The
set of readings in this session engage with how states attempt to regulate the
flow of people across boundaries, and the ways in which populations are
rendered legible or illegible through such attempts at regulation. In “Immobilizing mobility”, the authors argue
that state efforts to regulate mobility in the context of “refugees” in Hungary
result in “more radical forms of mobility”. The authors argue that state
agencies and humanitarian volunteer groups emphasize a vertical form of
mobility with a clear binary established between citizen and foreigner, politics
and humanitarianism, and most crucially, “groups to be acted upon and
institutions doing the acting”. As against such vertical imaginations of
mobility, horizontal mobility becomes possible when migrant groups’ forms
alliances with other non-migrants, and act in ways that are agential, and not
simply as "suffering subjects". When a group of refugees decide to walk towards
Austria, when the state continuously refuses transport, is for instance, a
radical move, where the distinctions between humanitarianism and politics
collapse. When several people collapse in the process of walking, the state is
forced to arrange buses. In another instance worth recalling, migrants refuse
to move to “safe homes” that Hungarian volunteers offer, preferring to stay in
the railway station which holds the possibility of movement.
Dines
et al, in thinking about the lives of migrants in Lampedusa, engage with
Agamben’s notion of “bare life”. Personified by the Homo Sacer( sacred man), "bare life" did not have
protection of law, and could be killed with impunity. Excluded from the
category of the citizen, the figure could still be subject to biopolitical
interventions. The notion of bare life is drawn upon to suggest lack of
culpability for the loss of lives in border crossings- “provides a ‘moral alibi’
that allows authorities to deny any responsibilities for casualties”. While
some scholars have argued that the notion of "bare life" denies political
resistance, others have argued for “the need to move beyond the binary scheme
between bare life and political resistance to draw attention to more mundane
instances of recalcitrance that…can potentially rewrite the hegemonic cultural
script of liberal citizenship”. Two Eritreans, who after receiving documents,
not only returned to Lampedusa, but went to greet compatriots arriving at the
port, is presented as an episode of transgression that attempted to challenge
the hegemonic cultural script of citizenship .
The
ways in which the complimentary and contradictory discourses of
humanitarianism and securitization are
invoked in relation to migrant bodies is discussed. The authors argue that “the
harnessing of the migrant as both a threat and a victim has effects that extend
far beyond Lampedusa”. The authors suggest that while the notion of “bare life”
is problematic in not accounting for factors such as ineffective migration
policies, institutional racism and complexities of migrant experiences, it does
prove useful in explaining processes that govern migration.
In
a review article, Fassin argues that anthropological literature about borders
and on boundaries have been kept largely separate. While borders were viewed as
territorial limits defining political entities and legal subjects, boundaries
were seen as social constructs establishing symbolic differences and producing identities.
The authors argue that understanding how immigration is governed and experienced
requires a combination of the concepts of boundaries and borders. “Linking
borders and boundaries”, they argue “inscribes politics and the state-rather
than culture or the market- into the question of immigration”.
In
a somewhat different register, and yet engaged with similar questions,
Comaroffs trace the linkages between “Zombies, Immigrants and Millenial
Capitalism”. Locating the reports of "zombies" as half- alive figures, under the
control of “witches” who take away productive work available within the
experiential contradictions of neoliberal capitalism, the authors attempt to
make sense of the nature of myth-making in northern South Africa. The central
argument being made is that the contradictions and frustrations of advanced
capitalism, where wealth seems attainable and yet out of reach, is
symbolically represented through “spectral labour”, which takes away
possibilities for the creation of value. The linkage between “zombies” and
discourses around migrants lie in the common grouse against them- as agents who
take away the possibility of generating value, from legitimate workers in northern
South Africa. The most interesting point lies in the conclusion, where the
authors say they would like to keep an “open mind about the pragmatic
possibilities of the living dead”. That is to say, it is the stories of zombies
and witchcraft that has generated discussion about unemployment and disgruntled
young people, and forced the state to take note.
Some
questions that emerge from the set of readings for class discussion are as
follows:
1.
The
distinction between vertical and horizontal mobility could be thought through
more closely. Is it always possible for horizontal mobility, exercised by
agential migrants to force politics into humanitarian efforts? Are historical
contingencies crucial in determining such possibilities?
2.
There
are various ways in which states attempt to control the movement of people,
even as the movement of goods is sought to be facilitated, in advanced
capitalism, as indicated by several readings. Does the state as an entity
appear most clearly in these regulatory apparatuses? Given that people who seek
to move between boundaries find ways to subvert regulatory mechanisms, is the
state, yet again, rendered fluid? Or is it to be located in these acts of
subversion that pit themselves against the state?
3.
What
potentiality does myth hold to make legible to the state forms of inequality
that are otherwise glossed over? As Comaroffs suggest towards the end of their
piece, how must we think about the “pragmatic possibilities of the living dead”?
The attention of the state towards episodes such as witch burning might be
primarily through policing- mechanisms. Could it, possibly, draw attention to
the structural conditions that are hinted at by linking witchcraft to
capitalist exploitation?
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