Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political

McNevin, Anne

doi:10.7312/columbia/9780231151283.003.0001

Cited by 66 publications

(88 citation statements)

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“…The notion aims to “unveil the ethics of contemporary states when it comes to the evaluation of difference” (Fassin :366) . Yet it also seeks to capture the more immanent logics that generate the multidimensional scale on which migrant civic value is being agonistically defined and measured, by migrants themselves and by states, their supporters, and their detractors, within and beyond illegality (see Fischer ; Squire ; McNevin ; Nicholls ; Nyers and Rygiel ; and Schinkel for legal and postmigrants). In this section, we describe the operations by which unauthorized residents are being framed both as civic culprits to be punished and as civic minors expected to deserve present and future membership through good moral, economic, and bureaucratic performance…”

Section: The Moral Economy Of Illegalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Informal Citizenship: The New Moral Economy of Migrant Illegality1

2012

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Over the past decades, citizenship studies have explored in detail the various forms of social and civic integration achieved by otherwise illegal residents in contemporary immigration countries. While a great deal of analysis has tended to rest on a dichotomy between formal exclusion on the one hand and informal incorporation on the other, recent studies have begun questioning this dualistic model by examining the formal circuits of incorporation followed by unauthorized denizens at various geographical and institutional levels. Taking cues from this emerging line of research, this article makes three interconnected arguments. First, in contemporary liberal democracies, the rising tension between the illegal status of new immigrants and their limited but effective incorporation does not always pit formal law against informal practices, but is often located within law itself. Second, as a dynamic institutional nexus, “illegality” does not function as an absolute marker of illegitimacy, but rather as a handicap within a continuum of probationary citizenship. An incipient moral economy sees irregular migrants accumulating official and semiofficial proofs of presence, certificates of reliable conduct and other formal emblems of good citizenship, whether in the name of civic honor, in the hope of lesser deportability, or in view of future legalization. Third, such access to formal civic attributes is simultaneously being made increasingly difficult by the intensification of restrictions and controls from immigration, labor, and welfare authorities, thus confronting irregular migrants with the harsh dilemma of being framed as “more illegal” for the very documentary and economic features also assumed to improve their present and prospective civic deservingness.

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Section: The Moral Economy Of Illegalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Informal Citizenship: The New Moral Economy of Migrant Illegality1

2012

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“…Building on this, critical work has emerged at the intersection of critical migration, border, and citizenship studies (e.g. Ilcan 2014;Johnson 2014;McNevin 2011;Nyers 2015;Papadopoulos and Tsianos 2013;Schwenken and Ruß-Sattar 2014;Squire 2011). Isin's work has been instrumental in moving the discussion of citizenship from being nation state based to thinking citizenship through networks and relations of connectivity that 'traverse frontiers. '…”

Section: Transgressions: Dying To Live -Expanding the Boundaries Of Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dying to live: migrant deaths and citizenship politics along European borders: transgressions, disruptions, and mobilizations

Rygiel

2016

Citizenship Studies

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“…While some critical scholars have looked at the ways in which refugees and non-status migrants engage politically, making their voices heard through public protests and building occupations (Walters 2002;Nyers 2003Nyers , 2008aNyers , 2008bMcNevin 2006McNevin , 2011McGregor 2011), this article will look at the way in which migrant detainees enact and express their unspeakable and unliveable conditions through their own naked body. The aim of this work is, thus, to reflect on the violent modalities that non-status migrants are deploying against the current politics of the camp, which violently suppresses any (political) voice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaking through the body: detention and bodily resistance in Italy

Puggioni

2014

Citizenship Studies

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This work reflects on the character of the modalities that non-status migrants are deploying in the context of current politics of the camp, with special attention to the Italian context. It will suggest that once the possibilities of dissent through the voice (the political tool par excellence in a liberal democracy, and one associated primarily with rationality and the capacity for reason) are foreclosed, migrants tend to resort to another powerful tool: their own body. Detainees have made their bodies speak by resorting to practices of self-mutilation, hunger strike, suicide attempts, and lips and eyes sewing. Detainees' violent acts of dissent are not dissimilar from the violent modalities used, a few centuries earlier, by some enslaved people who chose liberty through death. The aim is not so much to make comparison between the two figures, but to emphasise the way in which, under conditions of extreme control, subjugation or unfreedom, acts of dissent and resistance -and thus acts of politics, as articulated in Rancière's concept of dissensus -are not necessarily enacted through democratic practices but, on the contrary, through whatever modalities are available to them, including violent (self-harm) modalities.

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Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political

Cited by 66 publications

References 0 publications

Beyond Informal Citizenship: The New Moral Economy of Migrant Illegality1

Beyond Informal Citizenship: The New Moral Economy of Migrant Illegality1

Dying to live: migrant deaths and citizenship politics along European borders: transgressions, disruptions, and mobilizations

Speaking through the body: detention and bodily resistance in Italy

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