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A ‘bare life’ in the borderlines of the Mediterranean

The particular seminar will focus on EU’s migration and asylum management in the Mediterranean, and in particular the border practices and reception centres in Greece. The two overarching research questions are whether migration has been securitised in Greece, that is if it has been formulated and addressed as a security threat and secondly, which are those mechanisms that conduce to the securitisation of migration, that is how this process has been coming about.

The wider rationale of the presentation lies within the ‘state of exception’ (Agamben 2005), whereby entire categories of citizens cannot be integrated into the political system. The erection of walls falls into the logic of framing migration as an issue of belonging within the polis – who belongs and who doesn’t, who is included and who is excluded. Securitisation of migration achieved through raising issues of identity and safety plays a key role to the creation of the borderline of belonging. As Agamben puts it, the logic of exception is deeply linked with the sovereign state. The sovereign power employs certain practices of securitisation producing a ‘bare life’, the life of the ‘homo sacer’ a life banned from conventional juridical and political structures (Agamben 1995).

Mar 1, 2021 07:00 PM in Athens