The Perverse Politics of Four-Letter Words: Risk and Pity in the Securitisation of Human Trafficking

Abstract

This article unpacks two constructions of human trafficking: as a security threat and as a humanitarian problem. Restricting its focus to trafficking of women for the sex industry, the article highlights the double identification of these women as illegal migrants and victims, prostitutes and suffering bodies. How are these schizophrenic identifications possible? An analysis of the security and humanitarian articulations as governmental interventions in Michel Foucault's sense of the term locates a perverse continuity. As the bodies in pain governed by a `politics of pity' metamorphose into psychological cases to be governed by risk technologies within a `politics of risk', the humanitarian and security interventions are shown to be in no way mutually exclusive.

I Spy with my little eye - Full Copy

“…This has become a highly topical issue, as the dividing line between asylum seekers and "illegal" immigrants has become blurred. Both groups are perceived as threats by a growing segment of the public and by right wing political parties throughout Europe (Aradau, 2004;Huysmans & Squire, 2009). In this line Squire (2009) stresses the emergence of the notion of "asylum-seeker-cum-illegal-immigrant" (p.12).…”

Algorithmic autoimmunity in the NHS: Radicalisation and the clinic

“…This collapsing of the discursive separation between health and security is the culmination of biopolitical logics, which deploy both risk and pity in their imagination of insecurity (Aradau, 2004;HeathKelly, 2013).…”

Des études critiques de sécurité au démantèlement de la sécurité

“…Bien qu'il appelle à démêler « la forme et la structure de l'être que la sécurité sécurise », il conclut par un appel à rendre possible la « sécurité après la sécurité » (Burke 2007 : 17-19). En fondant son analyse sur l'idée que la sécurité est une forme de « politique perverse » (Aradau 2004) et en affirmant la nécessité de la remplacer par d'autres formes de subjectivité politique, Aradau, comme Burke, finit également par renforcer la sécurité. En dépit de la recherche d'une solution de rechange « politique insurrectionnelle » (Aradau 2008 : 192), elle reformule simplement la question et se demande si « la sécurité [peut] être pensée différemment, reconçue de manière à comporter d'autres formes de subjectivité » (ibid.…”