The duty to render assistance at sea appears to be a well-established humanitarian norm; nonetheless, in 2011 alone more than 1500 people drowned in the Mediterranean. Witnesses recount that many could have been rescued if fellow seafarers had not ignored their pleas for help. Struggling to understand failures to rescue, many seek to portray indifference as individual failure from the norm. In contrast hereto, this article provides an insight into the governing of indifference in contemporary liberal societies -that is, how people are guided towards becoming indifferent to the lives and sufferings of particular populations. Thus, my focus will be on the workings of law and its potential to produce collective indifference. The drowned, I argue, are not casualties of individual immoral behaviour; through a system of sanctions, fellow human beings are encouraged to look away and even to let people die at borders in the name of security. This not only dilutes the legal duty to rescue but has also had a detrimental impact upon the normative landscape, leading to a distinction between worthy lives that fall within the duty to rescue and charitable lives becoming a question of benevolence.
Practices refer to collective and historic acts that shaped the evolution of the fundamental distinction used to define the field of security—that of internal vs. external security. In general, security practices relate to two kinds of tools through which professionals of (in)security think about a threat: regulatory tools, which seek to “normalize” the behavior of target individuals (for example, policy regulation, constitution), and capacity tools, specific modalities for imposing external discipline upon individuals and groups. The roots of the distinction between internal and external security are embedded in a historical process of competition over where to draw the line between the authority and limits of diverse agencies. Much of the international relations (IR) literature ignores the diversity of security practices, and reduces security to an IR problem detached from other bodies of knowledge. This is an error that needs to be corrected. Security and insecurity must be analyzed not only as a process but also as the same process of (in)securitization. The term “security” cannot be considered as a concept capable of capturing a coherent set of practices, but rather the result of a process of (in)securitization. Research on security practices opens a variety of promising paths, but at least three challenges need to be met before this potential can be realized: a sustained development of cross-disciplinary studies; address the “sacrifice” entailed in definitions of security; and more time to elucidating as clearly as possible processes of resistance from those who are the target of these practices.
This article examines the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) from three perspectives: First, while the GCM is not legally binding, the human rights obligations of states which underpin the GCM are. The application of international human rights law to everyone, including migrants, has led to frictions in the inter‐governmental negotiation process, with some states declining to sign the GCM. States cannot relieve themselves of the human rights obligations to which they are already, voluntarily, bound by refusing to sign the GCM. Second, the GCM asserts the human rights of migrants, and by implication condemns state practices contrary thereto, but it also yields to political sensitivities. Thus, we encounter a Compact that defends existing human rights standards, but concurrently submits to political will and tolerates conditions of vulnerability. Third, the GCM’s implementation depends upon, as yet undefined, partnerships with non‐State actors and monitoring against human rights standards.
Politics of borders and the distinction between inside/outside have become an important security practice of liberal states. Borders are strategically used to change the balance between security and liberties. This article analyzes the legal constitution of border zones and argues that security is not exceptional in its constitution but results from ordinary law and practices. Illiberal practices at border zones are embedded in ordinary politics of the liberal state.
The 'international' can be conceived of as a highly sought after symbolic capital. People seek to internationalise their curriculum vitae or resumes, study international subjects, get international diplomas, travel internationally, obtain international jobs. As symbolic capital the 'international' can be converted into 'profit' complementing other forms of capital (economic, cultural and social capital), deployed in struggles for social domination. It is used as a strategy of social positioning and social domination quasi-globally, but it is not recognised everywhere in the same way. We are particularly interested in the unequal distribution of this symbolic capital, the way differential conversion rates and social boundaries operate in the generation of social inequalities. For this, we will work with and against Bourdieu, in analysing the 'international' as a source of a highly contextual form of symbolic power, deployed in a variety of social group formations, but with uneven, differential effects, a naturalised and disguised form of domination. Ultimately, this article problematises how claims to 'internationality' operate in social relations and power-struggles and provides an analytical framework hereof.
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