Envisioning Asylum/Engendering Crisis: Or, Performance and Forced Migration 10 Years On

Abstract

'The questions of migration, asylum, the management of international borders, security, and "terror" are at the political heart of our age'. This statement could have been written yesterday but in fact, it was published 10 years ago, as the opening sentence of Helen Gilbert and Sophie Nield's editorial for their special issue of RiDE, 'Performance and Asylum: Embodiment, Ethics, Community' (2008, 133). In this introduction, we outline connections and disruptions according to our special issue's foregrounding terminology of 'envisioning asylum' and 'engendering crisis', before offering an overview that situates its contributions in terms of current debates, agendas and trajectories.