn't be. I'd still generally agree with that, up to a point.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
11:33 / 24.09.02
Yeah, but Fly - whether someone is 'treasuring their own illusions' or 'seeking necessary refuge' depends on whether you agree with them or not...

Thing is, the Born Agains on 'Nesh's Christian board have made themselves a 'safe space'. The rules prohibit soapboxing on subjects they disapprove of - such as homosexuality. How does this differ - apart from us being right and them being a bunch of assholes - from Barbelith's rather more flexible prohibitions?

Let me rephrase: a safe space is a place where no one is allowed to challenge a given perception of the world.
 
 
Lurid Archive
11:50 / 24.09.02
I agree with Nick that it is a matter of perception. Indeed, I think it is fairly clear that Barbelith functions as a safe space in some regards. Although there isn't a united stance on many issues, I think that there is a strong agreement about the evils of discrimination based on race, gender or sexuality. Anyone "challenging" this - as cyclepathgirl recently found - is liable to come under intense "scrutiny" that is probably indistinguishable from outright attack from the point of view of the recipient.

Not that I think this is a bad thing - quite the opposite - but it deserves acknowledgement.
 
 
Persephone
12:02 / 24.09.02
I don't suppose that I'm too much into militant safe space, but I am sure that I've grown a sort of organic safe space around me... birds of a feather, etc.

See though, I believe that there is a vast gulf between even the closest people. Tiny spaces contain infinitudes and all that. There's hardly anything less knowable than another person. But when you finally really get close to another person, then you can take the first step into that infinity. But you can't do that --well you can, but that's a totally different operation-- when you're shouting across some huge divide like "a child's right to life" vs. "a woman's right to choose," you never get into that innerspace.

I guess I don't believe in universal experience. I don't necessarily think that all of humanity should be hewing toward the same grand worldview. Maybe I think that we're meant to specialize --like, different groups get assigned different projects & the game is to make the most out of your little project. Hence different safe spaces. Like some greenhouses are for orchids and others are for clematis.
 
 
w1rebaby
17:09 / 24.09.02
I prefer the concept of an "organic safe space" over an "rule safe space". A group that shares broadly similar opinions can evolve over time should the members develop in their beliefs - rules are less flexible (though if your beliefs are authoritarian or dogmatic anyway... I can see that a fundamentalist board might find strict community commandments quite appropriate.) In other words, an "organic safe space" can adapt to the people within it, which is surely the point of having it at all, whereas a "rule safe space" finds it harder.

The challenge being when a safe space changes character because of the different character of those joining it... but if you want to avoid that, restrict entrance to your space.

I've just realised that I'm speaking from the position of someone who doesn't find that rules make me feel safe. In fact, strict rules make me feel unsafe. So I would argue against them, really. Bah. But rules can arise organically.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
07:55 / 25.09.02
I would probably forsake the anarchist lesbian pub, mostly because if it was in my neighbourhood I'd a) know all the people, b) have fucked at least one of them who I'd rather avoid, and c) be at risk of feeling hella uncomfortable anyhow, as an 'ex-lesbian' and really not an anarchist in any sense of the word. Maybe even if they were playing The Need... Besides, there'd be all these tourists who had come along to enjoy genuine lesbian anarchist music and appropriate the culture for their own evil purposes.... *grinning*

So, yes. I have no faith in safe space. But this is far more to do with the parameters of what is assumed to be 'safe' in particular instances and what is not. Ie, I don't think that grouping people around an identity really works to ensure the safety of a spaces, or spaces. I know that in the past (and sometimes now) queer-specific venues have worked for me, are more more 'comfortable' than straight venues, whatever. But I don't inhabit them specifically and more importantly, I don't assume that there's a 'safety' there -- emotional, physical, sexual, political -- that will protect me from anything.

But that whole rhetoric of 'safety' is also about having one's individual experiences validated, reflected by others. For a space to be safe one often has to have a sense of shared experience, shared origin -- which is intriguing because of its liberal individualist bent, but also because of the assumptions made about personal experience being somehow 'genuine' or 'unassailable.'

