SSC Seminar Series: Harrison Smith

Harrison Smith, PhD candidate
Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

Surveillance and Prosperity Partnerships: An Examination of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, 2005-2009

Wednesday, March 7
12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Location: Mac-Corry Room D411, Queen's University

Prosperity partnerships have become instrumental networks for the continued development of border surveillance and screening measures, effectively allowing neoliberal business interests to influence border policy directions. This seminar will focus on a theoretical and empirical analysis of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), 2005-2009. This presentation will begin from the underlying contextual elements of the SPP, primarily by developing a theoretical framework of neoliberal prosperity partnerships in a time of market uncertainty and global insecurity. From here, I will provide a hermeneutic and discourse analysis of the SPP’s key reports in order to reveal the ways in which surveillance and screening technologies were socially constructed as the key regulatory techniques for the mutual inclusion of North American security and economic competitiveness in the global marketplace. Finally, I will explore how the SPP mobilized the assistance of the private sector, forming itself into a powerful prosperity partnership to advance neoliberal practices of surveillance and social exclusion at North American borders.

Everyone welcome!