Borders, Statelessness, and Agency:
Rethinking Political Space
By
Jennifer Rose Vermilyea
B.A., University of Victoria 2006
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Masters of Arts
In the Department of Political Science
© Jennifer Rose Vermilyea, 2008
University of Victoria
All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy
or other means, without the permission of the author.
ii
Supervisory Committee
Borders, Statelessness, and Agency:
Rethinking Political Space
By
Jennifer Rose Vermilyea
B.A, University of Victoria, 2006
Supervisory Committee
Dr. Warren Magnusson, Supervisor
(Department of Political Science)
Dr. R.B.J Walker, Departmental Member
(Department of Political Science)
Dr. Matt James, Departmental Member
(Department of Political Science)
Dr. Michael Asch, Outside Member
(Department of Anthropology)
iii
Supervisory Committee
Dr. Warren Magnusson, Supervisor
(Department of Political Science)
Dr. R.B.J Walker, Departmental Member
(Department of Political Science)
Dr. Matt James, Departmental Member
(Department of Political Science)
Dr. Michael Asch, Outside Member
(Department of Anthropology)
ABSTRACT
The modern state system has a specific answer to the question of where and how political
action can occur: in the state and through citizenship. State sovereignty underpins the
basic discourse of who belongs and who speaks in political communities, which is said to
have important implications for those without claim to citizenship, namely the refugee.
Giorgio Agamben‘s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life is an important
discussion of how the logic of sovereignty produces the refugee in the contemporary
international state system. However, I will argue in this paper that this narrative, like
many others, eclipses moments of refugee agency and reproduces the refugee in apolitical
terms by binging a particular conception of the political to bear. This paper critically
engages with the writings of Immanuel Kant and Giorgio Agamben to explore how this
discourse of political community (state) and political identity (citizenship) has emerged
historically and is continually reinforced. I argue that these narratives fail to see the
politicality of so called spaces of abjection which are continually reshaping and
reforming perceived understandings of the political.
iv
Table of Contents
Supervisory Committee
ii
ABSTRACT
iii
Table of Contents
iv
Acknowledgements
v
Introduction:
1
Chapter One:
5
SOVEREIGNTY AND THE POLITICAL
CONDITIONAL HOSPITALITY
Chapter Two
AGAMBEN: SOVEREIGN POWER AND BARE LIFE
Chapter Three
BODY AS RESISTANCE
CITIES OF REFUGE
6
17
25
25
45
47
50
Conclusion
62
Bibliography
66
v
Acknowledgements
This paper could not have been written without the support and encouragement of my
supervisors, colleagues, and friends. I am especially grateful to Warren Magnusson who
provided extensive support and feedback throughout the process of writing this thesis. I
would also like to thank Matt James for his helpful comments and careful reading of this
thesis.
Parts of Chapter 1 were developed from a previous paper which I co-authored with Jen
Bagelman titled ―The Blind Spot of Hospitality‖. I would like to thank Jen for helping
me develop many of the ideas in this chapter, as well as helping me outline and think
through many of the issues in this thesis.
1
Introduction:
The modern state system has a specific answer to the question of where and how political
action can occur: in the state and through citizenship. State sovereignty underpins the
basic discourse of who belongs and who speaks in political communities, which is said to
have important implications for those without claim to citizenship, namely the refugee.
However, by focusing on sovereignty, this narrative has the inherent effect of describing
and reproducing the refugee in apolitical terms by bringing a particular conception of the
political to bear. Moreover, it eclipses the modalities of being political that do not make
claim to such state-centric notions as sovereignty and citizenship.
There has been a great deal of analysis on the ways in which those without claim to the
political space of the state are continually silenced and forced to have others speak on
their behalf. Whether represented as victims or as security threats, the modern state
system – it is claimed – has the effect of politically silencing those without ‗proper‘
political community (state) and identity (citizenship). However, while aptly pointing to
the significant exclusions embedded within state-centric politics, these approaches fail to
emphasize how refugees and other so-called abject populations are continually
problematizing these regimes of citizenship and mobilizing their own political
interventions and voice.
This paper aims to address modalities of being political that do not make claim to such
state-centric notions as sovereignty and citizenship. To do so, I first present an analysis
2
of how this language of the state-system has emerged historically and the implications it
has for contemporary refugee politics. The first chapter of my paper looks at the writings
of Immanuel Kant. While I recognize that we cannot draw a line from Kant‘s writings to
contemporary forms of abjection, I argue that there are important logical implications
embedded within Kant‘s writings for contemporary refugee politics. Specifically, I am
interested in the tension he presents between a universal notion of humanity on the one
hand, and a humanity that is always already conditioned upon life within a state. I argue
that Kant‘s writings create an aporia which enables both the category of ‗statelessness‘
and the evasion of responsibility for these individuals. While Kant could not have
anticipated the type of state system that has emerged today or the technologies of border
control that enforce it, his writings were an early indication of the type of state system
that would eventually prove to have significant consequences for contemporary politics
of asylum.
While one logical extension of Kant‘s work is to look at contemporary humanitarian
practices or contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism, for the purposes of this paper, it
is more interesting to look at how the language of victimization and ‗bare life‘ has
emerged to characterize those without claim to the political space of the state. To do this,
in the second chapter of this paper, I engage with the writings of Giorgio Agamben,
whose most famous and important work is titled Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare
Life. Agamben is an important thinker in this regard, as he highlights the violence of
sovereign power at the border, in the spaces where citizenship can no longer be claimed.
However, while Agamben is an interesting and important thinker for contemporary
3
politics of asylum, I remain highly critical of his writings. I argue that Agamben not only
universalizes the so-called condition of ‗bare life‘ – which is a highly contestable and
ambiguous characterization to begin with – but that he also reproduces the conditions of
abjection by failing to see the politicality of those individuals and groups of people
without proper political community or identity. In presenting a particular understanding
of sovereignty as the understanding of sovereignty, Agamben is able to draw a clear
distinction between political life and bare life. In this chapter, I draw upon the writings
of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Ranciere in order to shed critical light upon those pockets
of resistance that are possible in even the most abject of spaces.
I argue that an
investigation into so-called spaces of exception must involve a consideration as to how
these spaces might serve both as spaces of abjection as well as spaces of resistance.
In the final chapter, I take up this notion of resistance more concretely. In particular, I
consider the ways in which certain practices can work to subvert the speechlessness
imposed upon the ‗absolute other‘ into a form of political voice. Specifically, I consider
how certain forms of bodily resistance function as a spectacle of resistance. I will first
look at Abbas Amini who, in May 2003, protested the UK government‘s treatment of
asylum seekers by going on a hunger strike. In addition to resisting food and water, he
also sewed his own ears, eyes and mouth with coarse thread. The point here is not to
celebrate Amini‘s ‗spectacle‘ as a heroic act of resistance, but rather to consider how this
action both confirms and denies his own abjection. In bringing the violence imposed
upon him into shocking visibility, Amini is able to gain a small pocket of political voice
in and through the practices that seek to render him invisible.
4
The spectacle of bodily resistance, however, is not the only way in which spaces of
abjection might be politicized.
I would like to consider how the ‗city of refuge‘
potentially opens up ways in which the sovereignty of the state is confronted and
contested at the local level.
The initiatives of the ―Don‘t Ask Don‘t Tell‖ campaigns
have been adopted in numerous cities across the United States and are underway in
Toronto. The aim is to make cities more hospitable to non-status peoples by forbidding
city workers to ask about a person‘s status, or reveal it to other government officials, to
ensure that all residents of the city, regardless of status, are able to access essential
services without fear of arrest or deportation. I explore the ‗city of refuge‘ as an example
of a local action in response to demands that confront and challenge the regulatory
regimes of the state. It would seem that this initiative – and others like it – is not a claim
to sovereignty but to a right to act and respond to local needs and demands which,
crucially, are not being made in the name of citizenship.
By exploring the subjective
nature of migration, one is able to move beyond this paternalistic vision and recognize
that migrants pose significant challenges to our received notions of community (state)
and identity (citizenship). By taking the subjective aspect of migration seriously, we can
be better attuned to how migrants are active agents in the process of their own political
subjectification.
5
Chapter One:
This chapter will explore the ways in which citizenship is articulated through a statecentric notion of political belonging, and how this extends to the hospitality practices of
states in relation to asylum seekers. I will assess the way in which citizenship and the
state are commonly invoked as the natural and in many cases pre-political division of
humanity into people, and more particularly, into nations or societies. While explicit
reference to ‗nature‘s plan‘ has long passed out of fashion, I argue that the notion of a
teleological progression of humanity – as laid out in Kant‘s Political Writings – remains
all too familiar today. The Kantian framework suggests that it is possible to locate
diverse peoples along a singular developmental continuum, and also, to show that some
people have moved farther along this continuum while others remain behind.
This
teleological understanding of humanity has resonances in contemporary anthropological
studies, and continues to have important implications in distinguishing between civilized
and uncivilized societies and individuals.1
I will then outline the Kantian conception of hospitality which, I argue, is conditioned
upon the state-system. I will explore how Kant‘s theory enables a conditional hospitality
that has important contemporary implications for asylum seekers. Kant is unable to
imagine a ―universal humanity‖ that does not also create a fundamental division between
valid standing in the world and those experiences and perspectives from which there can
1
See, for example, George W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (New York, The Free Press, 1987); also
see the contributions of Marc Pinkoski & Michal Asch and of Mark Pluciennik in Alan Barnard (ed.)
Hunter –Gatherers in History, Archaeology, and Anthropology (Berg, Oxford, New York: 2004); see also
Anthony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: 2004, 295297).
6
be no entry into that world.2 I will argue that Kant‘s logic of hospitality leaves the status
and fate of the contemporary asylum seeker unclear, and that this aporia enables states to
evade responsibility for asylum seekers and, at best, treat them as guests with the right of
‗temporary sojourn‘.
Although this paper serves to shed critical light on the violences woven in the Kantian
strand, I am cognisant of Kant‘s motivations to create a universal humanity moving
towards perpetual peace. Indeed, Kant, among his contemporaries, was particularly
concerned with the evils of colonialism, and his analysis of the hypocrisy of European
states ―who make endless ado about their piety, and who wish to be considered as chosen
believers while they live on the fruits of iniquity‖3 has enduring significance. While
these contributions may be considered progressive for his time, and indeed for our own
time, I remain sceptical of this progressive language of inclusion and equality as it tends
to cloak the violences inherent in the Kantian state-system which appears to offer us
freedom. Moreover, as I will argue in this chapter, Kant‘s anti-imperial position exists in
tension with his arguments in favour of self-defence against non-civil states and actors.4
Sovereignty and the Political
Modern notions of citizenship are frequently articulated through a peculiar tension
between internalist state-centric notions of political belonging on the one hand, and an
2
Kant, Perpetual Peace 105.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, 107
4
Anghie (2004), 297.