It's very interesting, anyhow. I would like to insert here one word: strap-on.org. sfd will know exactly what I'm talking about...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:56 / 27.09.02
Well, to make it a bit topical (only for the UK Crew, I fear)...

The documentary series College Girls has cropped up in a few pub conversations lately. It is devoted to St, Hilda's, the only all-female college left at Oxford.

St Hilda's is constantly embattled. There is a perception that it is academically inferior to other colleges, because it has to hoover up female applicants rejected elsewhere. It is constantly in need of money, and its all-female status is constantly threatened.

However, its existence is justified, among other reasons, by the argument that it provides a safe space for women, specifically for women who want to study without sharing a college with men. This argument may seem absurd, but may (again, may) seem less so when one considers the widely spread but hugely apocryphal story that, even after going coed, Oriel did not allow women in to study history for many years for fear that one of the tutors would attempt to rape them or refuse to acknowledge them.

Now, some would argue that, now that there are no more all-male colleges in Oxford, this all-female college is a vulgar anachronism. Others, Mr. Disco among them, might point out that this supposedly safe space actually has all sorts of issues through its crude gender bilateralism.

But it could be said that the entire town is a safe space for men, effectively, and that this outpost is not much of a concession.

Which is sort of at the heart of the question. The generation of safe space seems to presuppose the idea that there is such a thing as "unsafe space", and that it takes up much of the world. In which case, is the creation of safe space a retreat from the need to engage with and change a harsh reality? Or a vital place to rest and recover in the long fight? Or, perhaps most insidiously, is it, as Sleaze suggests, an illusion, creating a false security against the sad truth that a safe space, like a water-hole, may provide company and succour, but it also gathers the vulnerable into a single, easily-targeted space?
 
 
Persephone
02:24 / 28.09.02
But isn't the answer, all of the above and all at the same time? Tying in with the best of the worst and worst of the best thread, the thing that is our strength is our weakness... e.g., what's good about the left is its relativism, which is what's bad about the left. What's good about a safe space is that it makes us strong, but what's bad is that it makes us weak.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:35 / 28.09.02
Well....no.

Because a safe space doesn't necesarily make you strong; it may provide a place where you don't have to *be* strong. And likewise, one could see pretty much the entire world as a safe space for straight, wealthy white men, in what way has the possession of that safe space made them weaker?
 
 
Persephone
12:14 / 28.09.02
You might say then that the entire world provides a place for straight, wealthy white men where they don't have to be strong. Not to discount the real power that such people may be enabled to wield in such a space. Simultaneous strength and weakness. I think, perhaps, that this idea of crisis in masculinity has to do with the loss --or more probably, the fear of loss-- of this safe space, the world.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
15:32 / 28.09.02
This world is emphatically not a safe space for wealthy white men. There have been attempts to make the developed world into such a space, but they haven't been terribly successful, which is why wealthy white men now chose to live in gated communities and hide behind closed doors and minds. The British Empire did well, and then folded. The Roman Empire was better at it, and lasted longer, but there have always been 'no-go areas'. As the divide between rich and poor increases and awareness of it rises, the box gets smaller and there are 'go areas', and everywhere else. This is true on a global scale as well - the attempt to co-opt the world leads to proportionate resistance... The weakness of capitalism is that its rapacity, once revealed, is enough to trigger rejection. The very fact of being wealthy and white is now enough to put you in danger in some areas, and the attempt to diminish that risk and control rejection exacerbates the danger.

This is not as much of a good thing as has occasionally been suggested.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
05:07 / 29.09.02
"This world is emphatically not a safe space for wealthy white men. There have been attempts to make the developed world into such a space, but they haven't been terribly successful, which is why wealthy white men now chose to live in gated communities and hide behind closed doors and minds."

Oh, bullshit. Perhaps I shouldn't be distracted from my original and probably more relevant line of questioning, into the power dynamics that work through questions of safety and unsafety. And your thoughts about capitalism are quite interesting, although maybe we could also insert an analysis of how Keynesian economics/welfare stateism is making capitalism an even nastier beast, producing ever more unrest and insurrection.

