This chapter argues that the institutional dynamics of the autonomous system – centralization and ethnicization – have intensified in the reform era, fueling key sources of ethnic tensions in contemporary China. The driving force has been the decline of class universalism and the rise of identity politics. The chapter shows how these two developments were spurred by early post-Mao policies to redress the leftist excesses of the Mao era, including the “declassing” of minority policy, rehabilitation of former ethnic elites, exit of Han personnel, revival of religion, and accommodation of ethnic customs in law enforcement. These policies have affected the TAR and Xinjiang in particular because of the central government’s greater urgency and efforts to implement them in the two politically sensitive and centrifugal regions. Yet the very end of class universalism and the advent of identity politics have also made it harder for the central state to achieve its goal of better integration. Whereas class universalism was divisive intraethnically, pitting ethnic masses against small groups of ethnic aristocrats, identity politics is divisive interethnically, creating cleavages along ethnic lines.

In June 2015, the body of a thirty-four-year-old Syrian woman who had perished at sea was exhumed from her grave in Sicily with the permission of her family, and reburied in Berlin. Part of a political demonstration called ‘The Dead are Coming’, the burial was led by an imam, and was marked by the absence of German politicians, whose names were taped to a row of empty chairs as mourners looked on.2 The reburial was the first in a series organised by a Berlin-based art group called the Centre of Political Beauty, which sought to bring the bodies of those who had drowned in the Mediterranean to ‘the heart of Europe’.3 Describing border deaths as a result of ‘our inaction’ and claiming to give the deceased ‘the dignity that they deserve’, the group stress that it is ‘not just about saving their dignity’ but also that of European populations.4 The Centre of Political Beauty advocates a form of ‘aggressive humanism’ that must ‘hurt provoke and rise in revolt’.5 Just as Antigone refused to be swayed by authorities in marking the death of her ‘dearest brother’ during 442 BC, activists as part of the group seek to ‘do wrong in order to do right’. In a situation whereby border deaths across the Mediterranean are perceived to be met with widespread indifference, the group advances a humanist intervention that ‘assaults’ a form of ‘political apathy’ which is deemed to be deadly. As such, ‘The Dead are Coming’ can be understood as nothing less than an insistent attempt to reaffirm dignity in a situation where it has become lost to both the dead and the living.

This chapter continues with the argument that the built-in tensions of the autonomous system, namely centralization and ethnicization, have intensified in the reform era. The focus of this chapter is religious revival in Tibet and Xinjiang. Religion has been a volatile problem in the state’s relationship with the two outer peripheral regions, thanks to its crucial linkage to ethnic and cultural identity. This identity, in turn, can be linked to ethno-nationalism and even separatism. Heightened institutional tensions for ethnic strife have stemmed, on the one hand, from state sponsorship of religious revival, and on the other hand, from state curtailment of its unsanctioned growth. The alternatively facilitating and constraining roles of the state have intensified centralization as well as ethnicization in the religious development of Tibet and Xinjiang, or cycles of state facilitation/control of religion and ethnic backlash. Foremost among this backlash has been increased radicalization, from private madrassas, Wahhabism, “Arabianization,” and “terrorism” in the Uighur case, to self-immolation in the Tibetan case. These have in turn induced state crackdowns, including deradicalization camps.

This chapter focuses on the transformation of approaches to ethnicity in China’s transition from empire to nation state. That is, how and why these approaches evolved from a maintenance-oriented strategy aimed at pacification and stability in pre-modern times to a transformative strategy aimed at classifying and engineering identities in the socialist era. Historically Confucian universalism provided a neutral and inclusive approach to ethnicity, but it could not accommodate the idea of the nation in modern times. After late Qing and Republican failures at nation building, the CCP accomplished this task through a mix of class universalism and state classification of identities. The new approach served to incorporate minority members as equal citizens in the new modern state by politicizing previously localized identities at the national level. The contradictions therein – promoting political incorporation but also ethnic identities to fit that goal – or centralization and ethnicization, created the first set of institutional dynamics for ethnic strife in contemporary times.

This chapter focuses on the transformation of policy instruments for co-opting minority groups: how and why Chinese approaches evolved from a maintenance-oriented approach in pre-modern times to transformative strategies aimed at egalitarianism in the socialist era. In pre-modern times, hegemonic strategies were used to induce frontier pacification and cooperation, with emphasis on elite co-optation and outer peripheral regions. This approach was practical for the minimalist imperial state with limited infrastructural and resource capacity. In modern times, the Republican regimes attempted nation building by mixing elite appeasement and mass assimilation, to little avail. The CCP turned upside down pre-modern methods by repudiating traditional ethnic elites and penetrating ethnic regions with preferential egalitarian strategies. The new approach promoted political incorporation but also ethnicized policies to fit that goal. The contradictions therein – centralization but ethnicization – created a third set of institutional sources of ethnic tensions in contemporary times.