3
7
appeal to universal human rights or citizenship on the other hand. 5 Indeed, as Barry
Hindess suggests, ―Modern democratic regimes commonly express a commitment to the
idea of universal human rights. They also discriminate against foreigners in their midst
and at the borders…‖6 Thus, while it is now widely accepted that at least some form of
human rights exist, the common assumption is that these will normally be exercised in the
state through which one is a citizen. This is not to say, however, that the discourse of
human rights is not commonly invoked to denounce torture activities or argue for the
inherent rights of refugees. However, my point here is simply that there remains a highly
state-centric notion of rights and of entitlement to these rights. While refugees may
indeed have the inherent rights of protection and survival, these remain the most basic of
rights which continually position the refugee as a victim in opposition to the political
citizen.7
To understand this modern articulation of citizenship and political belonging, it is perhaps
useful to consider the way in which the ahistorical narrative of sovereignty underpins the
basic discourse of the political.8 By ―sovereignty‖, I mean something much broader than
government authority: sovereignty is not so much a tangible thing or fact as it is the
constitutive principle of political life, forming the seemingly incontestable basis – i.e. the
‗political‘ –upon which politics is said to occur. As Peter Nyers suggests,
[Sovereignty] provides a solution to the problem of political order,
establishing the conditions for legitimate authority over time and within a
particular space. What‘s more, as questions of order inevitably lead to
questions of identity (i.e., the political body that is to be ordered),
5
See, for example Hindess (2000)
Hindess (2000), 1486
7
This point will be discussed further in the second chapter.
8
See Nyers (2006) Walker (2000)
6
8
sovereignty also provides a powerful historical answer to the question of
what kind of political subjectivities we possess (citizenship) and where
political relations can be practiced (state).9
Sovereignty, therefore, provides a historically specific answer to the problem of political
order – one that is contingent yet carries significant implications in that this story of
sovereignty is rarely contested in the study of international relations.
Sovereignty works to provide a specific spatial answer to the question of where and how
politics can occur: in the state and through citizenship. As Rob Walker argues, ―Modern
politics is spatial politics. Its crucial condition of possibility is the distinction between an
inside and an outside, between the citizens, nations, and communities within, and the
enemies, others and absences without‖.10 According to this line of thinking, the state
provides a spatial resolution to the problem of political order by insisting that any dispute
within its bounded territory will be resolved by a legitimate sovereign power. Moreover,
theories of international relations commonly express the claim that only within the secure
borders of territorial states is it possible to engage in proper politics of the type that
would form the basis of a political community.11 The lack of a common power or
legitimate authority to secure the relations between states is interpreted as evidence of the
anarchical nature of the international realm. Thus, the violence involved in securing the
borders of the state against the anarchical ‗outside‘ is justified as the necessary
precondition for civil political relations to flourish within the political community. As
Walker argues, this notion of the political has taken on an almost undisputable presence
9
Nyers (2006) xi
Walker (1995) 306
11
Walker (1995) 306
10
9
in the modern world. Thus while it is common for debates to exist about relations within
states and indeed between states, the notion of sovereignty itself is less frequently
problematized as a site of political inquiry.
The concept of sovereignty and the way in which it has come to dominate and indeed
underpin much political discourse today is extremely complex and is not something that
can be discussed in the length of this chapter. However, I will focus particularly on how
the notion of citizenship functions as a mechanism of the political through the state
system, and how claims to a ‗universal‘ or ‗cosmopolitan‘ citizenship frequently revert
back to a statist notion of political belonging.
As I laid out at the beginning of this
chapter, modern notions of citizenship – while on one level maintaining a commitment to
the idea that the rights of citizenship should be universal – function upon the suggestion
that states should be accountable to their citizenship and responsible for their protection.
In this way, while the idea of universal rights has taken on new significance in the
twentieth century, the way in which these rights are to be secured is most often through
the state to which one belongs.
One such example of this notion of citizenship is the way in which citizenship repeatedly
emerges as the answer to questions of human displacement.
Durable solutions for
stateless peoples – the quintessential example of human displacement – are tied to
citizenship either by return to county of origin or voluntary repatriation. However, if
voluntary repatriation is not an option – as in the case where it would pose a threat to the
asylum seeker‘s life – the alternative solution would be integration within a new host
10
society. In both cases, citizenship and community membership is contrasted with the
asylum seeker‘s instability and portrayed as the solution to problems of human
displacement.
These ‗solutions‘ are increasingly presented under the guise of
humanitarianism, which purport to be an ethical and apolitical intervention into the
problems of human displacement.
However, the ‗problem‘ of stateless people is
repeatedly presented as a problem of political space: the real problem is that the asylum
seeker does not belong to a particular state in which he or she can receive the privileges
and security of citizenship.
How should we understand this pervasive notion of citizenship and the division of
humanity into nations and societies upon which it is based? This is a complex issue and I
can hardly do more here than touch its surface. However, as Barry Hindess suggests,
―the common view is that this partitioning reflects a natural, or at least extrapolitical,
division of humanity into people and, more particularly, into nations or societies‖.12
Here, the story of citizenship in the modern period is commonly presented as a historical
teleology of the kind set out with exemplary clarity in Kant‘s political writings. Kant‘s
―Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose‖ unveils the ―purpose in
nature‖ that, in Kant‘s view, underlies the ―senseless course of human events‖.13 Kant‘s
argument here rests on an assumption that still commands considerable academic support:
namely, that the natural capacities of individuals and societies flourish best under the
external guidance of the state. To understand the influence of this teleological notion of
12
13
Hindess (2000) 1491
Kant, Universal History, 42
11
humanity through citizenship, it is necessary to consider the a priori assumptions of Time
and Space articulated by Kant which still carry considerable weight today.14
According to Kant we cannot know things in themselves (noumena): ―the world as it
really is…is unknowable‖ for the world is always mediated through our own deceiving
sense perceptions; thus, ―[w]e can apprehend only the world of appearances.‖15 Man as a
finite being – one who is both the subject and object of his knowledge – can never know
the world separate from his perceptions of it; therefore, a gap between the finitude of man
and the infinite world is a given. Despite man‘s inability to know the world in itself, Kant
insists that man as a species can progress in its knowledge and understanding of the
world. As such, he rejects empirical dogmatism as well as dogmatic rationalism in
favour of a critical philosophy that is aware of the conditions under which it is possible to
attain knowledge of the world.
While Kant dismisses the contention that we can know the world in itself, he assumes the
mathematical a priori principles of Time and Space, through which it is possible to
organize the world. For Kant, Space and Time function as ‗intuition‘ separate from, and
untainted by, our sense perceptions: ―[they] are not empirical concepts which [have] been
derived from outward experiences.‖16
As such, Time and Space operate as the
conditions of possibility for man to know and order the world through that which is not
14
The following section on Kant‘s teleological notion of humanity has been derived in part from an earlier
paper that I co-authored with Jen Bagelman titled ―The Blind Spot of Hospitality‖.
15
Kant, Political Writings: Introduction. 17
16
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. 175
12
sense-based, but rule-based.
That is to say, the a priori principles ―serve as the
foundation of all external intuitions.‖17
It is important to consider here how Kant‘s a priori principle of Time interacts with his
teleology. Kant contends that, ―[a]ll the natural capacities of a creature are destined
sooner or later to be developed completely and in conformity with their end.‖18 All
beings are imbued with an absolute destination towards which they must move; to deny
this end is to deny one‘s own nature. The idea here is that a telos is buried inside each
individual, waiting to be worked out through time. Through Kant‘s teleological
understanding of nature, Time becomes a linear progressive projection. This progressive
understanding of Time is what informs his – and our - modern notion of History.
In addition to a progressive notion of Time, Kant constructs a singular, universal
conception of Time, and therefore of History, through his teleological assumptions. Kant
claims that, as humans, we share a single universal teleology. Before turning to the
content of nature‘s plan, however, we should note the moral significance this plan has for
Kant. Kant writes that ―I have an innate duty to influence posterity in such a way that it
will make constant progress.‖19 Moreover, since humanity ―is constantly progressing in
cultural matters (in keeping with its natural purpose), it is also engaged in progressive
improvement in relation to the moral end of its existence‖.20
Kant‘s teleological
understanding of humanity, then, can be viewed as a moral necessity. Rather than a plan
17
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 178
Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, 42
19
Kant, Theory and Practice, 89-89
20
Ibid.
18
13
of nature that is based upon empirical observations, this is a plan that is based upon a
moral necessity taken for granted by Kant. In writing a single teleology for human being,
Kant is writing a single History which necessarily writes Time as progress.
This
understanding of Time is effectively spatialized as a singular line upon which different
forms of existence may be ranked according to their progression along that line.
Although this spatialized time works itself out within and through human subjects, Kant
maintains that certain external conditions are necessary for this internal maturation to
occur. Kant contends:
―As things are at present, we still have a long way to go before man as a whole
can be in a position…of using their own understanding…without outside
guidance.‖
This quotation represents a triple move for Kant. First, it is apparent that we are in a
perpetual movement towards peace, evident in the fact that we have a ―long way to go.‖
It is unclear if we will ever reach Enlightenment; however, our ambition towards it
continually justifies the present as a regulative ideal. Second, we see Kant constructing a
singular teleos, a singular humanity, through his totalizing phrase, ―man as a whole‖,
which further reinforces his story of Time as a singular historical progression. Kant
offers such a totalizing understanding of the world that it is difficult to imagine it
otherwise. Finally, Kant is telling a story that necessitates the state as the external
condition of possibility for – or ―outside guidance‖ of – our self-actualization. 21 Yet he
seems to promise that this statist guidance is temporary and will eventually become
redundant; ―at present‖ the state is required, which implies that in the future it may not
be.
21
Kant, What is Enlightenment? 50
14
In this final move, Kant is setting up the state as the only condition under which human
beings may be fully human, and mature.
According to Kant, it is our unsocial
socialability – people‘s tendency, ―to come together in society, coupled, however, with
the continual resistance which constantly threatens to break this society up‖22 – which
drives us towards civil society. This leads to conflict and competition among individuals,
and later also between states, which in turns leads them to develop more fully towards
their telos:
In the same way, trees in a forest, by seeking to deprive each other of air
and sunlight, compel each other to find these by upward growth, so that
they grow beautiful and straight.23
Kant‘s understanding of nature, then, relies upon competition and conflict, and it is this
tendency which moves humanity as a whole towards their telos. However, it is also the
case that this competitive and conflictual nature requires that our unsocial qualities be
brought under control, namely by means of the state. The interactions of individuals
must be regulated by ―lawful power in a whole, which is civil society.‖ 24 So too, the
relations of civil societies themselves must be regulated but by a larger cosmopolitan
whole ―for only in this case can the greatest development of the natural dispositions
occur.‖25
In a sense, Kant urges us to abandon the state of nature for the state itself:
He must accordingly enter into a state wherein that which is to be recognized as
belonging to each person is allotted to him by law and guaranteed to him by an
22
Kant, Idea. 44.
Kant, Idea, 46
24
Kant, Critique of Pure Judgement, 300
25
Ibid.
23
15
adequate power (which is not his own, but external to him). In other words, he
should at all costs enter into a state of civil society.26
The establishment of a civil society, initially out of the need for survival, eventually
provides the conditions ―in which human attributes and qualities can be further cultivated,
thus gradually transforming society itself into a moral and rational whole‖. 27 If it were
not for this natural tendency of conflict and competition – which in turns creates the need
for civil society – ―all human talents would remain hidden for ever in a dormant state, and
men, as good natured as the sheep they tended, would scarcely render their existence
more valuable than that of their animals‖.28
This developmental view of humanity should not be view as merely a rhetorical theory
without implications in lived experience.
Indeed, as Barry Hindess suggests, this
developmental view of humanity continues to have significant and unfortunate
consequences:
If, as Kant suggests, we should view our universal history, all peoples can
be located along the one developmental continuum, and if constitutional
republics (today‘s democracies) represent the most advanced stage so far
achieved, then those who live in other ways must be seen as inhabiting
stages which are less advanced.29
Rather than a recognition of cultural diversity, this understanding of human development
leads Kant to place the rest of humanity culturally and morally behind the peoples of the
26
Ibid.
