This thesis is about border politics, in more than one sense. It looks at the recent period of anxiety about the control of Australian national borders (approximately, from the late 1990s until the 2007 Federal election), and attempts to understand how certain assumptions about women as potential reproductive bodies permeated biopolitical discourses in Australian national culture during this period. I employ the term ‘containment’ in order to make sense of this cultural moment. With reference to the work of theorists of modernity such as Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman, I argue that containment is a key discourse in modern cultures—a way of thinking and speaking about confinement, control, management and order. It structures how we think about the management of populations and is a central part of the justification for the confinement of problem populations by modern political authorities. As such, then, it describes the ways in which the use of immigration detention for unlawful non-citizen asylum seekers has been thought about and accepted as reasonable in Australian national culture. / However, a discourse of containment has also been central to the thinking about gendered bodies in modernity, in particular to assumptions about the control of women’s bodies. The assumptions about the containment of women in the modern gender order are directly linked to ideas about political status, citizenship and sovereignty in modern nation-states. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’—the life that is excluded from the protections of citizenship and thus left unprotected from violence—I attempt to make sense of the connections between the immigration detention camp as a site where the modern state exerts control over the life of the nation, and that modern state’s attempts to control reproductive and reproducing bodies. The reducing of certain people to the status of bare life is, then, a gendered process. Women and men are stripped of political status in different ways because they are assumed to have, or potentially have, different kinds of political status. / I therefore consider how ideas about women as reproductive bodies were integral to the discourse and practices of containment which underpinned the use of immigration detention in Australia. These ideas were important at a number of levels. Firstly, ideas about women as reproductive bodies infused the thinking about national borders, border control and the management of national reproduction. Secondly, a racially inflected discourse about ‘women and children’ was of central importance in shaping the ways in which male and female asylum seekers in immigration detention were treated. In the techniques used to control and manage gendered asylum-seeking bodies, key modern assumptions about women as reproductive bodies, the family, sovereignty and violence are revealed. Furthermore, I argue that many popular culture texts which attempt to make sense of, or critique, Australian national border politics have reinforced the same gendered ideas about containment, the same naturalised assumptions about the reproduction of the nation, which underpinned exclusionist border politics and the use of immigration detention. Examining the intersection of gendered and national discourses of containment in national border politics reveals the gendered violence which infuses the modern social order.

À la fin du Moyen Âge, les bâtards nobles ont bénéficié d’une situation privilégiée. L’étude de la « maison » ducale de Bourbon (XIVe-milieu du XVIe siècle) montre que cette reconnaissance s’exprime par l’identité, la parenté et le pouvoir conférés aux personnes de naissance illégitime. L’objectif est de mettre en évidence les rouages qui ont favorisé la promotion sociale d’une population née hors mariage. Les enfants naturels bénéficient d’un statut qui leur est propre, s’exprimant à travers des langages identitaires qui les singularisent. Ceux-ci les autorisent également à se revendiquer du lignage paternel qui leur assure un rang social. Les discours produits sur les bâtard.es rejoignent surtout l’attitude de la parenté à leur égard : elle les incorpore tout en les distinguant au sein du lignage. Les enfants nés hors mariage renforcent alors la parenté légitime et concourent à la reproduction sociale de la famille. À travers les fonctions qu’ils exercent, le patrimoine qu’ils possèdent ou les alliances qu’ils contractent, ils soutiennent les ambitions politiques des princes, dans un contexte de restructuration des rapports de force avec la royauté. / At the end of the Middle Ages, bastard children of nobles benefited from a privileged situation. The study of the House of the Bourbon dukes (14th-mid-16th centuries) shows that such recognition was expressed through identity, kinship and the power conferred upon people of illegitimate birth. The objective is to highlight the system which favored the social promotion of a population born outside of marriage. Natural children benefitted from a unique situation, expressed through specific languages of identity. This allowed then to claim paternal lineage as well, which assured them of a certain social standing. The discourses produced regarding bastards are reflected most notably in the attitude towards them based on their ties of kinship, which includes them as part and parcel of the lineage. Children born outside of marriage thus reinforce legitimate kinship and participate in the social reproduction of the family. Through their professional roles, the patrimony which they possess and/or the alliances which they forge, they support the political ambitions of the princes, in a context of the restructuration of power relations with royalty.

