Prefiguration and the post-representational politics of anti-deportation activism

Kemp, Tom

doi:10.1080/14742837.2022.2078803

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…In contrast, autonomous approaches view migration as a force that always exceeds the state and its legal and policy frameworks (Papadopoulos and Tsianos, 2007). On these premises, migrants collectively mobilise in spaces that dominant forces cannot reach so that they can reconfigure social relations, establish new ties of solidarity and build power within subaltern groups (Kemp, 2022;Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013;Monforte and Dufour, 2013;Zibechi, 2010Zibechi, , 2012.…”

Section: Multiple Approaches To Human Rights and Their Potential For ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the field of migrant mobilisation, scholars have conceptualised the difference between integrationist approaches, through which migrants mobilise to demand rights to the state, and autonomous approaches (Marciniak and Tyler, 2014; Tyler and Marciniak, 2013). While integrationist approaches are often geared towards achieving reforms (Kemp, 2022), they can challenge exclusionary state processes and practices, including by disrupting and reclaiming the notion of citizenship as a series of acts through which racialised migrants constitute themselves as political subjects (Ataç et al, 2016; Isin, 2008; Rygiel, 2016). In contrast, autonomous approaches view migration as a force that always exceeds the state and its legal and policy frameworks (Papadopoulos and Tsianos, 2007).…”

Section: Multiple Approaches To Human Rights and Their Potential For ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

Perolini

2023

Sociology

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Human rights often fall short of challenging oppression because they are enmeshed with conservative institutions, such as the law and the state. Despite these shortcomings, grassroots organisations contesting border regimes in Berlin often make use of human rights in their everyday mobilisation. They engage in autonomous forms of mobilisation outside the state and construct non-legal notions of human rights that are emancipatory for racialised migrants. However, these same organisations also address demands to state authorities by using legal notions of human rights. In this article, I draw on the framework focusing on abolition and non-reformist reforms, which have been developed by activists and scholars in their resistance to policing and the Prison-Industrial Complex. I innovatively extend its use to propose a nuanced understanding of grassroots approaches to human rights. Specifically, I argue that these approaches entail the concurrent pursuit of short-term reformist reforms and border abolition.

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Section: Multiple Approaches To Human Rights and Their Potential For ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Multiple Approaches To Human Rights and Their Potential For ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

Perolini

2023

Sociology

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The Cruel Optimism of International Prison Regulation: Prison Ontologies and Carceral Harms

Kemp,

Tomczak

2023

Law Soc. Inq.

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This article examines the development of international human rights standards and oversight mechanisms directed at addressing the negative effects of imprisonment. We identify this as the rules-based prison-regulation project, widely endorsed by international organizations and legal scholars. However, with a focus on the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, we argue that this project has inherent limitations, as it is based on (a) a reductive understanding of carceral harms and (b) a rule-centric ontology of prisons. By challenging these foundations, we explore whether the project exemplifies “cruel optimism” (Berlant, 2011), where the pursuit of improved prison regulation could inadvertently hinder societal flourishing. We argue that the continuous search for new and better prison standards may perpetuate rather than alleviate the problems associated with imprisonment unless accompanied by explicit strategies for countering prison growth and dramatically reducing prisoner numbers, for building the democratic power of prisoners and communities targeted by imprisonment, and continual linkages between prison conditions and the wider political-economic institution of imprisonment. We conclude that engaging with prisons as sites of relational power in practice must underlie any quest to reduce the harms of imprisonment.

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Who needs a world view?

Duff

Evans

2022

Contemp Polit Theory

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In your sleep or relentlessly awake, rehearse reasons. Yes, I balled up my hands, no not making a fist, but because I was scared that they would break my fingers. Why were you resisting? Why were you there? Cross-examinations refract through the half-remembered face of that primary school teacher who took a dislike, complained of your 'look of defiance' on parents' evening. Do you really think it's very ladylike in such a manner to hold yourself? Why do you exist? It's not going to help your cause, is it?'Perhaps the Enlightenment was mistaken to jump to the conclusion that life was like a continuing court case, in which it was imperative to come, quickly and efficiently, to definitive judgments about what was ''true '' and what ''false''; what was ''legitimate'' and what ''illegitimate''; and what was ''justified'' and what ''not justified''' (p. 58), writes Raymond Geuss. It is impermissible not to know why your leg twitched as they forced you against the concrete, why that patch of grass is so implausibly large in your memory. Absolutely unjustifiable not to know why digging dried leaves out of black kids should be anyone's duty to execute; or why duty is supposed to be so great in the first place. Be reasonable, they hiss in your ear as they cut off your clothes. Their statements say they didn't hurt you; they say they hurt you because you deserved it. You will insist these can't be true together. They are contradicting themselves and you will use logic to vanquish them. Scratch the justifications into yourself. You won't be allowed notes on the stand (although they will).That making yourself defensible can be an all-consuming and traumatic process is an observation likely to resonate with anyone who has stood in the dock or attended a philosophy conference. Even in the best-case scenario, whatever vindication the court, the discipline, or the Tribunal of Pure Reason can offer may not undo the damage that subjection to its requirements has inflicted. It will take a quite another process, a therapeutic one, perhaps, to un-batten the hatches on the disconnected, ambiguity-intolerant, legitimate subjects it has made of us, to let the playful, fluid element back in.

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Prefiguration and the post-representational politics of anti-deportation activism

Cited by 4 publications

References 46 publications

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

The Cruel Optimism of International Prison Regulation: Prison Ontologies and Carceral Harms

Who needs a world view?

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