Hindess (2000), 4
28
Kant, Idea, 45
29
Hindess (2000), 9
27
16
West. Far from celebrating difference, then, ―Kant‘s hierarchical perspective requires us
to see them as deficiencies to be overcome‖.30
Kant‘s temporalising of difference remains all too familiar even today.
Johannes
Fabian‘s Time and the Other argues that there is a tendency in contemporary
anthropological discourse to locate peoples one studies as somehow representing a time
that is now past: there is a ―tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a Time
other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse.‖31 While, as Fabian
notes, this may not be a problem in studying cultures that are clearly in the past, the
problem is with its use in relation to one‘s contemporaries.
This location of
contemporary peoples as somehow in the past is made possible by this Kantian discourse
which temporalizes difference along a universal continuum.
This logic enables a
distinction between civil societies, and ones which have yet to reach this point.
In these ways, Kant writes universality into his starting point by assuming a singular
teleological progression of humanity and by showing how this teleological progression
must occur within the state. The political implications of this origin story are more
deeply understood when considering how they manifest in his conception of
cosmopolitan hospitality.
30
31
Ibid.
Fabian, (1983), 31
17
Conditional Hospitality
For the purposes of this paper I will turn to Kant‘s third definitive article in Perpetual
Peace, ―Cosmopolitan Right Shall be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality.‖
Rather than looking at hospitality through a lens of free trade – whereby nations are
required to open their borders to a global market – I will analyze hospitality as it applies
to refugee and humanitarian practices. While I agree with Jim Tully‘s traditional reading
of Kant‘s hospitality as each state‘s ―duty to…open its border to the cosmopolitan right
of voluntary ‗commerce‘ and free trade of other nations‖ here I am primarily focussed on
hospitality as dealing with the flow of bodies rather than capital. 32 I contend that both the
free trade and refugee practices that are imbued in Kant‘s notion of hospitality function as
powerful mechanisms of exclusion even today.
In Perpetual Peace Kant lays out hospitality as a universal human right. He clearly states
that when speaking of hospitality ―we are…concerned not with philanthropy but with
right.‖33 Hospitality, then, is inscribed in the form of a right, and thus becomes a matter
of law.
To consider the implication of this delineation we must question both his
understanding of ‗right‘ and his conception of the ‗human‘ entitled to this right.
32
33
Tully (2007), 16
Kant Perpetual Peace, 105
18
We should remind ourselves that for Kant, not all people are at the same developmental
position in their maturity. While relying upon a supposedly universal understanding of
humanity, Kant insists that while some humans are civilized, or at least moving towards
civility, others remain in the state of nature. For Kant the state is the condition of
possibility for the actualization of humanity. Without the state‘s ―external guidance‖
humans are unable to fulfill their teleology, and are thus not fully ‗civilized‘. Indeed, it is
a ‗crime against human nature‘ to live without the state for the state is the condition under
which our teleological progression towards peace must occur. Furthermore, those who
live within the anarchic state of nature are considered equally chaotic and unpredictable,
and thus must be looked upon with constant suspicion.34 Although it would appear that all
hostile action is not to be tolerated, hostile action is perfectly acceptable and even
necessary where the non-state actor is concerned:
Man (or an individual people) in a mere state of nature robs me of any such
security and injures me by virtue of this very state in which he co-exists with me.
He may not have injured me actively (facto) but he does injure me by his very
lawlessness of his state (statu iniusto), for he is a permanent threat to me, I can
require him either to enter into a common lawful state along with me, or to move
away from my vicinity35 [emphasis added].
In this way, while Kant claims to provide hospitality for all humans, those who pose
potential threats to one‘s own security – namely those individuals in a ‗mere‘ state of
nature – are denied such treatment.
It may be argued that Kant‘s theory of the state of nature is simply a thought experiment
without any real ramifications for contemporary stateless persons. We can clearly see,
however, the logic behind Kant‘s theory operating in international law today. Anthony
34
35
Kant Perpetual Peace, 98
Ibid.
19
Anghie, one of the leading international relations lawyers in the world, argues that Kant‘s
work provides justification for violence against states and individuals which are not
‗civilized‘ according to the Kantian definition of the term.36 Commenting on the above
quote in which Kant outlines the permanent threat posed by the individual in a mere state
of nature, Anghie suggests that, by making this argument, Kant enlarges the justifications
for war to a quite extraordinary extent by expanding the concept of an ‗injury‘: ―those
societies, which lack a ‗legal civil state‘, by their very existence, injure their neighbours,
thus justifying the use of force against them‖.37 Anghie argues that what this concept
permits, and indeed requires, is the development of a set of ideas relating to how we
should distinguish a legal civil state from a non-civil state.38
Anghie relates this
discussion of civil states versus non-civil states to contemporary practices of International
Law, and suggests that International Law can be said to operate only among liberal states,
while non-liberal states ―operate in a zone of lawlessness, untrammelled either by
international or domestic law – and it is precisely for this reason that Kant feared such
states‖.39
As we see in Kant‘s writings, his solution to the existence of non-civil actors does not
explicitly and immediately call for war or violence; rather, ―I can require him either to
enter into a common lawful state along with me or to move away from my vicinity‖ 40.
However, as Anghie notes, what globalization has ensured, of course, is that it is no
36
Anghie (2004)
Anghie, 295
38
Ibid
39
Ibid
40
Kant, Perpetual Peace, 98
37
20
longer possible to distance oneself from the civil state.41 Thus, the first possibility –
namely that ‗I can require him to enter into a common lawful state along with me‘ – is all
that remains. We should pause on the word ‗require‘ because, while this may be a vague
term, it can, and has been, interpreted in such a way that enables significant violence
against those without proper claim to ‗statehood‘. Anghie concludes his discussion on
Kant by suggesting that ―Kant‘s anti-imperial position, then, exists in tension with his
arguments in favour of self-defence – and, indeed, a version of self defence that appears
to make conquest of the non-civil state imperative‖.42
This tension in Kant‘s argument creates an aporia about how the modern asylum seeker
might be treated. The modern asylum seeker, it would seem, is not in the state of nature
because, for Kant, this seems to imply a voluntary condition on the part of the individual
in the state of nature. As our unsocial socialablity suggests, it is first out of desperation
that we enter into civil society because of our competitive and conflictual nature. 43 To
remain in the state of nature, then, is both an irrational and voluntary decision. The
modern asylum seeker, however, comes to a host country precisely because he or she is
seeking membership within a political community. The asylum seeker, then, is not in the
state of nature, is not part of the host society (but does have a right of temporary sojourn),
and yet he or she cannot go back to their ‗home‘ society.
A look at contemporary immigration and refugee politics in the UK illustrates the
enduring significance of this aporia enabled by Kant‘s writings. On March 13, 2008, it
41
Anghie (2004), 297
Ibid.
43
Kant, Idea, 44
42
21
was reported that more than 14,000 Iraqi asylum seekers in the UK will be told that they
must go home or face destitution in Britain, as the UK government considers Iraq safe
enough to return. The Iraqis involved will be told that unless they sign up for ‗voluntary‘
removal, they will essentially be made homeless and lose all access to city services. They
will also be asked to sign a waiver agreeing that the government will take no
responsibility for them or their families once they return to Iraq. 44 All this is being done
despite the fact that 78 people have been killed in incidents across Iraq in the past week
alone. Furthermore, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says
that it is dangerous to return asylum seekers to Iraq because of continuing conflict.45
Here, we see the ambiguity of the modern asylum seeker at play. It is precisely the logic
of this aporia – which we already see present in Kant‘s writings – that enables this
evasion of responsibility for the asylum seeker. Kant‘s claim that first entry cannot be
denied to those who seek it if this would result in their ‗destruction‘ has been
incorporated into the Geneva Concention on the Status of Refugees as the principle of
‗non-refoulment‘ (United Nations 1951).
While this principle requires signatory states
not to forcible return refugees and asylum seekers to their countries or origin if doing so
would pose a clear danger to their lives, this is often done, as in the case of the Iraqi
asylum seekers mentioned above. Furthermore, it is possible for states to manipulate this
article in a variety of ways, such as by sending asylum seekers to so-called safe third
countries. The contradictions and tensions within Kant‘s writings enable states to treat
asylum seekers as individuals in the state of nature or at best as guests. The ‗choice‘ to
44
The Guardian, ―Iraqi asylum seekers given Deadline to go home or face destitution in UK,‖ March 13,
2008.
45
Ibid.
22
enter into civil society is not apparent for many contemporary asylum seekers, as the
modern state system creates the conditions under which certain individuals can be left in
a ‗non-space‘ in terms of political belonging. While unable to return to their ‗home‘
country, the ‗host‘ country is not required to provide them permanent residency. This
contradiction has significant consequences for those left in this space of limbo. As I have
suggested, Kant‘s logic makes both the status of contemporary asylum seekers, and a
state‘s response to these individuals unclear. This ambiguity thus makes it possible for
states to evade responsibility and creates the very conditions of possibility for stateless
people, and also those who are in the ‗state of nature‘, in the Kantian sense, and must thus
be looked upon with constant suspicion.
While, as I have argued, Kant‘s writings have significant logical consequences for
contemporary politics, there are some important qualifications that need to be made to
understand the specific set of conditions within which Kant is writing. I evoke Kant‘s
writings here to shed light on contemporary forms of abjection, as it would seem that
many of the ways in which stateless people are marginalized today follow logically from
the type of politics Kant sets up in his Political Writings. However, I am cautious not to
read contemporary forms of abjection back into the work of Kant. Indeed, there is much
about contemporary forms of abjection that Kant could not have imagined when he was
writing. Kant is writing in a time of frontiers rather than borders.
The notion of
statelessness did not have the same implications or meaning as it does today, as the vast
majority of the world was ‗stateless‘ in the modern definition of the term. Furthermore,
contemporary practices of citizenship extend far beyond the idea of citizenship that was
23
just emerging at the time of Kant. Modern technologies of border control, the passport,
and emerging forms of biometrics were virtually unthinkable in the context in which Kant
was writing.
Many contemporary politics theorists – such as Giorgio Agamben, who will explored in
the next chapter – argue that there is no longer an ‗outside‘ to international politics and
thus even the ‗excluded‘ are now always already included by means of abjection. We can
see this phenomenon of inclusion through exclusion operating in Kant‘s work. While it is
clear that Kant is critical of the European colonialism of his time, his ‗solution‘ to this is
less clear. Kant implicitly accepts that the Europeans will stay, and that those who are
further behind on the developmental continuum will eventually be brought into civilized
society. Thus, while he excludes the vast majority of the world from his understanding of
civilized society, he nonetheless implies that these people will eventually be included in
what we now see as European civilization. Thus, while being careful to qualify Kant‘s
writings within the context of his time, I argue that the implications of his thought can be
seen in contemporary forms of abjection. The tension between the universal and the
particular set out by Kant can be seen in contemporary debates between the notion of
universal human rights and a state-centric understanding of citizenship. Furthermore, the
specific type of politically qualified life set out by Kant – as a life within the state – has
significant consequences for contemporary migrant and refugee politics.
In the
following chapter, I will take a shift to critically engage with the work of Giorgio
Agamben who I see as a thinker that explores some of these logical consequences which
have followed from Kant‘s writings. Ultimately, I see Agamben as an interesting but
24
deeply problematic thinker who, while trying to engage with contemporary forms of
abjection, ends up reproducing these very categories of abjection in the process.