Rather than 'not being able to go places', isn't the contemporary definition of safety/privilege entirely tied to mobilty, exodus, escape? Wealthy people travel: that's what marks you as a person who has privilege, your ability to move. Hasn't the whole entire fucking world been turned into a themepark which is perfectly safe for any wealthy white capitalist swine to enter, fuck over and leave whenever they feel the need?

Go talk about gated communities to an asylum-seeker, why don't you.

(Which is why talk of safe 'spaces' won't work, because what constitutes space, per se, is the trajectory of people weaving through a space, how people move, what data traces are left with their passing and what freedoms they have to move within/through a particular space...)
 
 
ceridwen
05:32 / 30.09.02
most people would agree that treasuring illusions rather than dealing with the real world is not a healthy approach to life. doesn't mean that safe space is bad, though maybe some uses of it. it is probably neccesary, if just for a place to rest.

how has safe space weakened straight, wealthy white men? it has perhaps weakened their morals? their ability to deal with alternate views? their ability to move outside of what is socially accepted? their desire to move beyond complacency? just some ways that safe space might weaken anyone.

i don't think that the idea of safe space can be approached from a discussion of privlege. mostly because safe space can be so broadly defined.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
19:36 / 30.09.02
Disco:

I didn't say the world wasn't safer if you're rich and powerful and from the industrial northwest than otherwise. But the idea that being from the industrial northwest means you can go anywhere gives a vastly exaggerated idea of the ability and willingness of the northwest to exert power around the world. The US is the most powerful nation on Earth, but even that writ does not cover everywhere, and there are places where having a US passport to wave is a very, very serious disadvantage. As is being 'white' which is a term I have more and more trouble with as time goes by, because there are several kinds of people who don't fit very well.

Rather than 'not being able to go places', isn't the contemporary definition of safety/privilege entirely tied to mobilty, exodus, escape?

Well, maybe - if you can carry your safe space with you and make it stick, you're rich as hell. That almost impossible. It's a rather involved definition of 'safe space', though, and if you're going to yell at me you ought to let me in on it beforehand, yes? The equivalence you give privilege and safety is interesting - perhaps you could expand on it.

Hasn't the whole entire fucking world been turned into a themepark which is perfectly safe for any wealthy white capitalist swine to enter, fuck over and leave whenever they feel the need?

Basically, no. Although I'd relish seeing a few of them try.

Go talk about gated communities to an asylum-seeker, why don't you.

We're about a heart-beat from Godwin's Law, here.

Why are asylum-seekers relevant to this discussion? I can think of a few ways, but I want to know why you're throwing them in my face like you've just made the point of the decade and I'll never recover.

(Which is why talk of safe 'spaces' won't work, because what constitutes space, per se, is the trajectory of people weaving through a space, how people move, what data traces are left with their passing and what freedoms they have to move within/ through a particular space...)

Now that's an interesting idea. I don't think it's true that safe spaces can't work, though. Here, for example, we're safe from physical assault already - barring you getting my address and coming round to beat me up. Barbelith is a safe space for most positive minority positions, too - in the sense that Tom won't stand for racism and so on. Limited safety is possible. Full safety is not.

My original question was whether safe space was a crutch to fall back on or a vital thing; whether it weakened or strengthened you if you relied on it or even just used it. So what do you think?

Oh, and by the way, I have more than one idea about capitalism. If you're going to give me hell over it, you might want to explore them a little first.

cerwiden:

how has safe space weakened straight, wealthy white men? it has perhaps weakened their morals? their ability to deal with alternate views? their ability to move outside of what is socially accepted? their desire to move beyond complacency?

All of the above, I sometimes think. Oh, look, we've got 'straight' there now as well. I think that, increasingly, if capitalism survives at all, fair dealing will become good business, and an inability to do it will be a handicap - in some ways it already is. The inability to see alternate views will always be a handicap, and if that's a product of safe space, then it's a problem for safe space. etc.
 
 
some guy
17:57 / 01.10.02
how has safe space weakened straight, wealthy white men?

