Suchergebnisse

The Making of Migration addresses the rapid phenomenon that has become one of the most contentious issues in contemporary life: how are migrants governed as individual subjects and as part of groups? What are the modes of control, identification and partitions that migrants are subjected to? Bringing together an ethnographically grounded analysis of migration, and a critical theoretical engagement with the security and humanitarian modes of governing migrants, the book pushes us to rethink notions that are central in current political theory such as "multiplicity" and subjectivity. This is an innovative and sophisticated study; deploying migration as an analytical angle for complicating and reconceptualising the emergence of collective subjects, mechanisms of individualisation, and political invisibility/visibility. A must-read for students of Migration Studies, Political Geography, Political Theory, International Relations, and Sociology.

1. Governmentality and Migration Studies. - 2. Autonomy of Migration and Migrant Struggles. - 3. Arab Revolutions and the European Space: Three Analytic Snapshots. - 4. Spatial Economy after the Revolution. - 5. Politics of Migration Controls and the Politics of Invisibility. - 6. Countermapping and Migration Governmentality Mechanisms

This article interrogates the reservations in the Left in Europe towards claims for freedom of movement and stay. The piece argues that an unequal right to desire – conceived as an aspiration move, to stay and to seek for a better life – underpins those criticisms and suggests that for developing counter-politics of migration, it is key to challenge such racialised predicament. The first section shows how expansive claims for equal access to mobility and the right to stay are discredited as utopian and non-realistic. The second section unsettles the politics of number that sustains public discourses on migration showing that this can be turned to the advantage of arguments in support of border controls. It moves on contending that a critique of racialising borders needs to unpack the unequal right to desire. The fourth section draws attention to the nexus between the disruption of futurity and the unequal right to desire and argues that this enables tracing connections between migrants and (some) citizens through the lens of dispossessed future. It suggests that the allegedly utopian character of claims for freedom of movement does not the depend on the failure of past struggles but on the unquestioned racialised right to desire

Introducing the notion of "digital expulsions", this paper argues that digital technologies in refugee humanitarianism are mainly used for hampering migrants from becoming asylum seekers and getting access to rights. Focusing on Greece, it explores which carceral mechanisms are enforced and sustained through the incorporation of digital technologies in refugee governmentality: it contends that it is key to investigate the specific harms that digital technologies generate on asylum seekers. The article intertwines scholarship on digital technologies in migration governance with carceral geography literature and shows that carceral mechanisms are enacted also through digital technologies. The paper draws attention to how in Greece asylum seekers' access to the asylum procedure and to financial and humanitarian support is further obstructed due to forced technological intermediations. In the second part, it investigates refugees' carcerality considering the increasing use of technology in refugee camps and in the asylum procedures: it contends that carceral mechanisms are enforced beyond detention and shows that these work by debilitating and choking refugees' lives and stealing their lifetime.

AbstractThis article investigates the fragmented knowledges that migrants need to deal with in order to get access to asylum, and the related effects of disorientation it generates on them. The piece argues that disorientation is as a constitutive political technology of refugee governance and develops this argument by focusing on the Greek asylum system. It starts by drawing attention to the multiple technological steps and forced digital intermediations that asylum seekers in Greece need to navigate, focusing in particular on the Cash Assistance Programme, and it shows how asylum seekers need to deal with dispersed knowledges. The article moves on by analysing how the governing through disorientation underpin the asylum legal system in Greece and how this ends up in debilitating asylum seekers and hampering them from accessing rights and humanitarian support. The final section explores how asylum seekers are racialised and treated as deceitful subjects, and argues that not only their speech but also their conduct and behaviour are assumed to be deceptive, and therefore their knowledge turns out to be pointless. It concludes by challenging claims for more transparency and more knowledge as a response to the governing through disorientation.

This article advances the notion of "extractive humanitarianism" to designate the role played by data extraction and knowledge extraction operations in refugee governmentality. It argues that extractive operations rely on refugees' active participation to their own governmentality—what I define as participatory confinement. The piece engages with feminist literature on unpaid labor and shows that participatory confinement implies that refugees perform unpaid labor activities, which are disguised as voluntary work. It moves on by conceptualizing participatory confinement through the lens of the invitation to governmentality. In order to develop this, the article focuses on two modes of participatory confinement: unpaid labor that asylum seekers do as "voluntary" activities and knowledge and data extraction. It concludes by questioning extractive humanitarianism in light of the subtle coercion and invisible exploitation that asylum seekers are exposed to.

This paper deals with data extraction and data circulation that are at stake in refugee governmentality with a focus on the Cash Assistance Programme in Greece. It focuses on the data extraction activities which are part of the cash Assistance Programme and on the ways in which data is shared and not shared among the actors involved. It starts by critically engaging with debates on techno-humanitarianism in refugee governmentality, and it moves on by drawing attention to the constitutive dynamics between data abundance and data disregard. Then, it analyses the extent to which different actors can access and act upon the data. The second part of the article centres on the peculiar modes of subjectivation that asylum seekers are shaped by, as cards beneficiaries and techno-users. It shows that asylum seekers are both passive surfaces of data extraction and, at the same time, are object of a request to speak and to produce data and feedback about their use of the card. The paper concludes with a section about the injunction imposed on asylum seekers to act as autonomous and responsible techno-users and, at the same time, to comply with multiple spatial restrictions.

This article investigates the fragmented knowledges that migrants need to deal with in order to get access to asylum, and the related effects of disorientation it generates on them. The piece argues that disorientation is as a constitutive political technology of refugee governance and develops this argument by focusing on the Greek asylum system. It starts by drawing attention to the multiple technological steps and forced digital intermediations that asylum seekers in Greece need to navigate, focusing in particular on the Cash Assistance Programme, and it shows how asylum seekers need to deal with dispersed knowledges. The article moves on by analysing how the governing through disorientation underpin the asylum legal system in Greece and how this ends up in debilitating asylum seekers and hampering them from accessing rights and humanitarian support. The final section explores how asylum seekers are racialised and treated as deceitful subjects, and argues that not only their speech but also their conduct and behaviour are assumed to be deceptive, and therefore their knowledge turns out to be pointless. It concludes by challenging claims for more transparency and more knowledge as a response to the governing through disorientation.

This article deals with the technologies and apps that asylum seekers need to navigate as forced hindered techno-users in order to get access to asylum and financial support. With a focus on the Greek refugee system, it discusses the multiple technological intermediations that asylum seekers face when dealing with the cash assistance programme and how asylum seekers are obstructed in accessing asylum and financial support. It explores the widespread disorientation that asylum seekers experience as they navigate un-legible techno-scripts that change over time. The article critically engages with the literature on the securitization and victimization of refugees, and it argues that asylum seekers are not treated exclusively as potential threats or as victims, but also as forced hindered subjects; that is, they are kept in a condition of protracted uncertainty during which they must find out the multiple technological and bureaucratic steps they are requested to comply with. In the final section, the article illustrates how forced technological mediations actually reinforce asylum seekers' dependence on humanitarian actors and enhance socio-legal precarity.