25
Chapter Two
Thus far, I have considered how the language of the state system and the world historical
development model operate in Kant‘s work to enable a distinction between civilized and
uncivilzed. I have also argued that there is an aporia in Kant‘s logic about how the
modern asylum seeker might be treated.
At this point, I would like to take a shift to
consider contemporary theories of abjection through the writings of Giorgio Agamben.
Agamben is an important thinker in this regard because of the questions he raises of the
exception. Moreover, he aptly points to the ways in which spaces of abjection – the camp
– can take the capacity of being a subject away from those caught within these spaces.
However, I am interested here in the question of how spaces of exception can serve
against abjection.
In this chapter, after first outlining Agamben‘s argument, I will
highlight what I see to be the main shortcomings of his analysis. Ultimately, I am
interested in politicizing those spaces which Agamben considers to be inherently
apolitical.
Agamben: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
Much has been written on Agamben‘s analysis of the camp and the exception. Indeed,
since September 11, 2001, Agamben has become almost the obligatory reference for
critical academic analysis of geopolitics in regards to the U.S. dominated war-on-terror.
The reason is not difficult to discern. As Matthew Hannah suggests,
26
His account of the primordial basis of state sovereignty seems to have found
perfect illustrations in the blinkered, bound, and orange-clad ‗enemy
combatants‘ held at Guantanamo Bay; the hooded victims of the torture
filmed at Abu Ghiraib prison in Iraq; and the mysterious unidentified
captives moved by ‗extraordinary rendition‘ to CIA-run ‗black sites‘ for
interrogation.46
These prisoners are examples of what Agamben, drawing on ancient Roman
jurisprudence, calls homo sacer or, following Walter Benjamin, ‗bare life‘, that is ,
people who have been subjected to the sovereign ―ban‖, individuals ―set outside human
jurisdiction without being brought into the realm of divine law‖.47
Agamben begins his most important study, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life,
by taking up threads from Foucault‘s arguments regarding the centrality of biological life
in modern politics.48 Agamben credits Foucault with having recognized that ―a society‘s
‗threshold of biological modernity‘ is situated at the point at which the species and the
individual as a simple living body become what is at stake in a society‘s political
strategies.‖49 According to Agamben, however, Foucault failed to extend his analysis of
biopolitics to include such phenomenon as the Holocaust, and how the politics of life is
implicated within sovereign power. As such, Agamben takes up this ‗vanishing point‘
within Foucault‘s analysis and asks, ―What is the point at which the voluntary servitude
of individuals comes into contact with objective power?‖50 His conclusions reveal the
extent to which, for Agamben, biopoliltics presents itself at the centre of sovereign
power:
46
Hannah (2008), 57
Agamben (1998), 82
48
Agamben (1998), 3-12
49
Agamben (1998), 3
50
Agamben, (1998), 6
47
27
What this work has to record among its likely conclusions is precisely that
the two analyses [which Foucault had held apart, namely, of biopolitics and
of sovereignty] cannot be separated, and that the inclusion of bare life in the
political realm constitutes the original – if concealed – nucleus of sovereign
power. It can even be said that the production of a biopolitical body is the
original activity of sovereign power….Placing biological life at the center of
its calculations, the modern State therefore does nothing other than bring to
light the secret tie uniting power and bare life….51
In what sense is the politicization of life constitutive of sovereign power? Drawing upon
a range of classical sources, such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Carl Schmitt,
Agamben argues that sovereignty is a paradoxical concept because the sovereign ―is, at
the same time, outside and inside the juridical order. [T]he sovereign, having the legal
power to suspend the validity of the law, legally places himself outside the law‖. 52
Agamben explains this suspension by means of the term ―state of exception‖, taken from
the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt. A passage from Schmitt‘s Politische
Theologie already clearly suggests what Agamben means when he says that biopower
and sovereignty are inextricable:
The exception appears in its absolute form when it is a question of creating a
situation in which juridical rules can be valid. Every general rule demands a
regular, everyday frame of life to which it can be actually applied and which
is submitted to its regulations. . The rule requires a homogeneous medium.
This factual regularity is not merely an ―external presupposition‖ that the
jurist can ignore; it belongs, rather, to the rule‘s immanent validity. There is
no rule that is applicable to chaos. Order must be created, and sovereign is
he who definitely decides if this situation is actually effective. All law is
―situational law.‖ The sovereign creates and guarantees the situation as a
whole in its totality.53
If we take ―regular, everyday life‖ to mean the realm of biopolitics, and Schmitt‘s
distinction between ―order‖ and ―juridical order‖ as distinguishing biopolitics from
51
Agamben (1998), 6, emphasis in original.
Agamben (1998), 15
53
Schmitt [1922] 1990, quoted in Agamben (1998), 16.
52
28
legality, Schmitt can be taken to argue here that ―sovereignty is the ability of the
sovereign to step outside the law in order to (re)establish the biopolitical regularity or
normalcy of life necessary for law itself, the juridical order, to function‖.54
For Agamben, the state of exception also pertains to bare life. What is significant and
dangerous about the modern order, according to Agamben, is that the state of exception
becomes the rule, ―the realm of bare life – which is originally situated at the margins of
the political order – gradually begins to coincide with the political realm, and exclusion
and inclusion, outside and inside, bios and zoe, right and fact, enter into a zone of
indistinction.‖55 For Agamben, the camp is the space where politics becomes biopolitics
and ―bare life‖, not the citizen, the subject of politics.56 In the concentration camp,
inhabitants are stripped of every political status, including agency, voice, and even their
humanity. They become what Agamben calls ‗bare life‘ or ‗homo sacer‘ – that form of
life that can be killed but not sacrificed.57 The figure of bare life is ―included in the
juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed).‖58
Homo sacer is constituted by the sovereign ban and is subject to two exceptions: he is
excluded from human law (killing him does not count as homicide) and he is excluded
from divine law (killing him is not a ritual killing and does not count as sacrifice). In
short, homo sacer is ―Life that cannot be sacrificed and yet may be killed.‖59 He is
neither fully human in political jurisdiction nor a form a life that can be brought into the
54
Hannah (2008), 59
Agamben (1998), 9
56
Agamben, (1998), 9
57
Agamben, (1998), 8
58
Agamben, (1998), 8
59
Agamben, (1998), 82
55
29
realm of divine law. This double exclusion is of course at the same time a double
inclusion: "homo sacer belongs to God in the form of unsacrificability and is included in
the community in the form of being able to be killed."60 This exposes homo sacer to a
kind of raw violence and ―constitutes the political as the double exception: the exclusion
of both the sacred and the profane.‖61
The exception – the sovereign‘s ability to step outside the law – in fact defines the very
center of the juridical order. That is to say, ―the very space in which juridical order can
have validity is created and defined through the sovereign exception.‖62 However,
sovereign law is more complex than simply a binary logic of inclusion by means of an
interdiction. As Jenny Edkins suggests, ―It is not just a question of creating a distinction
between inside and outside: it is the tracing of a threshold between the two, a location
where inside and outside enter into a zone of indistinction.‖
63
In this zone of
indistinction, the exception and the rule become indistinguishable. Michael Dillon and
Julian Reid suggest that the zone of indistinction can be seen ―as a switching mechanism
that affects a passage between inside and outside, law and violence, physis and nomos.‖64
In commanding the trafficking that takes place, sovereign power positions itself as that
which decides upon and controls this trafficking.
Bare life is constituted, then, in and
through the fundamental act of sovereignty, in the moment of deciding what forms of life
will be granted political qualification under the state, and what forms absolutely will not.
60
Agamben (1998), note 7, 82
Edkins (2000), 17
62
Edkins, (2000) 5
63
Ibid, 6.
64
Dillon and Reid (2000) 22
61
30
In this zone of indistinction, what counts as life is not so much life defined by and
controlled through a language of freedom and facilitation – the normalizing practices of
disciplinary and biopower of Foucault – but rather a raw life, a bare life, devoid of even
the operationalized type of freedom of which Foucault speaks. In this space of the zone
of indistinction, what we see is not so much a relationship of governmental power –
where power is not negative and repressive but positive and productive – but rather a
relationship of violence, where life is exposed to the violent limit of sovereign power. As
Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin-Fat suggest,
What we have in the camps is not a power relation. Power is no longer
necessary: it is no longer necessary, for example, in its role as constitutive of
subjectivities, because there is no longer a subject – just bare life. But more
to the point, if power relations are productive as Foucault tells us, there is no
such thing, no subject, no anything that is being produced in the camp. All
we have is bare life being administered.65
In short, it is not possible to talk about power, in the Foucauldian sense, in the zone of
indistinction.
Governmental power is something that produces and constitutes
subjectivities; however, where there is no subject, no anything, being produced – just
bare life – this particular form of power recedes and all that is left is mere administration,
violence.
To further expand upon Agamben‘s argument, it is useful to consider some contemporary
spaces of ‗exception‘. The number of people kept in refugee camps around the world is
staggering. For example, of the 20 million people currently receiving assistance from the
UNHCR, approximately 12 million are refugees living in camps or similar conditions.66
An example of a well-documented detention center is Woomera detention center in South
65
66
Edkins and Pin-Fat (2004), 9
Mayell, Hillary
31
Australia, a desert camp that operated from 1999 to April 2003, designed to hold about
400 people, but holding at times as many as 1,400 asylum seekers, some for as many as
three years, in desperately poor conditions.67
Australia has a policy of mandatory
detention and detains every asylum seeker until they can ‗prove‘ that they are a legitimate
refugee. In the center, about 20 inmates a week attempted suicide.68 A detainee says,
―when we came first to Woomera, we didn‘t believe we were in Australia…Because the
things that happened – they wouldn‘t happen in Australia. In must be another country‖.69
―Woomera is another country‖, adds Campbell, commenting on his interviewee‘s
utterance. However, the significance of Woomera is that it was effectively a place of
unlaw within law – it was a place in which the so-called ‗normal‘ state of affairs was
suspended for an ‗exceptional‘ state of affairs. Hence the confusion whether it was inside
or outside Australia. The paradox here consists of sovereign power being both inside and
outside the juridical order at the same time, a situation in which the experience becomes
‗the law is outside itself‘, or, ‗nothing is outside the law‘.70
In reflection of the frustration felt by the detainees in Woomera, many went on hunger
strikes, slashed themselves, and committed suicide. Fifty of them broke out of the camp
in 2002, most have been captured, ―but they are unlikely to be prosecuted or jailed – if
they were, they would have visiting rights and a definite length of imprisonment, luxuries
denied them as asylum seekers inside Woomera‖.71 The detainees were ―legally
abandoned outside the legal system through exceptional practices that hold them under
67
BBC News, ―Australia Shuts Asylum Camp,‖April 17, 2003. Quoted in Isn and Rygiel, 196.
Campbell (2002)
69
Quoted in Campbell (2002), 26
70
Agamben (1998), 15
71
Campbell (2002), 27
68
32
their ban…the detention center is a ‗hybrid‘ in which the distinction between the legality
and illegality of what happens in it does not make sense‖.72 It is what Agamben would
call the exception, constituting a space categorically different from a prison, in which
inmates have ‗rights‘. Indeed, it is the reason why the inmates of Woomera could find
the panopticon luxurious compared to the camp.73After all, the panopticon was ‗a model
of mutual involvement and confrontation‘ that required the constant mutual engagement
of power holders and those subject to power‖.74 The power involved in the camp, as
Edkins suggests, is simply a relationship of violence where the positive powers of
normalization and discipline disappear.
