Carleton University

Post-Doc, Department of Political Science

Other Affiliations: The Open University, Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance

Thesis Title: Love as a Border Technology: The Governmentality of 'Mail-Order Brides' and Marriage Migrants in the United States and Germany

About

My interdisciplinary research seeks to theoretically and empirically explore the connections between love, governmentality, security, and neoliberal practices. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and currently hold a postdoctoral SSHRC research fellowship at Carleton University. From April 2012 to late June 2012, I am a visiting postdoctoral research fellow at the Open University’s Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance.

Located at the crossroad of political theory, feminist theory, migration studies, and critical security studies, my main research project focuses on the governmentalty of marriage migration. By notably drawing attention to what I call “technologies of love”, I seek to detail how technologies of government entail materialization processes and certainly rely on rationalized forms of knowledge, yet do not stand in contradiction with a would-be distinct emotional realm. How technologies of love contribute to governing processes in the mediation of citizenship, and how they resist it, is what I seek to investigate. Driven by this theoretical insight, my current book project examines in a comparative fashion the govermentality of marriage migration in different settings, including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Denmark and Germany. It aims to document the actual or proposed implementation of several legal and technocratic changes that have made marriage migration a “problem,” a site of regulation integral to the governmentality of migration in these countries. 

In collaboration with William Walters, I am also working on two long-term research project, the first one being funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and entitled “Security and Its Publics.” This project explores the dynamics of the legitimation and contestation of security programmes and policies in diverse fields, as well as the cultural, legal and political practices of making things public. The second one is the development of a new research cluster called HERMÈS based at Carleton University’s Migration and Diaspora Studies initiative. This research cluster is interdisciplinary in nature, and works at the interface of the themes of migration, culture and politics. It will take the form of a long-term collaboration between Carleton University and the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Finally, in IR, I am also engaged in a side research project on the politics of language in the sociology of the discipline of IR. My interest here lies on the ways in which the recourse to English and the issue of language in IR knowledge production have been understudied as a disciplinary practice. It aims to explore the theoretical, emotional, and material implications of language when it comes to understanding international relations.   

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