SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article explores some of the ways in which law appropriates subversive identities. Drawing on work from geographical, feminist and critical race approaches to property, I put forward an understanding of property as a relation of belonging ‘held up’ by space. Building on this understanding, I argue that identity can operate as property in the same way that land and material objects can, and that law appropriates subversive identities by bringing them into its hegemonic space of recognition and regulation. Law’s appropriations have a range of effects on both the individual subjects directly involved in legal proceedings and the broader spaces in and through which those subjects forge their identities. Specifically this article explores the appropriation of gay and lesbian identities in the context of immigration law, and of aboriginal identities in the context of Australia’s Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 (Cth) (NTNERA).