Camps such as Woomera, however, are not the only spaces of ‗exception‘ that can be
found today. There also exist spaces within the city where abjects live under suspended
rules and rights. Unlike camps, whose logic is to keep out and away those threats to state
sovereignty, spaces, or what Isin and Rygiel identify as ‗zones‘ are nestled within the city
which create internal borders and spaces of exception.75 Refugees living in many cities
of the world have been called ―an invisible population‖ whose needs are often overlooked
even under UNHCR programs.76 People living without legal status are vulnerable to
abuse by employers and landlords, exploitation by immigrant consultants and lawyers,
and detention, deportation, and surveillance by authorities. For non-status people, the
national border is not just a wall around the country; it creates walls inside the country as
well. People living without status often do not have access to social services because
72
Diken (2005), 82
Diken (2005), 82
74
Bauman (1991), 10
75
Isin and Rygiel (2006), 193
76
Human Rights Watch, ―Refugees, Migration, and Trafficking‖, in Human Rights Watch World Report
2003
73
33
they fear that by going to the Police or a Social Worker, they will be reported to
immigration authorities.77 The government does not collect official statistics on
people living without status, so it is difficult to say how many non status
immigrants live in Canada. However, recent estimates suggest that there are
anywhere between 50,000 to 200,000 people in Canada with less than full legal
status, with 50% living in Toronto.78
While almost all non-status immigrants work, they are not protected against unfair and
dangerous conditions.79
Peter Nyers has interviewed non-status people about their
dangerous and unfair working conditions, and as one person living without status
suggests, ―A lot of employers are delighted to hear that you have no papers, because they
can overwork you and exploit you…it really drains you that you have to work 12 hour
shifts for very little money. I used to be young, now I feel so old‖. 80 Indeed, the use of
immigrant labor is not restricted to Canada, but is something that pervades the American
economy and many others. While this is an important and extensive issue in itself, the
point I wish to make here is simply that it is possible to identify these spaces of exception
within the city as well, and operating through a logic similar to what Agamben identifies.
In France, the build-up of Iraqis sleeping in tents in Cherbourg is alarming local residents
and politicians. The northern French port has become a ―no man's land‖ of Iraqis
desperately trying to get to England to claim asylum.81 Because Iraq is at war, the Iraqis
cannot be forcibly deported. They are instead forced into a continual cycle of destitution:
77
Nyers (2004), 8
Ibid.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
81
The Guardian, ―Lost in France: the Iraqi‘s seeking a new life in Britain‖, October 2007
78
34
―Caught by French police at the ferry terminal, they end up being released and head
straight back to Cherbourg. Caught at a British ferry terminal, they are escorted back to
their port of departure - Cherbourg, where the cycle restarts‖.82
In Britain, would-be asylum seekers find themselves in similar situations, forced onto the
street without any access to social services. While the UK government provides housing
to some asylum seekers, once a negative decision has been reached they often find
themselves on the streets without any access to social services, place to sleep, or even the
right to work.83 Indeed, the ‗choice‘ recently given to Iraqi asylum seekers to either
voluntarily return to Iraq or face destitution in the UK reflects the desperate state of
affairs in which failed asylum seekers might find themselves.84 These asylum seekers are
literally turned into a homeless population without rights to social services or even the
basic rights of ‗humanity‘. These zones within the city are spaces in which the state
attempts to render asylum seekers invisible and inaudible, without access to the services
and rights afforded to proper citizens of the city.
In considering contemporary spaces of exception, Agamben‘s thesis becomes more
evident. Agamben argues that ―the camp is the hidden paradigm of the political space of
modernity.‖85 During the twentieth century in the West, and paradigmatically since the
advent of the camp, ―the space of the state of exception transgressed its boundaries and
started to coincide with the normal order.‖86 The zone of indistinction transgressed the
82
Ibid.
The Observer, ‗Desperate Measures‖, October 2007
84
The Guardian, ―Iraqi asylum seekers given deadline to go home or face destitution in UK‖, March 2008.
85
Agamben (1998) 123.
86
Edkins (2000) 25
83
35
sphere of a space of exclusion to become the necessary centre of politics in modernity. 87
That is to say, all human life became potentially bare life, or homo sacer. As Zizek puts
it, ―the true problem is not the fragile status of those excluded, but, rather, the fact that, at
the most elementary level, we are all ‗excluded‘ in the sense that our most elementary
‗zero‘ position is that of an object of biopolitics and that eventual political and citizenship
rights are given to us as a secondary status‖.88 In saying that all human life has become
potentially homo sacer, then, Agamben is suggesting that without the secondary status of
citizenship, we are nothing but the bare life produced by sovereign power. The asylum
seekers living within the city without any rights embody the ‗zero‘ position of humanity
for Agamben.
Our ‗politicality‘ is then only a product of this secondary status of
citizenship, and not something that is a potential in our most elementary ‗zero‘ position.
I want to argue that the logic of the camp as set out by Agamben does not – and cannot –
account for the modalities of being political in these spaces of exception. He is utterly
unable to see the politicality of out most ‗zero‘ position because he is only able to see
spaces of exception as spaces of abjection, and not politics. Here I would like to consider
Ranciere‘s protest against Agamben and Arendt on what he sees to be a conflation of the
condition of being rightless with the condition of being apolitical. Ranciere argues that
by following Arendt so closely, Agamben takes the capacity of being a subject away from
those who are caught in the camp, rendering it an altogether apolitical space. Ranciere
argues that, in distinguishing between bare life and political life through a kind of
ontological trap, Arendt and Agamben sort of the problem of the political in advance.
87
88
Agamben (1998), 23
Zizek (2002), 95
36
Ranciere notes that ―[i]n this space, the executioner and the victim, the German body and
the Jewish body, appear as two parts of the same ‗biopolitical‘ body‖.89 Ranciere argues,
―Any kind of claim to rights or any struggle enacting rights is thus trapped from the very
outset in the mere polarity of bare life and state of exception.‖90 He notes this distinction
in Arendt, where she argues,
[i]f a human being loses his political status, he should, according to the
implications of the inborn and inalienable rights of man, come under exactly
the situation for which the declarations of such general rights provided.
Actually the opposite is the case. It seems that a man who is nothing but a
man has lost the very qualities which make it possible for other people to
treat him as fellow man.91
Ranciere takes issue with Arendt, arguing that for Arendt
Either the rights of the citizen are the rights of man – but the rights of man
are the rights of the unpoliticized person; they are the rights of those who
have no rights, which amounts to nothing – or the rights of man are the
rights of the citizen, the rights attached to the fact of being a citizen of such
and such a constitutional state. This means that they are the rights of those
who have rights, which amounts to a tautology.92
In his criticism of Arendt, Ranciere confuses her critique of human rights – and the state
system upon which they are founded – with a claim that politics depends upon rights. In
fact, what Arendt is arguing is that politics cannot be founded on rights. Moreover,
despite its weightiness as a discourse, human rights are in fact meaningless without the
ability to first claim a right to have rights, that is, to exist as a political subject.93
Arendt‘s argument is that human rights are indeed predicated upon a certain notion of the
political, which has important implications for those without claim to this political space.
89
Ranciere (2004), 301
Ranciere (2004), 301.
91
Arendt (1951), 300.
92
Ranciere (2004), 302
93
Isin and Rygiel (2006), 186.
90
37
Ranciere takes issue with what he sees to be a clear distinction between political life and
bare life in Arendt‘s thought. As Ranciere suggests, ―If you answer, as Arendt does, that
it is the sphere of citizenship, the sphere of political life, separated from the sphere of
private life, you sort out the problem in advance. The point is, precisely, where do you
draw the border separating one life from the other? Politics is about that border‖. 94
Moreover, it is precisely in claiming the rights that one does not have that one becomes a
political subject. Rather than a notion of rights as given or inherently belonging to some
individuals and not others, Ranciere suggests that political moments come about through
the act of claiming or taking rights.95 Ranciere‘s argument here is that the condition of
being political should not be conflated with the condition of having rights. Indeed, it is
precisely in spaces of exception or the camp that politics can occur, ―shaped in the very
gap between the abstract literalness of the rights and the polemic of their verification‖.96
While Ranciere‘s argument makes important insights into Agamben‘s analysis on the
camp – which I will discuss in more detail later in this chapter – I want to suggest that his
argument is actually very close to Arendt‘s own critique of human rights.
Arendt‘s main argument in her chapter ―The Decline of the Nations State and The Rights
of Man‖ in The Origins of Totalitarianism is that human rights are meaningless without
the ability to first claim the right of a political subject. In other words, ―the right to have
rights‖ only makes sense for people who already enjoy membership in a political
community. In tracing the origins of the discourse of human rights in Europe, Arendt
argues that minority treaties, which were meant to offer protection to ‗stateless peoples‘
94
Ranciere (2004), 307
Ranciere (2004), 307.
96
Ranciere (2004), 308
95
38
were themselves a product of the logic of sovereignty and racialized conceptions of the
homogeneity of population and rootedness in the soil that undergirded it. 97 Indeed, the
very status of statelessness only makes sense and comes about through an understanding
of political community as belonging within a state. As Arendt puts it
[n]o paradox of contemporary politics is filled with a more poignant irony than the
discrepancy between the efforts of well-meaning idealists who stubbornly insist on
regarding as ‗inalienable‘ those human rights, which are enjoyed only by citizens of
the most prosperous and civilized countries, and the situation of the rightless
themselves.98
The question of rights for the rightless proved contradictory from the outset, as it was the
state itself which produced the problem of statelessness in the first instance, and therefore
the question of minorities and refugees. Hence, all efforts to define the rights of the
stateless as somehow inalienable rights proved ineffective.99
Arendt locates this paradox in the origins of the rights of man, which is indeed very close
to Kant‘s description of man that was discussed at the beginning of this paper: while on
the one hand, the origin of rights can be traced to man himself (as opposed to God), the
guarantor of such rights could only be a sovereign people: ―man hardly appeared as a
completely isolated being who carries his dignity within himself without reference to
some large encompassing order, when he disappeared again into a member of a
people.‖100 In other words, the particular understanding of man which emerged through
the discourse of rights was one which was embedded in the sovereignty of the people,
and was increasingly defined as being rooted in soil and with a state. As Arendt puts it,
97
Arendt (1951), 270
Arendt (1951), 273
99
Isin and Rygiel (2006), 187
100
Arendt (1951), 275
98
39
―The whole question of human rights, therefore, quickly and inextricably blended with
the question of national emancipation; only the emancipated sovereignty of the people, of
one‘s own people, seemed to be able to ensure them.‖101
In pointing out the nature of rights as dependant upon the citizen, Arendt was not, as
Ranciere suggests, defending this particular notion of citizenship or rights, but rather
pointing to what is at stake in this understanding of rights. While the inalienable rights
of man are said to exist independent of government, once the rights of citizenship have
been removed, there is nothing to protect people as human beings. If human rights are
meaningless without the ability to first claim political existence, then politics cannot be
based upon rights. This is not a conflation of the condition of being political with the
condition of having rights, but rather an assertion that the condition of being political
must make claim to something other than rights.