À cause de leur impact environnemental élevé, les déchets d’équipements électriques et électroniques (DEEE) sont un problème majeur pour les pays développés. La consommation importante de produits électroniques, dont la durée d’utilisation est de plus en plus courte, a entrainé une production croissante de DEEE. C’est dans ce contexte que l’Union européenne a instauré en 2003 la responsabilité élargie des producteurs (REP). Cet outil de politique environnementale a rendu légalement responsables les fabricants de la mise en oeuvre et du financement d’un programme d’intendance des DEEE. Alors que la REP vise principalement le traitement écologique des DEEE, cet instrument ne permet pas de réduire les quantités considérables qui sont produites par les consommateurs. Cette situation est d’autant plus inquiétante que les gains environnementaux obtenus, grâce à l’implantation de la REP, ont été annulés au regard de l’augmentation continue de la consommation de biens électroniques à l’échelle mondiale. En réponse à cette problématique, la présente thèse porte sur les pratiques de l’usager au cours de la phase de consommation des appareils électroniques (aussi appelée phase d’usage). Cette étape du cycle de vie regroupe l’achat, l’utilisation, la réparation et la mise au rebut des biens. Une approche qualitative de type exploratoire faisant appel à l’étude de cas a été utilisée. Le téléviseur, retenu comme cas d’étude, illustre des enjeux partagés par plusieurs équipements électroniques, tels que : la fréquente mise sur le marché de nouveaux modèles, le bas prix d’acquisition comparé au coût de la réparation et l’influence de la mode sur les choix effectués par le consommateur. Ces facteurs facilitent le remplacement des biens et, par conséquent, pourraient entrainer leur fin de vie prématurée qui se matérialise à travers différentes formes d’obsolescence. Dans le cadre de cette étude de cas, une trentaine d’entrevues semi-dirigées a été réalisée avec des usagers et réparateurs de produits électroniques en vue de documenter les différentes sous-étapes de la phase d’usage d’un téléviseur. Sur la base des informations recueillies, l’objectif de cette thèse est de formuler des recommandations, à destination des autorités politiques, qui pourront permettre une minimisation des impacts environnementaux liés à la phase d’usage des appareils électroniques. Les résultats ont permis de mettre en évidence, via le rôle et le statut singulier occupé par le téléviseur dans les foyers, les comportements de l’usager contribuant à augmenter l’empreinte écologique associée à la phase d’usage. L’acquisition de nombreux biens électroniques et non électroniques suite à l’achat du téléviseur, ses multiples fonctionnalités le rapprochant de celles de l’ordinateur et des tablettes, ainsi que la fin de vie prématurée de produits fonctionnels, mais obsolètes d’un point de vue technologique, font partie des résultats de cette recherche. En lien avec ces constats, cette étude propose des instruments de politique environnementale, dont l’affichage de la durée de vie des équipements électroniques, destinés à aider le consommateur à réaliser des choix plus éclairés au moment de l’achat. D’autres orientations, telles que la possibilité d’évoluer vers une réglementation horizontale, c’est-à-dire un cadre législatif qui ne se basera plus sur le produit individuel, mais sur l’ensemble des appareils ayant des fonctionnalités similaires, sont exposées. Par ailleurs, cette recherche explore certains leviers pouvant minimiser le phénomène de fin de vie prématurée des appareils électroniques, tels que l’envoi de biens obsolètes et fonctionnels des pays développés vers ceux en développement pour permettre leur réutilisation et la tendance du Do-It- Yourself dans la réparation des produits électroniques. / Given its high environmental impact, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has become a major problem for developed countries. The growing consumption of electronic products, whose useful lifespan has decreased over the years, has led to an increasing production of WEEE. In response, the European Union has adopted in 2003 the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). This environmental policy tool holds legally responsible manufacturers for the implementation and financing of the e-waste stewardship program. While the ERP focuses mainly on the environmentally sound disposal of waste from electric and electronic equipment, this instrument does not prevent or even reduce the growing amounts of e-waste discarded by households. This situation is particularly worrying, since the environmental benefits achieved with the implementation of the ERP are no longer efficient considering the continuous increase of electronic goods’ consumption in the world. In light of this issue, the present thesis examines the practices of users during the consumption phase of electronic appliances (also referred to as the use phase). This stage of the products’ lifecycle includes purchase, use, repair and disposal of a good. To conduct this research, a qualitative approach by means of a case study was used. The selected case is the television, which illustrates many issues related to the use phase of electronic devices, such as frequent launch of new models in the market, low purchase price compared to the cost of repair and the influence of trends on the consumer’s choices. These factors may cause the premature replacement of electronic products and, therefore, lead to their premature end-of-life, which materialize into different types of obsolescence. In the context of this case study, around thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted with users and repairers of electronic equipment in order to document the different sub-stages of the television’s use phase. Based on collected data, the main objective of this thesis is to provide recommendations to political authorities, which could enable the minimisation of environmental impacts related to the use phase of electronic appliances. The results highlight, via the role and singular status occupied by the television, the user’s behaviour which helps increase the environmental footprint of the use phase. The multiple purchases of electronic and non-electronic goods following the television’s acquisition, its many features that are similar to those of the computers or tablets, and the premature disposal of functional but technologically obsolete devices, are among the main findings of the study. In respect of these observations, this study proposes environmental policy instruments, like an environmental labelling of the electronic products’ lifespan, which aim at supporting a more informed consumer choice. Other orientations, such as the opportunity to adopt a horizontal policy, which is a legal framework that would no longer focus on the individual product, but rather on all appliances with similar functions, are exposed. In addition, this research explores some levers that could minimize the phenomenon of premature end-of-life of electronic devices, including the exportation of obsolete and functional goods from developed to developing countries to enable their reuse and the trend of Do-It-Yourself for their repair.