It's interesting how this notional global safe space is attracting more and more adjectives. Pointlessly, I might add, as if straight, weathly white women or gay, wealthy white men had smaller spheres. Those claiming the world is an increasingly homogenized safe space for straight, wealthy white men have obviously not been out in it - at least not outside the confines of North America, Europe and Australia. Being a white man, particularly a wealthy one, is not the healthiest state of being for those traveling through much of Asia, Africa or Latin America, for example.

The question of wealth (we all have Internet connections and are therefore in an extremely small and financially priveledged global demographic) and race (just try to count the different kinds of "white" and see where we get) seem little more than baiting in a discussion of safe space. And how do these labels intersect? Is a black man better or worse off than a white woman? Who gets the victim crown?

We're likely to get much more mileage out of examining whether safe spaces make one weaker or stronger than hauling out the usual straw men. We ought to define what a safe space is, who uses it and why.

In terms of university safe spaces or minority pubs, I tend to see safe spaces as part of a development stage, generally used early on (the first days of college, the early period of coming out). But it seems that most grounded people tend to outgrow safe spaces fairly quickly - I know very few adult homosexuals who still concern themselves with the notion of safe space locations, for example, while a trip to the gay pub two blocks from my house reveals a decidely younger demographic. University seemed to echo this, with underclassmen disproportionately comprising safe space meetings.
 
 
Persephone
23:37 / 01.10.02
It's interesting how this notional global safe space is attracting more and more adjectives.

Just before this gets phenomenal, the original adjectives were straight, white, and wealthy. Nick subtracted "straight," which cerwiden added back. No net increase.
 
 
ceridwen
00:34 / 02.10.02
laurence - i completely agree with you. being straight or white or male is not always advantageous. i think it can by agreed that geographcaly, no place is safe for everyone. if we are discussing privlege and victimization some people have more options than others. what i wanted to discuss was the idea of separating a physical safe space from an emotional safe space. my thought is that a feeling of safety leads to complacency, which weakens, generally.

more later when i have some time.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
01:48 / 02.10.02
"It's a rather involved definition of 'safe space', though, and if you're going to yell at me you ought to let me in on it beforehand, yes? The equivalence you give privilege and safety is interesting - perhaps you could expand on it."

I wasn't yelling at you, but anyhow. Let's unpack. First, perhaps we should distinguish between two kinds of safe space (which, I think, were confused in the post I reacted to.) And maybe here is where I say I reckon the whole notion of 'safe space' is about power and the way power is distributed. So, number one: There's an identity-based notion of safe space in which people who do not have enough social power to be protected by the state can gain some kind of temporary protection: gay clubs, womens-only space, et cetera et cetera. Often these safe spaces are not legally protected, or are produced informally, in the cracks of the system. The lack of formal protection by the state (particularly in identity-based communities) means that a certain precariousness or vulnerability coexists with 'safety' -- and that's when border policing kicks in, which I've already talked about earlier (maybe not enough, though.)

So, the second notion of safety is the safety afforded those who *are* protected by the state. A wealthy minority. Maybe we could use more sophisticated language than simply saying most of those people are white, but the truth is they mostly are. Which, I think, is where the utter blindness of your post really kicked in for me, Nick. The very notion of 'safe space' assumes that one is not sufficiently protected by the state: in fact, safe space is often a kind of protection FROM the state. The apparatus of the state exists to keep some people protected (and mobile) and some people unprotected and immobile. This is where safety and privilege become coterminous. Does this all make sense?

"Why are asylum-seekers relevant to this discussion?"

My point is that people can and do carry their safety with them and 'make it stick'. It's called citizenship, passports, visas. Perhaps there are places in which an American passport is not the best accessory, but Americans are usually filthy rich anyhow and can bribe their way through anywhere. (And don't bother arguing that not all Americans are filthy rich: exchange rates make it so.) In contrast, it is incredibly difficult for someone from, say, India, to even get a visa to the USA or the UK or the EU (or here). Asylum-seekers, or more properly, people without papers, are routinely incarcerated for their attempts to find 'safe space'.

"My original question was whether safe space was a crutch to fall back on or a vital thing; whether it weakened or strengthened you if you relied on it or even just used it. So what do you think?"