While I contend that Ranciere misreads Arendt‘s critique of human rights, his argument
makes an important corrective to Agamben‘s reading of Arendt and the state of
exception. Whereas Arendt argues that politics cannot be based upon human rights
because of the paradoxical nature of rights as such, Agamben is utterly unable to see the
politicality of those denied rights. Agamben‘s tendency to pose bare life against that of
the political citizen needs to be problematized. While Agamben recognizes the ‗inclusive
exclusion‘ of homo sacer in the political order, this inclusion is only ever a negative
inclusion. As Agamben suggests, the figure of bare life is ―included in the juridical order
101
Ibid, 279
40
solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed).‖102 Hence, while
Agamben recognizes the constitutive relationship that homo sacer plays in the political,
he maintains a sharp distinction between bare life and political life.
This dualism of bare life and political life is not balanced or symmetrical, but riddled
with unequal power relations. Moreover, there is a tendency to see such relations of
exclusion as somehow ahistorical or essential. According to Engin Isin, one of the key
assumptions of any discourse utilising a ‗logic of exclusion‘ is that the characteristics
associated with the ‗excluded‘ predate their expulsion:
The logic of exclusion presupposes that the excluding and the excluded are
conceived as irreconcilable; that the excluded is perceived in purely negative
terms, having no property of its own, but merely expressing the absence of
the properties of the other; that these properties are essential; that the
properties of the excluded are experienced as strange, hidden, frightful, or
menacing; that the properties of the excluding are a mere negation of the
properties of the other; and that exclusion itself (or confinement or
annihilation) is actuated socially.103
If we follow Agamben‘s argument, the abject are defined only through lack: ―as the
embodiment of exclusion, the abject are prime candidates for ‗hidden, frightful, or
menacing‘ subjectivities to define their condition.‖104
This discourse suggests that,
understood politically, the abject stand in contrast to the visible political subjectivity of
the citizen. Instead, they are left as speechless and apolitical victims. While Agamben‘s
analysis does not necessarily promote this particular understanding of politics, his
narrative has the inherent effect of describing and reproducing the abject in apolitical
terms by bringing a particular conception of the political to bear. Moreover, it eclipses
102
Agamben, (1998),.8
Isin (2002), 3
104
Ibid
103
41
the modalities of being political that do not make claim to such state centric notions as
citizenship and sovereignty.
Agamben‘s assertion that ‗we have all become potentially homo sacer‘ is a striking
statement which, I argue, encodes a variety of ways of being into a particular frame of
analysis. Agamben‘s pessimistic outlook on the city provides insight into the apolitical
nature of bare life:
The third thesis [of my study], finally, throws a sinister light on the models
by which social sciences, sociology, urban studies, and architecture today
are trying to conceive and organize the public space of the world‘s cities
without any clear awareness that at their very center lies the same bare life
(even if it has been transformed and rendered apparently more human) that
defined the biopolitics of the great totalitarian states of the twentieth
century.105
Agamben‘s argument is full of sweeping statements such as this, and we should be
cautious to accept them without critical analysis. While it certainly may be the case that
spaces of exception exist where those within them are condemned to the status of
speechless victims and indeed devoid of much, if any, political agency, this is certainly
not the case for all stateless peoples today.
It is here that Ranciere‘s argument becomes interesting for its insights into human
agency. Politics, for Ranciere, is an activity that turns on equality as its principle.106
Nothing is political in itself, ―for the political only happens by means of a principle that
does not belong to it: equality‖.107 However, equality is not something that is given by
105
Agamben (1998), 182
106
Ranciere (1999), 31
Ranciere (1999), 33
107
42
law or rights, but rather an ‗assumption that needs to be discerned within the practices of
implementing it‘.108
The notion of a utopic, inherent equality is simply an empty
assumption for Ranciere.
In itself, ―it has no particular effect, no political
consistency‖.109 Indeed, equality turns into inequality the moment that it takes place in
the social or state organization.
Intellectual emancipation accordingly ―cannot be
institutionalized without becoming instruction of the people, in other words, a way of
organizing the minority‖.110
The practices that enact political equality, however, are not necessarily coextensive with
citizenship. Political moments are just as likely to come from abject subjects as from
citizen subjects. For Rancière, the point is that politics is ‗a specific kind of connection‘
that ‗comes about solely through interruption.‘111 This involves those moments when
abject subjects (in Rancière‘s terms, those who have ‗no part‘ in the social order)
articulate a grievance as an equal speaking being. This is a moment of enacting equality,
rather than assuming it as a static, empty concept. For Rancière, this is a radical political
moment. It qualifies as a quintessential political moment, what Isin identifies as the
‗moment when the naturalness of the dominant virtues is called into question and their
arbitrariness revealed‘. Such moments enable the excluded—the abject—‗to constitute
themselves as political agents under new terms, taking different positions in the social
space than those in which they were previously positioned‘.112
108
Ibid.
Ranciere (1999), 34
110
Ibid.
111
Ranciere (2001),
112
Ibid.
109
43
Ranciere finds the opposition between man and citizen deeply problematic. As Ranciere
puts it, ―man is not the void term opposed to the citizen…[a political subject] has a
positive content that is the dismissal of any difference between those who are or are not
qualified for political life‖.113 Political subjects for Ranciere act as subjects that do not
have the rights that they have and have the rights that they have not. In other words, they
at the same time reveal the arbitrariness of rights as simply ‗given‘, and enact the rights
that they are denied.114 Moreover, ―they not only confront the inscriptions of rights to
situations of denial; they put together the world where those rights are valid and the world
where they are not‖.115
In considering the operation of spaces of abjection today, Agamben too quickly assumes
these to be apolitical spaces. While his analysis makes important insights into the way in
which the abject are continually silenced and rendered invisible through spaces of
exception, Agamben‘s argument has the inherent effect of reproducing the abject as
speechless victims without political agency.
The distinction between bare life and
political life in Agamben‘s thought eclipses the modalities of being political that do not
make claim to citizenship, or challenge the implicit assumptions that this division of
peoples makes. Agamben‘s analysis fails to take seriously the active agency of those in
even the most abject of spaces. The unfortunate effect of conjuring up the image of the
concentration camp – and of absolute ‗bare life‘ – is that it makes the possibility of
resistance futile. While there are certainly extremes where resistance may indeed be
impossible, not everyone outside the ‗proper‘ sphere of the political is at this extreme,
113
Ranciere (2004), 304.
Ibid
115
Ibid
114
44
and as I will argue in the following chapter, even in the most abject of spaces, certain
modes of resistance may be possible.
Thus, while there is a certain validity to
Agamben‘s argument, I argue that it forecloses both the gradations of inclusions and
exclusions, and it also frames abjection in such a way as to make resistance to such
abjection appear altogether impossible.
Ranciere‘s understanding of political subjectivity is interesting here for the challenges it
poses to this division of bare life and political life. For Ranciere, it is precisely spaces of
exclusion that can serve against abjection. In the following chapter, I will consider
concrete examples of politics coming about through abjection. I will first explore bodily
resistance as a means of making visible the violences which attempt to render the abject
invisible. In this example, we can see a certain ‗truth‘ or applicability to Agamben‘s
argument on bare life in that the asylum seeker – Abbas Amini – is on the one hand
rendered invisible and politically abject. However, I argue that even in this extreme of
abjection, Amini was able to exercise a form of political voice and that this was brought
about precisely through his abjection. I will then consider how local campaigns can act
to politicize the lives of those so-called invisible populations within the city. Part of my
aim in the following chapter is to show how Agamben‘s analysis of the camp and bare
life misses both the gradations of exclusion and inclusion as well as the responses both by
those in these spaces of exclusion, and by government or authority figures confronted by
these populations.
45
Chapter Three
Understanding the ways in which refugees and non-status migrants are being stigmatized,
marginalized, and securitized is of obvious importance. The work of Giorgio Agamben
represents just one of the ways in which conditions of abjection are discussed today.
Recent scholarship has persuasively illustrated how refugees have historically been
victimized and denied the status of political beings.116 This work – while crucial and
important – risks glossing over the agency of non-status migrants in the process of
describing their abjection. In focusing solely on the abjection of non-status lives, what
risks being displaced is the various ways in which these communities are politicizing
themselves – becoming political subjects – on their own terms. Moreover, this discourse
risks homogenizing the ways in which states are responding to migration. In claiming
that citizens have rights and non-citizens do not, that citizens are political while noncitizens are characterized by abjection, Agamben‘s analysis not only empirically misses
the point of contemporary politics, but reproduces the categories of the citizen/non citizen
in the process.
In this chapter, I consider the ways in which migrants are asserting their own political
agency and autonomy in and through the very discourses that continually seek to render
them silent. I want to argue that spaces of abjection do not all function in the same way
as the camp set out by Agamben, and that indeed there are varying gradations of
abjection and citizenship that need to be explored. However, I will first address this
notion of so-called ‗bare life‘ where the condition of abjection is clearly evident and
116
See, for example, Lippert (1999), Soguk (1999), and Pratt (2005).
46
extreme.
I look at Abbas Amini who, in May 2003, protested the UK government‘s
treatment of asylum seekers by going on a hunger strike. In addition to resisting food and
water, he also sewed his own ears, eyes and mouth with coarse thread. I explore Amini
not as a tragic hero, but as someone whose actions are nonetheless political. Clearly, in
the concentration camp, resistance may indeed have been futile in many instances.
However, in solely focusing on the concentration camp and futile resistance, we miss
what might be political moments of those in modern asylum centres.
I will then consider the ‗City of Refuge‘ as an example of a local action in response to
demands that confront and challenge the regulatory regimes of the state. In the United
States, over fifty municipalities have adopted some sort of ‗Don‘t Ask Don‘t Tell‘ policy
(DADT). In Canada, a DADT campaign was launched in Toronto in March 2004, with
over forty community organizations as active participants. Groups in Vancouver and
Montreal are considering similar campaigns. DADT campaigns aim to create a ‗City of
Refuge‘ where everyone has equal access to essential services, regardless of citizenship
status, and without fear of arrest or deportation. It would seem that this initiative – and
others like it – is not a claim to sovereignty but to a right to act and respond to local needs
and demands which, crucially, are not being made in the name of citizenship. The city of
refuge shows that not all levels of government respond to the demands of migrants in the
same manner. I want to problematize the notion of sovereignty set out by Agamben by
showing that not only is this notion of sovereignty repeatedly challenged by those voices
apparently silenced by its reach, but that this all-encompassing nature of sovereignty is
perhaps not so all-encompassing after all. Spaces of ‗exception‘ do not all function in the
47
same way, and perhaps an important political act of migrant politics is the making of
spaces of exception as unexceptional, that is, as spaces where the sovereign exception
does not reach, does not encompass, but rather runs up against another type of politics.
Body as Resistance
In May 2003, Abbas Amini, an Iranian seeking asylum in the United Kingdom [UK],
protested the UK government‘s treatment of asylum seekers by going on a hunger strike.
In addition to resisting food and water, he also sewed his own ears, eyes and mouth with
coarse thread. Of this he said, ―I sewed my eyes so others could see, I sewed my ears so
others could hear, I sewed my mouth to give others a voice‖ [emphasis added]. Even after
reaching a successful asylum claim, Amini did not relent. On the contrary, he claimed
that his action was not just on his own behalf but for all asylum seekers: ―I have come to
realize that there is a very important struggle to be continued.‖ In an interview with The
Guardian he revealed of his actions, ―yes, it was political; professional psychologists
have all determined that I am not psychologically damaged and have no mental illness,
but the pressure on me was so huge that I got to the point that I thought there was no
hope.‖ 117
Amini‘s political act viscerally reveals how his own person has been reduced to bare life
by the seemingly protective practices of hospitality. By bringing the hospitality practices
that imposed silence upon him into shocking visibility, Amini unmasked the violences of
117
Edkins and Pin-Fat (2004), 17
48
this very hospitality that depend upon being continually masked. By physically disabling
his ability to speak – and in so doing demanding someone communicate for him - Amini
illustrated the ways in which refugees are always-already politically silenced and forced
to have another speak on their behalf. Crucially, he claimed back the possibility of
speaking politically.118
Suturing one‘s eyelids and lips in protest viscerally marks the
pain of the denial of political subjectivity. But it is also an act of resistance, ―reclaiming
political subjectivity out of this very act of silencing‖. 119 Denied legal citizenship status,
and with it ―the onto-political statues of a speaking being,‖ abjects ―have to interrupt the
dominant political (speaking) order not just to be heard, but to be recognized as a
speaking being as such‖.120 In this way, Amini used his own body – which had been
depoliticized –as a political site of resistance.
