Governing populations through the humanitarian government of refugees: Biopolitical care and racism in the European refugee crisis

Abstract

The notion of humanitarian government has been increasingly employed to describe the simultaneous and conflicting deployment of humanitarianism and security in the government of 'precarious lives' such as refugees. This article argues that humanitarian government should also be understood as the biopolitical government of host populations through the humanitarian government of refugees. In particular, it explores how the biopolitical governmentality of the UK decision to suspend search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean in 2014, and the British rejection and German welcoming of Syrian refugees primarily concern the biological and emotional care of the British and German populations. To this end, the article analyses how dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of refugees have been informed by a biopolitical racism that redraws the boundary between 'valuable' (to be included) and 'not valuable' (to be excluded) lives according to the refugees' capacity to enhance the biological and emotional well-being of host populations. This discussion aims to contribute to three interrelated fields of research -namely, humanitarian government, biopolitical governmentality, and responses to the European refugee crisis -by exploring how biopolitics has shaped the British and German responses to the crisis and how it encompasses more meanings and rationalities than currently recognised by existing scholarship on humanitarian government.

International refugee protection and the primary institutions of international society

“…136 As shown by Luca Mavelli, the emphasis on considerations of justice and empathy has contributed 'to reproduce a self-understanding of Germany as caring and committed'. 137 Similarly, in the midst of the 'refugee crisis', David Cameron announced that the UK would 'live up to its moral responsibility' by resettling 20,000 refugees from Syria by 2020. 138 becomes a way to enhance the emotional life of the population by promoting positive forms of self-representation and self-appreciation.…”

Bordering and Identity-Making in Europe After the 2015 Refugee Crisis

“…According to Giorgio Agamben, the very phenomenon of the refugee questions the taken-for-granted contours of the existing political communities and the very foundation of the nation-state-based territoriality (Agamben 1995). To follow-up on this logic, one may claim that the refugee crisis sharpened the border between what is known as "politically qualified life" (bios) that includes protection and liabilities through the institution of citizenship, and "bare life", or "life as it is" (zoe) (Mavelli 2017). The function of the sovereign power has shifted from establishing and defending territorial borders to distinguishing between "ours" and "aliens", "citizens" and "irregular migrants" (Zylinska 2004), between saving the lives of people in need and racial Othering/Orientalizing the "strangers" (Little and Vaughan-Williams 2017).…”

Governing Potential: Biopolitical Incorporation and the German “Open-Door” Refugee and Migration Policy

“…This understanding of life's potential as radical contingency and uncertainty provides conceptual tools to understand the securitising manoeuvres which have separated migrants and refugees in Europe from the 'home' populations due to their being identified with security, economic or cultural threats (Mavelli 2017). This understanding of life's potential also provides a means to analyse the practices of marginalisation and suspicion that this securitisation has enabled and produced, including the exclusionary and dehumanising practices of confinement, surveillance and classification that those arriving in Europe in recent years have been subjected to (Pallister-Wilkins 2015; Pinelli 2015).…”

“…A version of this latter argument has been made byMavelli (2017), who argues that the UK and German decisions to accept Syrian refugees in 2015 was an act of biopolitical care of the host populations through the humanitarian governance of refugees. 6 This focus on political calculations also goes beyond the 'humanitarian government' literature(Fassin 2007;) that discusses the inclusion of refugees as an act of care or compassion targeted at their biological being, and thus a form of government that avoids 'political' questions about the validity of asylum claims.…”