I think your question is completely irrelevant unless we define some terms and desist from universalising the experiences of 'us' 'here' as something important or even philosophically interesting. Let's think about the context we live in. Let's at least make some attempt at being 'politicised'.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:24 / 02.10.02
I am alive, and perhaps the last in New Cross to be so, to the irony that the idea that the world is constructed as safe space for the Western European elite is rejected by the contention that if you travel to Africa or South America it is not very safe at all to be a wealthy white man.

I wonder if the African, or South American, who presumably spends a fair amount more time in this "unsafe" environment than our Anglo, would feel in North America or Europe? Let's ask. Oh, hang on. We can't. Because they won't let him in.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
10:33 / 02.10.02
[shrug] A 'safe space' as I was thinking of it is a space where you can rely on certain rules being followed and certain conducts being outlawed. It apparently means something else to you - something rather more interesting, actually. So let's go there.

I'd suggest that the imperial project of creating the safe space you describe also generates the opposite - an extrematised rejection of that space, and in many cases the creation of a counterspace, a space which defines itself by unsafety for the prevailing one, or by safety for those who reject the prevailing one. Since these spaces are not mutually exclusive, and since the imperial space is not by any means a smooth, featureless edifice, but rather a pitted, interwoven mess, the two (actually, the many) spaces interpenetrate. Which means that no one from either - any - space is truly safe at any given time. This, depending on the prevailing orthodoxies of negotiation and power in the various spaces, can mean that no one, anywhere, is safe at any time.

And here we are - welcome to New York, September last year. The results of that confrontation of spaces - the totally successful appropriation of New York, of American airspace, of means of transport provided and made insecure by the success and ethos of capitalist enterprise by a revolutionary space which declares that if the Holy City of Mecca is not a safe space - in my sense - for Islam, then the Holy City of New York is not a safe space - in yours - for anyone.

Now, what is the next logical step for the US in its role as creator of American Safe Space - notionally more egalitarian than 'white man straight wealthy', but certainly the inheritor and chief exponenent of that role - in this situation? If I understand your position, the 'safe white space' is total, the power projected by that space holds every nation in its grasp; the logical thing to do is simply to complete the conquest. I'd suggest that's impossible (never mind undesirable) because of this interpenetration of spaces, and because of the nature of the risk involved: the increasing of pressure from imperial space results in a corresponding push from revolutionary space - and revolutionary space, at this level, and as a result of the arms race between two versions of imperial space in the last century, possesses the means to wreck large areas of the globe.

This is, also, a truly post-modern situation, in that we have a clash of theories of the world - an imperial space touting nation state politics and denying the influence of NGOs, yet in some areas puppeted by them; an analysis which sees the combine clearly, yet also derives a self-perception from religion; capitalist enterprise informed by an almost organic need to consume, defined to avoid ethical and pragmatic obstacles to moneymaking; notions of statehood, ethnic identity, post-national identity, and so on... All of these have spaces which they share, lease, police, and defend, all of which overlap, and which ally with one another in sometimes surprising ways.

If you're going to think of space in terms of power and relations, I'm not convinced there's such a thing as 'safe', whoever and wherever you are. The question then becomes, what will be done about it and by whom?
 
 
some guy
11:31 / 02.10.02
Often these safe spaces are not legally protected

What type of safe space would you say isn't legally protected? And are we talking physically or mentally safe?

Maybe we could use more sophisticated language than simply saying most of those people are white, but the truth is they mostly are.

The problem with not using "more sophisticated language" is that saying "white people" doesn't get us very far, because the simple fact is that most white people have their own minority issues. They are women, or gay, or liberal men, or Italian, or handicapped etc. The "straight/wealthy/conservative/white/man" is actually a very small demographic. The sloppy language bypasses this and comes across as baiting.

The very notion of 'safe space' assumes that one is not sufficiently protected by the state

I think this is a poor definition - who isn't protected by the state? There's a clear difference between legal and social protection. Safe spaces seem designed for the latter. And what are we considering "protection," anyway?

My point is that people can and do carry their safety with them and 'make it stick'. It's called citizenship, passports, visas. Perhaps there are places in which an American passport is not the best accessory, but Americans are usually filthy rich anyhow and can bribe their way through anywhere. (And don't bother arguing that not all Americans are filthy rich: exchange rates make it so.)