Through this act of resistance Amini physically embodies Derrida‘s assertion that
―Keeping silent is already a modality of possible speaking.‖ 121 By inscribing the powerrelations upon himself, Amini‘s body becomes a visible reminder of the violences which
have been made invisible. The figure of the asylum seeker illuminates the disjuncture
between sovereign power and the fictive basis upon which it rests.
Moreover, it
highlights the aporia that this Kantian hospitality creates for modern politics of asylum:
unable to return home, but denied citizenship status in the UK, Amini is literally in a nonplace in sovereign terms. The figure of the asylum seeker here exposes the absurd fact
that it is simply ―accident of birth that affords the technology to underwrite the legitimacy
118
Edkins and Pin-Fat (2004), 17
Isin and Rygiel (2006), 189
120
Nyers (2003), 1078
121
Derrida (2000), 135
119
49
of boundary making: political, topographical, linguistic, racial‖. 122 Or, as Engin Isin
suggests, ―political acts can be described as practices that work to expose the arbitrary
foundations of superiority, hierarchy, and inequality‖.123 It is in this sense that I consider
Amini‘s act political. In making the invisible power relations painfully visible, Amini
exposes the arbitrary foundations upon which they rest.
Indeed, this act of bodily
resistance – and others like it – elicits strong public reactions and exposes the violence of
the detention centers which depend upon this violence remaining somewhat unseen.
However, while I want to consider Amini‘s act as a political act, I do not want to
celebrate Amini as a tragic hero, since he acted in a space where he was nevertheless
denied both subjectivity and the capacity to decide his own fate. The paradox here is
significant: Amini could mark violence upon his body but this was also all he could do,
which is to say that this was essentially his only option. There is something spectacular
about Amini‘s resistance and it is perhaps this spectacle that enables the response it
generates. The sense of outrage to acts of bodily resistance such as this is a response to
the violence of this spectacle which exposes a deeper violence. This spectacle, however,
is not without its problems. While political for the reasons I have already stated, it is not
a type of political life that is either durable or desirable. Amini acted in a way which
represented his utter entrapment. This is an act of politics, a political moment, but
nonetheless not something that should be celebrated or held as a heroic gesture.
However, I argue that in exposing the arbitrary foundations of sovereignty and in turning
his voicelessness into a form of political voice, Amini‘s act problematizes Agamben‘s
122
123
Dauphinee, 236
Isin (2002), 276
50
distinction between political life and bare life. Amini spoke in a space that was designed
to make political speech utterly impossible; he made himself visible in a space that seeks
to render its inhabitants invisible.
Cities of Refuge
While Amini‘s political act sheds light on the pockets of resistance that are possible in
even the most abject of spaces – where sovereignty is truly defined as an inclusion
through exclusion – this example is neither the only mode of resistance to sovereign
power, nor is it the only relation possible with sovereign power. What Agamben‘s
analysis of the camp misses is the gradation of inclusions and exclusions in contemporary
politics. Agamben makes a great deal out of the creation of the exception, while he
nonetheless maintains that the exception is always included in the form of an exclusion.
Thus, while recognizing the constitutive relationship between spaces of exclusion and the
‗political inside‘, Agamben insists on a binary between the two, and fails to recognize the
variety of ways of being within and against sovereign power.
Perhaps one of the most problematic aspects of Agamben‘s argument is his insistence that
everything is encompassed within sovereign power, which is a notion of sovereignty that
Agamben adopts from Schmitt. Rather than taking this understanding of sovereignty as a
self evident truth, I would like to consider contemporary forms of migrant politics at the
local level which, I argue, do not make claim to sovereignty, and are not encompassed by
51
the type of sovereignty of which Agamben speaks. Specifically, I want to consider the
notion of the city of refuge, in which demands are directed towards local levels of
government, disrupting conventional understandings of sovereignty and politics.
Before exploring the city of refuge as a site of resistance, I want to first argue that even
where non-status people are not living in a ‗city of refuge‘, they are still living and
functioning in a way that is not necessarily defined by ‗bare life‘. To be sure, there are
considerable barriers and challenges that non-status people face on a daily basis – which
will be further discussed below – that I do not wish to gloss over here. However, I want
to make the simple but significant point that it is not sufficient to describe all non-status
people – who are by definition in a ‗zone of exclusion‘ – as bare life. Even where there is
no formal municipal policy to grant non-status people access to essential services, many
of these people develop ties within the community, work (albeit often under contemptible
conditions), and establish a way of life within the city that allows them to live as active
subjects. To erase their subjectivity completely and encode these abject populations
under the rubric of bare life is to miss both their subjective lived reality, and the variety
of experiences and ways of living of non-status people.
Many words are used to describe people without full legal immigration status, such as
―aliens‖, ―undocumented‖, ―illegals‖, and ―irregular migrant‖.
All of these terms
indicate a deviation from the full legal and political status of the citizen. As such, these
terms are political, and they need to be examined critically and deployed cautiously. For
the purposes of this paper, I will use the term ―non-status immigrant‖ because it is the
52
term used by the self-organized political action committees of non-status immigrants in
Canada (e.g., Action Committee of Non-Status Algerians). Simply speaking, non-status
immigrants are people who do not possess the legal status to allow them to live
permanently in Canada. It is relatively uncommon for a person to become non-status by
entering the country in an illegal manner. More often, people have travelled to Canada
quite legally until their legal status has expired. For example, a refugee claim could have
been rejected, or a student visa, visitor visa, or work permit could have expired while the
person continues to reside in Canada.
Through cross-national networking, the non-status action committees in Montreal,
Toronto, Vancouver, and other Canadian cities have developed a series of key demands.
These include an end to deportations, an end to the detention of migrants, immigrants,
and refugees, and the abolition of ―security certificates‖ (a measure in Canadian
immigration law that allows for non-citizens deemed to be a threat to ―national security‖
to be held in detention indefinitely, without charge, and under secret evidence).124
However, the demand that tops the list of most of the non-status action committees and
their allied groups is for the Canadian government to implement a program to
―regularize‖ the status of non-status immigrants.125
The demand for regularization is, simply put, a demand to allow non-status immigrants to
apply for official legal status so that they may reside permanently within Canada. The
term ‗regularization‘ unmistakably suggests that a process of normalization is occurring,
124
125
Nyers (2008, forthcoming), 15
Wright (2003)
53
whereby those accepted into Canada through regularization can make claim to normality,
while those rejected are further labelled as deviant or undesirable. Indeed, the Canadian
state has always employed restrictive criteria in their regularization programs.126 While
regularization programs are typically pitched as humanitarian and compassionate efforts,
the Canadian state has historically used these techniques to increase the restrictive criteria
necessary to legally reside in Canada. In this way, ―regularization programs can go hand
in hand with the imposition of tighter border regimes, more restrictive immigration
controls, and harsher punishment on non-status immigrants‖.127
This state-centric
response to immigration is a further way in which the normality and security of the
citizen opposes the insecurity and ‗irregularity‘ of the immigrant.
However, it is easy to see why such a program would be of great importance to non-status
peoples. Living without full legal status has important implications in the every day lives
of those in this position. Simply going to the doctor, a social worker, or the police poses
a fear of deportation, as authority figures in these positions have often reported non-status
people who have come to them for services. As one non-status person living in Toronto
puts it:
What I am saying here is that [living without status] really does affect your
everyday life in every possible way. For example, I am twenty-eight and I
have been married to my husband – it has been four years now. Sometimes
we raise the option of having children. Of course, when you are non-status
you have to ask yourself, because it is a responsibility to have a child, ―Can
I have a child, really? Should I take this responsibility and have a child?
What is going to happen tomorrow? Let‘s say I get deported.‖ You never
know.128
126
Nyers (forthcoming, 2008), 15
Ibid.
128
Quote from Nyers and Lowry (2003), 2
127
54
As this example illustrates, the challenges faced by those living without status are both
real and significant.
At the same time, however, by imposing restrictive criteria,
regularization programs can actually increase the numbers of non-status people in
detention and under deportation orders. As well, the restrictive criteria of regularization
programs discourages many non-status immigrants from even applying for regularization,
thus pushing them further underground and perpetrating the problem of social exclusion
faced by non-status immigrants.129
As such, regularization programs are not something that should be abandoned, but need
to be considered and implemented cautiously. Aware of the exclusionary mechanisms
embedded in state-centered regularization programs, campaigns by non-status migrants
and their allies are beginning to direct their demands to local levels of government, where
the state‘s power to exclude can be avoided or minimized. In their efforts to implement
innovative public policy at the municipal level, migrant rights movements challenge the
perceived assumption that it is the state which has the ultimate authority over matters of
immigration.
City-based policy initiatives are of interest to the campaigns for
regularization because, as discussed above, all other state-centric initiatives risk creating
more barriers and more exclusions in their effort to legalize immigrants. Thus, while the
power to grant ―status‖ is a prerogative of the federal government, municipalities can
side-step this by providing services on the basis of residency, not legal status.130 This
response by municipalities, to be sure, is often in recognition that failure to provide
services to all residents of a city could result in unsafe and unhealthy communities. If
129
130
Ibid, 16.
Ibid, 20
55
non-status migrants do not go to the doctor, report to the police or social workers, or
enrol their children in school out of fear that they may be reported and detained, local
authorities have the legitimate concern that social problems are not being addressed in the
city.
In response to this concern, a key element of non-status action committees and their allies
is the implementation of a Don‘t Ask Don‘t Tell policy (DADT). DADT campaigns aim
to create a ‗City of Refuge‘ where everyone has equal access to essential services,
regardless of citizenship status, and without fear of arrest or deportation. Under a DADT
initiative, city officials are forbidden to ask about the status of a person when delivering
them services (don‘t ask), and are also forbidden to report non-status persons to
government authorities (don‘t tell). A DADT policy would therefore ensure that all city
services are available to all residents on the basis of need, and would also ensure that
municipal funds, resources, and workers, are not being used to report non-status
residents.
A DADT campaign is well underway in Toronto, with over forty community
organizations as active participants. In a short time in Toronto, the DADT campaign has
generated considerable momentum and received wide publicity and support from city
councillors and the community at large.131 If successful, a DADT policy could become a
de facto regularization program that side-steps the exclusionary mechanisms built into the
logic of a state-centered regularization program.
131
Ibid, 21.
56
In addition to providing real solutions for people living without status in the city, the
DADT campaign, in taking on practices fundamental to the sovereign state, poses
important challenges to the state as the site of politics. Indeed, the DADT campaign
represents not only a challenge to perceived notions of migrant abjection, but also
challenges the apparently all-encompassing aspect of sovereign power.