This chapter continues with the argument that the built-in tensions of the autonomous system – at once centralization and ethnicization – have intensified in the reform era, fueling ethnic strife in contemporary China. The focus of the chapter is the system of ethnic autonomy. On the one hand, the demise of class universalism and the rise of identity politics have made political centralization less justifiable but also more imperative, thanks to the centrifugal tendencies of identity politics, which are now unconstrained by class universalism. On the other hand, the demise of class universalism and the advent of identity politics have made autonomy rights more imperative but also more polarizing, as they are now instrumental to interethnic competition in a new market economy. These new institutional dynamics are illustrated with three contending perspectives from within China: the liberal autonomists, integrationists, and socialist autonomists. From different angles, the three schools help to highlight the institutional sources that contribute to increased ethnic tensions in Tibet and Xinjiang in the reform era.

This chapter examines a third pro-migration activist intervention, which involves the dressing of unmarked graves at cemeteries in which the bodies of those who died en route are buried. It situates the intervention in relation to existing instruments of containment charted in Part I and shows how grave dressing challenges biopolitical, thanatopolitical and zoopolitical dynamics of governing migration through death and vulnerability by accounting for the lives of those who have died at sea. The chapter draws on research carried out in Lampedusa and considers how cemetery activism invokes dignity in death through the naming of the deceased and the marking of graves as sites of loss and mourning. In so doing, it shows how such interventions go beyond an action for the dead alone, albeit in terms that bring to bear tensions between and within a politics of pity and a politics of empathy. By exploring different strands of cemetery activism, the chapter highlights the critical importance of those interventions that involve a refusal of racialised processes of dehumanisation and that extend practices of mourning beyond commemoration in terms that render visible the normalisation of death and vulnerability. It shows how such interventions enact dignity in death through a politics of responsibility that directly challenges authorities for a failure to account for the lives of those lost or disappeared. Grave dressing in this regard not only draws attention to the problems of a politics orientated towards the security of home, but also recreates home in more hopeful terms, through the enactment of a politics of collective responsibility for deaths at sea in solidarity with both the living and the dead.

Chapter 4 traces the accretion of Nauruan administration from 1920 to 1947. According to Article 22 of the League Covenant, C Mandates were to be administered as ‘integral portions’ of the Mandatory’s territory, an ambiguous status that came to pose juridical and diplomatic problems for the League. Australia defended a minimalist interpretation of its obligations in Nauru, as the British Phosphate Commission delivered cheap Nauruan phosphate into the farming sectors of Australia, Britain and New Zealand. For Japan and Germany, however, C Mandate status revealed the hypocrisies of the mandate system. Tensions in the Pacific worsened after their withdrawals from the League in 1933. The chapter revisits Japan’s occupation of Nauru during World War II, the war in the Pacific, and the formation of the UN from 1942. Nauru was re-taken in 1945, and the UN Trusteeship Agreement for Nauru was finalised in 1947, with Australia reappointed as Administering Authority. The chapter concludes that the shift from mandate to trust territory status later proved significant in defining self-government as a trusteeship objective; but that this shift was met with further accretions of imperial form.

Since completing this book, many of the dynamics discussed throughout have continued to proliferate in increasingly fraught terms. While arrivals on the central Mediterranean route were relatively low in 2019 compared to 2015–2016, arrival figures increased on the western route, as well as on the eastern route amidst threats that the Turkey–EU arrangements would no longer operate without further EU funding for Turkey.1 ‘Indeed, in early March 2020 increased numbers sought to enter Greece after Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced on 29 February that he was ‘opening the doors’. Many faced violent pushbacks by Greek authorities. Balkan route countries pledged to prevent new arrivals, Greece announced that it would not accept new asylum claims for a month, while the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, thanked Greece for its work as a ‘shield’ for the EU.2 This came following protests by those stuck in camps on the Greek island of Lesbos, who were teargassed by authorities.3 Meanwhile, temporary border controls remained in place in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria and France due to the ‘security situation in Europe’, the ‘serious threat to public policy and internal security’, the ‘severe threat to public order and internal security’, ‘migration and security policy’, the ‘security situation in Europe and continuous secondary movements’ and ‘terrorist threats and the situation at the external borders’, respectively.4 Relocation and the Common European Asylum Policy remained uncertain, as leaders failed to forge solidarity on asylum and relocation and as a new Commissioner in charge of migration heralded a ‘post-Dublin horizon’.5 The maltreatment of those taking flight in eastern Europe continued with allegations of Frontex involvement,6 while Frontex was also taken to court for a lack of transparency regarding Operation Triton.7 Frontex went on to win the case and charged the pro-transparency campaigners nearly 24,000 Euros in legal fees.