Have you traveled widely? I have, and I can assure you there are vast portions of this planet where a US passport is best kept concealed, where being Western makes you a mark, where being white isn't the best thing on the menu. Exchange rates don't work quite the way you seem to think they do when you're on the street with $20 in your pocket and in serious trouble, because the assumption is that we are filthy rich, and can give more. You can do the Asian/African/South American tour in relative safety if you follow the extremely narrow corridors of "white safe space." Which basically means a handful of burroughs in a handful of cities. Step outside of that - actually get into the country on your own - and the rules change dramatically.

I wonder if the African, or South American, who presumably spends a fair amount more time in this "unsafe" environment than our Anglo, would feel in North America or Europe? Let's ask. Oh, hang on. We can't. Because they won't let him in.

Speak for your own country. It's dead easy to immigrate to the US. And I'd argue that a Columbian in the US today is safer than an American in Columbia...

If you're going to think of space in terms of power and relations, I'm not convinced there's such a thing as 'safe', whoever and wherever you are. The question then becomes, what will be done about it and by whom?

What are we defining as safety, incidentally?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
11:42 / 02.10.02
It's dead easy to immigrate to the US.

In the sense that as long as you have a ticket saying you're leaving, and money to pay for your stay, you may enter the country subject to obtaining a visa or a visa waiver (if you're from one of the countries on the approved list for waivers) and the completion of a rather exhaustive immigration form.
 
 
some guy
12:22 / 02.10.02
It's dead easy to immigrate to the US.
In the sense that as long as you have a ticket saying you're leaving, and money to pay for your stay, you may enter the country subject to obtaining a visa or a visa waiver (if you're from one of the countries on the approved list for waivers) and the completion of a rather exhaustive immigration form.

Ever been to a major US city, Nick?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
13:30 / 02.10.02
Yes, I have. In fact I used to live in one. I've entered the US from Canada, the UK, and Switzerland. I've entered alone, in the company of my parents, and with an American girlfriend. I've come as a student, a professional, and a tourist.

How about you - ever entered the US as a non-US national?
 
 
MJ-12
14:00 / 02.10.02
I think the LLB's question might be more clear if phrased, "Of the people who you see in a major American city, how many of the residents are immigrants?"
 
 
some guy
14:07 / 02.10.02
How about you - ever entered the US as a non-US national?

No, but I've entered with foreign nationals and had to wait for them. I don't see lengthy passport procedures as germane to the discussion of safe spaces.

As MJ-12 correctly guessed, what I am getting at is "Of the people who you see in a major American city, how many of the residents are immigrants?"
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
14:27 / 02.10.02
It's relevant to the discussion because you said it was easy to immigrate to the US. I assumed you must mean 'gain entry to' the US, because while that idea is bizarre, more so is the notion that it's easy to get legitimate residency in the United States, or to immigrate fully and take on US nationality. If it's so easy, I'm curious as to why the US has to run a 'green card lottery' each year, and why so many are turned down. I'm fascinated by the tightening of immigration law in the last ten years which imposed stiffer penalties on various immigration-related sins...

This is peripherally relevant to the discussion because the notion of safe space has now been rendered as an expression of power relations, nations and ethnicity, and imperialism of several kinds. Glance upward, and you will see.
 
 
some guy
14:57 / 02.10.02
Before we get bogged down in this, I want to point out that there are several interesting questions upthread that have yet to be addressed...

It's relevant to the discussion because you said it was easy to immigrate to the US. I assumed you must mean 'gain entry to' the US, because while that idea is bizarre, more so is the notion that it's easy to get legitimate residency in the United States, or to immigrate fully and take on US nationality. If it's so easy, I'm curious as to why the US has to run a 'green card lottery' each year, and why so many are turned down.

We're talking sheer numbers here. The whole of the US is built on immigration, and it's impossible to go into any major US city and not see a sizeable (and in many cases majority) immigrant population. To focus on who is denied access is absurd in the big picture when we consider scale.