What is
interesting and important about ‗city of refuge‘ politics is that it does not make claim to
sovereignty, but rather to a right to act and respond to local needs and demands which
challenge the regulatory regimes of the state. The city of refuge, I argue, poses serious
challenges to our perceived notion of political community (state) and political
subjectivity (citizenship). Rather than conceiving of the city as simply a ‗creature of the
state‘ which takes on similar powers of state sovereignty, only on a smaller level, I follow
Warren Magnusson who argues that the municipality is not subordinate to the state but is
a political authority of a different sort.
Magnusson argues, ―there are many other
structuring principles in the world besides state sovereignty, and the practices by which
we are governed do not all emanate from the state‖.132 I argue that the city of refuge
provides evidence of a different sort of structuring principle than that of state sovereignty,
and challenges the all-encompassing nature of sovereignty as defined by Agamben.
Indeed, the city of refuge forces us to ask, should citizenship and non-citizenship be seen
as variations in legal status, or are they forms of practice that are up for the taking? 133 Is
it possible to have a political community without status? The initiatives by non-status
immigrants and their allies, such as the one discussed above, suggests that community
132
133
Magnusson, ―Urbanism, Cities, and Local Self Government‖, 97
Honnig (2003), Nyers (2003), Ranciere (1999)
57
without status is not only possible, but that it is becoming a transformative sight of
politics which challenges perceived understandings of political belonging and agency.
The city of refuge is an example of a hospitality practice that addresses some of the
challenges posed by the aporia in Kant‘s logic, which continues to function through statecentric hospitality practices. By defying the logic of state sovereignty, the city of refuge
challenges perceived distinctions between the citizen and the non-citizen, political and
abject. Moreover, the political non-space in which asylum seekers often find themselves
through the logic of a Kantian hospitality is turned around in the city of refuge. Rather
than providing a ‗choice‘ to asylum seekers to either voluntarily return home or face
destitution in the ‗host‘ country – as was recently seen in the UK – the city of refuge
offers a different approach to this Kantian aporia. As a recent public campaign in San
Francisco illustrates, cities of refuge assert to provide safe access to public services which
might otherwise be denied those who do not have proper citizenship status.134
In addition to challenging the clear distinction between political life and bare life, cities
of refuge also confront key elements of Agamben‘s account of sovereign power.
Specifically, the sovereign ability to capture individuals, taken for granted by Agamben,
is put into question in the city of refuge. One may argue the non-status immigrants
indeed represent a space of exception as defined by Agamben – the inhabitants of nonstatus ‗identities‘ are denied the rights normally afforded to citizens. However, as the
above example makes clear, the distinction between citizen/non-citizen potentially breaks
134
New York Times, ―San Francisco Reaches Out to Immigrants‖, April 2008.
58
down in the city, where the defining rights of the citizen also become the defining rights
of the non-citizen. Indeed, what is essentially created is a community without status.
This is neither created by, nor captured by, sovereign power but is rather something
unaccounted for by state-centric notions of the political.
Mathew Hannah poses an important question to Agamben‘s analysis of sovereign power
when he asks, ―what are the geographical presuppositions of our purported vulnerability,
and how universally can they be said to apply?‖135 A key element of sovereign power is
the procession of knowledge about the status of inhabitants within its borders, and access
to these populations. The DADT campaign poses an interesting challenge to this element
of knowledge by essentially forbidding city officials to know the population it is serving,
through the categories of knowledge identified with sovereign power.
The city of
refuge, I argue, represents a point at which sovereignty runs up against other powers,
other politics, that cannot be included into sovereign power, even in the form of an
exclusion.
The geographical presupposition of Agamben‘s thought – namely that sovereign power is
all-encompassing – proves empirically false in the case of the city of refuge, where
perhaps what we see is not a space of exception, but a space of unexeptionality defined
through a different type of politics altogether than that put forward by Agamben. Proving
beyond the reach of the state precisely because of their unknowability through sovereign
categories of knowledge, non-status immigrants have the potential to remain unknowable
in the sovereign sense. Indeed, the aspects of normal, everyday life which make non135
Hannah (2008), 63
59
status immigrants vulnerable to sovereign power are being disrupted by a reversal of how
these everyday occurrences are confronted. This is an action taken not by the state, and
understood not though sovereign power, but through a local initiative aimed to deal with
real, everyday problems within the city.
The city of refuge is not only interesting because of its challenge to state sovereignty, but
also because of the way in which it challenges key assumptions of space within the city.
Henri Lefebvre is an important thinker in this regard because of his insights into how
space is utilized and contested. In The Production of Space, Lefebvre argues that space is
simultaneously a spatial practice (an externalized, material environment), a
representation of space (a conceptual model used to direct practice), and a space of
representation (the lived social relation of users to the environment). In the early part of
his book, Lefebvre applies this triple distinction to analyze different environments, and
focuses on how various societies have particularized space in both form and meaning
over time.136 To do this, Lefebvre considers the distinction between abstract space and
social space. Abstract space is produced by those in power, and is a hierarchical space
that is pertinent to those who wish to control the social and political organization of
space. Social space, by contrast, is a form of claiming space by those who live it. In
contrast to abstract space, social space arises from practice – ―the everyday lived
experience that is externalized and materialized through action by all members of society,
even rulers‖.137 Whereas persons working from the model of abstract space continually
136
137
Gottdiener, 131
Ibid.
60
try to produce a certain spatial configuration, the social space in practice always
transcends conceived boundaries and regulated forms.
I invoke Lefebvre here because there is a clear parallel between Lefebvre‘s understanding
of the tension between abstract and social space, and of the lived experiences of nonstatus migrants within the city. Lefebvre‘s understanding of space resonates strongly
with Ranciere‘s understanding of the political. If we can see political status not as a
‗given‘ or ‗assigned‘ characteristic, but rather as a practice that is up for the taking, then
we can begin to appreciate the politicality of those who might otherwise be characterized
by abjection. To return to the city of refuge, we can clearly see a model of the city
(abstract space) that is being produced through categories of citizen/non-citizen,
status/non-status, legal/illegal, that is continually being challenged by the lived social
practices of those within this space.
By decentring sovereignty from our mode of
analysis, we can begin to appreciate how this production of space is contested on an
everyday basis in practice. Moreover, we can begin to appreciate the active agency of
those who might be denied such agency by the model of space produced by sovereignty.
Sandro Mezzadra has written extensively on matters of migrant agency and resists the
characterization of migrants as victims in need of assistance, care, or protection. 138 While
recognizing the good intentions and ‗noble motives‘ from which this work stems,
Mezzadra insists that this characterization misses the subjective nature of migration. For
Mezzadra, migration is not simply an inevitable response to ‗objective‘ structural forces,
such as war, economics, or persecution, but involves ―an autonomous space of subjective
138
Mezzadra and Neilson (2003), 22
61
action that can force significant institutional transformations‖.139
By exploring the
subjective nature of migration, one is able to move beyond this paternalistic vision and
recognize that migrants pose significant challenges to our received notions of community
(state) and identity (citizenship). By critically engaging in the subjective aspect of
migration, we can be better attuned to how migrant politics are shaping and transforming
perceived notions of political space and identity.
Importantly, we can also avoid
reproducing a particular, state centric notion of political belonging in the process.
139
Ibid
62
Conclusion
In this paper, I have traced through the implications of particular conceptions of political
space in Kant, which were refigured by Agamben. By reading the two together, my aim
has been to think about the implications of these accounts of the political in terms of the
modern refugee. Particularly, I have tried to think through the effects of the aporia in
Kant‘s thought. I argue that Agamben, rather than dealing with this aporia, actually
reinforces it through his distinction between political life and bare life. The story of
political belonging (state) and identity (citizenship) – articulated by Kant and reproduced
by Agamben – is repeatedly contested by a different account of the political, one that
speaks ‗out of place‘ and can not be captured or explained by a state-centric notion of
sovereignty. While the accounts (and there are many) of the ways in which refugees are
rendered abject are important and should not be glossed over, the emphasis of this paper
is of a different sort. I argue that alternative and emerging forms of politics destabilize
perceived distinctions between the citizen and the non-citizen, and challenge the entire
architecture of political space.
While on the one hand, these political interventions by so-called abject populations are
occurring on a daily basis, much of the literature on abjection misses this subjective
formation. In particular, I have focused on Agamben‘s account of sovereignty and bare
life which has the inherent effect, I argue, of describing and reproducing the refugee in
apolitical terms by bringing a particular conception of the political to bear. In illustrating
the ‗bare life‘ of the excluded space of sovereignty, Agamben‘s analysis misses how
63
sovereign power is being challenged in these moments. Moreover, in relying on a certain
account of sovereignty, Agamben is able to make a clear distinction between political life
and bare life – one which he is not necessarily endorsing but that he nonetheless
reinforces through his particular reading of the political. Moreover, Agamben makes a
number of questionable characterizations in his argument, particularly in relation to his
understanding of bare life and how states respond to abject populations. I argue that, in
fact, there is a gradation of exclusions and inclusions in contemporary politics that is
altogether missed by Agamben. Indeed, contemporary politics is much more complex
than a clear distinction between political life and bare life would make it appear. Most
importantly, perhaps, Agamben‘s analysis leaves no room to think about the type of
active political agency occurring on a daily basis from those in the positions of so-called
‗bare life‘.
His analysis prevents us from seeing the ways in which refugees act
politically, and how others are responding in ways that may improve and open up new
possibilities and spaces that are denied by the logic of the state system. Ultimately, I
argue, Agamben dramaticizes this exclusion in an interesting way, but does so at a great
expense – one which does not help us to think about alternative and emerging forms of
political belonging and identity.
In exploring some of these spaces of resistance and acts of agency by non-status
migrants, I do not presume to speak on behalf of or represent the full struggles of these
abject populations. Rather, I hope to problematize the discourse that speaks of these
populations only through a language of victimhood and abjection. While it is clear that
powerful mechanisms of exclusion function today, it is not the case that these exclusions
64
necessarily define or render silent these so-called abject populations. Moreover, it is not
the case that all levels of government uniformly exclude non-citizens from a political
community in the same way. As the city of refuge illustrates, municipal governments are
actively reshaping perceived understandings of political community and identity.
Furthermore, non-status migrants are positioning themselves as active and political agents
in these struggles. What is interesting and important about the city of refuge is that it
operates, I argue, through a form of hospitality that we originally see in Kant. However,
this is a kind of hospitality that goes against the logic of state sovereignty, and perhaps
addresses some of the aporias in Kant‘s thought.
Highlighting refugee agency provides a way to challenge the narrative of sovereignty and
the account of the political that it produces. Agamben‘s analysis is an important step in
showing how the refugee is continually produced in and through sovereign power.
However, as this paper has argued, it cannot account for the lived realities of those in
these spaces of exclusion. While my discussion of the body as resistance and the city of
refuge are only preliminary steps to an adequate examination of refugee agency in its
myriad forms, it helps highlight what is otherwise foreclosed in many accounts of refugee
politics today. Indeed, the notion of the city of refuge itself is a topic of considerable
scope and something that could be expanded upon at great length. While it is now
common to argue that alternative forms of politics are possible, there is little work
actually being done to concretely consider these initiatives. Instead, research into the
logic of sovereignty and state politics dominates international relations theory today.
This is unfortunate because it misses the multiplicity of challenges to this sovereignty and
65
the account of the political that it produces. This paper has attempted to shed light on
some of these pockets of resistance, but it remains the task of contemporary theories of
politics to engage more seriously with these struggles as important acts of political
resistance and agency.
66
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