Syrian refugees arrive on Lesbos. Demotix/Björn Kietzmann. All rights reserved.Over thirty years ago Michel Foucault spoke to the refugee
crisis of his day. Today another refugee crisis, the largest since WWII, is
spilling out from Syria and North Africa. And tomorrow, Foucault anticipated,
there will be yet another current crisis.
The eternal return
In his 1979 interview Foucault addresses the question:
What is “the origin” of the refugee crisis that killed thousands of Vietnamese
and Cambodian people? He refuses to point his finger at a particular enemy or
culprit, but traces conditions that give rise to the terrifying cycle of forced
migrations we see repeated today. These violent migrations, he says, are symptoms
of historical developments. They arise from bordering practices that police
us/them relations inherited in the colonial present. Until these conditions
foundational to our global politics change, mass displacement of peoples will
remain not just a “sequel of the past, but a presage of the future.” Until these conditions foundational to our global politics change, mass displacement of peoples will remain not just a “sequel of the past, but a presage of the future.”
As I read Foucault’s words the familiarity of this
tragic eternal return renders me cold. Numb. The stories of human beings
abandoned "at death's door" and bodies washed up on shore resound
with an ongoing trauma. Foucault speaks of transit centers housing
Vietnamese asylum seekers in the late 70s—waiting zones that
were concentration camps in everything but name. Just this morning, I
read about how Germany’s former concentration camps are being used to house
today’s asylum seekers.
The specter
I have encountered Foucault’s words many times, but
never before have they moved me to tears. They viscerally expose truths about
bloody fortunes accumulated through the exploitation and dead labour of others.
They remind us that the borders we vigilantly patrol today protect not what is
ours, but stolen land founded on stolen lives. There has been too much violence
for too long. How could this vicious cycle ever be disrupted?
These feelings that Foucault’s words evoke are my
entry point into a discussion of his texts. Colin Gordon and Engin Isin
carefully situate these texts within the wider context of Foucault’s thought.
My comment is animated by the affective power of Foucault’s statements in terms
of how this might inform a politics of the present. The specter of Foucault has
much to teach us – if we are able to listen.
Foucault’s 1979 interview, and even more so his 1981
Geneva speech, assume a direct tone about the refugee crisis to which he refers.
Some might view this as uncharacteristic of Foucault. Yet as Isin points out,
Foucault often spoke with such force in his role as an ‘activist intellectual.’
In this role he spoke powerfully but not as an expert authority. In fact, he
undermines such a claim to authority in his question: “who asked me to speak?”
He unsettles this even further with his answer: “no one.”
While he continues to inhabit this critical attitude,
I read Foucault’s statements as a call to act. He offers more than a hope for
the near future. The temporary migrant laborer, to whom Foucault alludes, toiling
in the shadows on indefinite pathways to citizenship is a reminder of hope’s dangerous
hold.
Rather than hopes and promises of a yet to materialize
future, Foucault insists that an “international citizenry” must speak up and act
in the present. This political engagement, he states, cannot be confined to hollow
gestures of protest. We have become all too familiar with the easily co-opted,
feel-good performances that serve only to assuage the conscience of the governing,
without undermining conditions of privilege. For the governed to stand up to
power necessarily involves an act of disruption that unsettles and undercuts
privilege.
Today we see modes of political engagement that are
taking up Foucault’s call to address the ongoing-current refugee crisis. Although
the technologies of power and government have shifted and intensified since
Foucault’s call, so too have the tactics to resist. I would like to highlight a
few of these tactics that I see following on from and deepening the power of
Foucault’s call to act.
Intimate-international
solidarities
Increasingly we see trans-local movements committed to
exposing intersecting forms of violence – colonial, environmental, economic,
gendered – that displace people and cause forced migrations. Movements like No
One is Illegal have been fostering relationships between indigenous peoples
whose lands were stolen by the very colonial powers that bomb today and then
fail to unconditionally welcome the refugees it produces tomorrow. The very colonial
powers that bomb today… fail to unconditionally welcome the refugees it
produces tomorrow. Such movements also identify the links between environmental
degradation and displacement. Remember the 1.5 million Syrians forced to leave
their homes in 2007 due to a
historic drought caused in part by climate change? These intersectional
politics forge desperately needed complex solidarities. And they sustain these
solidarities through intimate modes of organizing such as inter-generational
conversation, art, song, and other practices of care.
In the wake of
intensified calls in Europe to protect the plight of refugees,
activist-academic networks are also probing the indifference towards so many
who do not qualify as bone fide refugees. Indeed, networks
like ‘Crossing the Mediterranean Sea
by Boat: Mapping and Documenting Migratory Journeys
and Experiences’ are more than simply posing questions. They are working in
partnership with those people moving under precarious conditions in an effort
to demand swift action on the part of EU Member States. This work insists that
the EU – which celebrates ‘open’ borders – dismantle its security apparatuses
that control, deter and kill certain lives through its ever-expanding ‘border
zone.’ [1]
While demanding changes to hostile policies, these
activist networks are not simply waiting for politicians and policy-makers. In
the spirit of Foucault’s call, people are intervening “actively and materially
in the order of international politics and strategy.” We see this in the
everyday life of our cities, some of them Sanctuary Cities, where people are providing
refuge in ways that states cannot, or will not [2]. In their most
radical form, these trans-local movements do not simply settle for providing
pockets of welcome. They actively dismantle border regimes that have
infiltrated the intimate fabric of daily life; they do so through acts of defiance.
Educators, doctors, neighbors refuse to enforce an exclusionary citizenship
regime by asserting: ‘All have a right to the city without fear of deportation
and detention. No, I will not become a border guard!’
In keeping with Foucault’s call, these forms of
political engagement seek to help people in grave danger. Increasingly however,
this engagement learns from and with those who resist day after day under terrifying
pressure. The act of embarking on a perilous
journey across miles of land and water – this is not the “residue of politics,”
nor a romantic politics but one that exposes the impossibility of doing
nothing.
Love
Over thirty years ago Foucault stated that in order to
make change we must put pressure on those who abuse power. Knowing all too well
the violence that such pressure begets he goes on to ask, “But what does
“putting pressure mean?” In the context of persistent violence I wonder:
what does it mean to enact love, actively and materially? How can we
put pressure through impossible expressions of love that disrupt, what Harsha Walia
refers to as, border imperialism?
Notes
[1] Bigo, Didier. “When
Two Becomes One: Internal and external securitisations in Europe” in Morten
Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds) International
Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration: Power, Security and
Community. (London: Routledge, 2000), 185.
[2] For a discussion on how
trans-local groups are responding to the inadequacy of civil governance in
other contexts see: James Tully, On
Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue, London, Bloomsbury, 2014.