This is also a sidestep of the original point, which is that allegations of the globe as a white safe space break down when we consider that, for example, a Guatemalan is, on average, safer in the US than an American is in Guatemala. I have a feeling that many issues are being conflated here. We need to step back and realize that legal and social protection are two different things, define what we're considering safe space, define what it is to be wealthy/white, establish a hierarchy of minorities (black man vs. white woman) and accept that the popular notion of Western imperialism often fails to extend beyond Pespi and pop culture in most parts of the globe. A black man in New York City is "safer" than a white man in most of Johannesburg. There may be a KFC next to the pyramids, but deviate from the extemely narrow corridor of white tourism in Cairo at your own risk.

This is peripherally relevant to the discussion because the notion of safe space has now been rendered as an expression of power relations, nations and ethnicity, and imperialism of several kinds.

There is a major divergence in the effects and benefits of imperialism on the macro and the micro. A "good" territory in the mind of politicial and commercial interests can be deadly when feet hit the ground.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
15:21 / 02.10.02
I wonder if the African, or South American, who presumably spends a fair amount more time in this "unsafe" environment than our Anglo, would feel in North America or Europe? Let's ask. Oh, hang on. We can't. Because they won't let him in.

Speak for your own country. It's dead easy to immigrate to the US.


Ok. I'll tell that to the dozens of students I've met since I started teaching in London, who have told me "the reason I'm studying in London is because the U.S. wouldn't accept my visa" (particularly, funnily enough, the Colombians, who need a visa just to take the Eurostar to Paris even though they are technically already in the European Union), and I'll see what they have to say about that.

From my admittedly rough survey of students from various nationalities, I can tell you that the best passport to have is an American or a UK passport. And God help you if you've got a Colombian passport., 'cuz you probably ain't goin' nowhere.

To be fair, you CAN emigrate to the U.S. (even if you're Colombian!), but it ain't easy.

Taking some of this over to a new thread, I think.

JOIN ME!
 
 
some guy
15:54 / 02.10.02
Ok. I'll tell that to the dozens of students I've met since I started teaching in London, who have told me "the reason I'm studying in London is because the U.S. wouldn't accept my visa"

Gets back to scale again. How many people apply for immigration to the US versus, say, Sweden?

From my admittedly rough survey of students from various nationalities, I can tell you that the best passport to have is an American or a UK passport.

What does this have to do with safe space? My US passport will get me into a lot of countries where I'm a mark as soon as I leave the tiny official channels...
 
 
Lurid Archive
22:11 / 02.10.02
Gets back to scale again. How many people apply for immigration to the US versus, say, Sweden? - LLBimG

This site has lots of info - not sure how trustworthy it is, but it passed my cursory cross referencing. The page on Global Data is particularly good. This link
http://www.migrationinformation.org/GlobalData/charts1.cfm has lots of comparative data. The US clearly has a lot more asylum applicants than Sweden. But then it is a bigger country. I could work out the figures as a percentage of the population - perhaps later.

The site does give comparative scores for the number of foreign-born as a percentage of the population. The countries compared are Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the US, here.

The US has a higher percentage than Norway, is about equal to the Netherlands and is lower than all the others.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
22:19 / 02.10.02
There's an immigration thread now, folks. If you wouldn't mind...?
 
 
Disco is My Class War
09:18 / 03.10.02
Excellent work. Thanks for the new thread, Cherry.

But yes, back to the topica...

Nick said: "Since these spaces are not mutually exclusive, and since the imperial space is not by any means a
smooth, featureless edifice, but rather a pitted, interwoven mess, the two (actually, the many) spaces interpenetrate. Which means that no one from either -
any - space is truly safe at any given time."

I never argued that it was or could be. The notion of 'safety' does, perhaps, merit some more investigation. Maybe we could take about it as a myth, rather than a given reality.

"If I understand your position, the 'safe white space' is
total, the power projected by that space holds every nation in its grasp; the logical thing to do is
simply to complete the conquest."

No, not at all.

Lawrence wrote:

"who isn't protected by the state?"

Obviously you are, but have a look around.

(Sorry, no time to answer questions properly. On lunch.)
 
  

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