Globalization, security, paradox: Towards a refugee biopolitics

Refuge

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 49-57

  Muller, Benjamin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GLOBALIZATION; HUMAN RIGHTS; REFUGEE; SOCIAL POLICY;

EID: 24944538381     PISSN: 02295113     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (42)

1. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
2. For a recent critical examination of the renaissance of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" thesis,
3. see Mark B. Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations (London: Polity Press, 2002).
4. See Peter Andreas and Thomas J. Biersteker, eds., The Rebordering of North America (New York: Routledge, 2003).
5. The Conservative Party stance on asylum is a policy area where the party finds itself dangerously close to the xenophobic British National Party. The Conservative leader has argued that the notion of presumed innocence should no longer be considered when it comes to asylum seekers, suggesting that they all be placed in secure facilities upon arrival during such time as required to process them. The Conservatives have also drawn on the increasing prevalence of security discourses in their arguments about asylum. See Anne Perkins, "Terrorists Posing as Refugees, Say Tories," The Guardian, 29 January 2003.
6. The theme of Gulliver was introduced in international relations by Rob Walker in Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 125-40. The basic assumption is that we are unable to conceptualize the political beyond state sovereignty, but only account for changes in scale. We might conceive of bigger or smaller political organizations, but other than differences of scale, they are reproductions of the same sovereign organization.
7. Nevzat Soguk, "Transnational/Transborder Bodies: Resistance, Accommodation, and Exile in Refugee and Migrant Movements on the US-Mexican Border," in Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities, ed. Michael J. Shapiro and Hayward R. Alker (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 294.
8. Also see Nevzat Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 15.
9. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 131.
10. Michael Dillon, "The Scandal of the Refugee: Some Reflections on the 'Inter' of International Relations and Continental Thought," in Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, ed. David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 114.
11. Soguk, States and Strangers, 9. For a provocative examination of the issue of the "speechless" condition of refugees, see
12. Peter Nyers, "Body Politics in Motion: Refugees and States of/in Emergency" (Ph.D. dissertation, York University, 2002).
13. Engin Isin's Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002) has raised related points. Indicating the extent to which the refugee is indeed a "political being," Isin argues that the strategies and technologies employed to define citizenship are equally integral to the definition of the others, the beggars, the refugees, and, as such, these figures are "being political," or for the purposes here, "political beings." Isin points out: "The closure theories that define citizenship as a space of privilege for the few that excludes others neglect a subtle but important aspect of citizenship: that it requires the constitution of these others to become possible", 4.
14. Soguk, States and Strangers, 18.
15. Soguk, "Transnational/Transborder Bodies," 287.
16. Deleuze and Guattari, 381.
17. Nyers, 149.
18. Michel Foucault in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 265.
19. Ibid., 262.
20. I b i d.
21. Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 102.
22. See Agamben, Homo Sacer.
23. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 130-31.
24. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 3.
25. Michel Foucault, "Right of Death and Power over Life," in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 260.
26. Ibid., 261.
27. "Well-founded fear" can be found in the Refugee Convention 1951. Also, see
28. Philip G. Schrag, A Well-Founded Fear: The Congressional Battle to Save Political Asylum in America (London: Routledge, 2000).
29. A small play on words here is worth noting. One of the core elements of the politics of asylum in the UK over the past two to three years has centred around the Red Cross Centre at Sangatte, France. According to UK officials (and the firm responsible for running the train through the Channel Tunnel "Eurotunnel"), Sangatte was a launching point for asylum seekers to make nightly forays through the Chunnel in order to seek asylum in the UK. Over a relatively long period of time, the UK government made demands that Sangatte be closed, which finally happened late in 2002 following intensive bilateral negotiation between the UK and France. However, as some have argued, and as real numbers indicate (67,000 asylum claimants came through Sangatte in three years, while the UK total for the same period was 220,000), Sangatte may not deserve such infamy. See Richard Woods, David Cracknell, and Lauren Quaintance, "Asylum Seekers Are Still at the Gates,'" The Sunday Times, 8 December 2002.
30. Melissa Kite and Richard Ford, "Tougher Curbs Urged for Asylum-Seekers," The Times, 16 January 2003.
31. Re: Sangatte, see note 25.
32. Dublin Convention (September 1997) stipulates that the claims of asylum seekers should only be examined once in the EU, and that the member state responsible for the presence of the asylum seeker is responsible for the examination.
33. Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with Diversity in Modem Britain (Home Office, February 2002), 23.
34. Ibid., 25.
35. Ibid., 95.
36. Ibid., 96.
37. See Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991).
38. Lewis Smith, "Back Door Refugee Centres Anger Residents," The Times, 20 January 2003.
39. Ibid. According to Smith's article, the two private firms employed by the government, Accommodata and The Angel Group, are regularly consulted by the government, and both have yearly turnovers in the tens of millions of pounds.
40. Ian Cobain and Russell Jenkins, "Struggle Ended as Suspect Lashed Out with Knife," The Times, 16 January 2003;
41. Melissa Kite and Richard Ford, "Tougher Curbs Urged for Asylum-Seekers," The Times, 16 January 2003.
42. Gabriel Rozenberg and Alan Hamilton, "Don't Expect a Welcome Reception at Asylum Hotel," The Times, 20 January 2003.