Abstract
AbstractThe 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 shouldalsobe understood as the biopolitical government of host populationsthroughthe 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 thebiologicalandemotionalcare 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.
Highlights
To date, one of the most powerful images of the European refugee crisis is the picture of three-yearold Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background, who drowned off the coast of the Turkish town of Bodrum on 2 September 2015 together with his brother and mother during his family’s attempt to reach Europe
The article analyses how dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of refugees have been informed by a biopolitical racism that redraws the boundary between ‘valuable’ and ‘not valuable’ 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
Summary
One of the most powerful images of the European refugee crisis is the picture of three-yearold Alan Kurdi (initially named as Aylan Kurdi), a Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background, who drowned off the coast of the Turkish town of Bodrum on 2 September 2015 together with his brother and mother during his family’s attempt to reach Europe. The approach advanced in this article maintains that existing responses to the European refugee crisis should not be explored solely as manifestations of humanitarian government of refugees,20 ‘biological’ forms of biopolitics,[21] thanatopolitics (governing undocumented migrants through violence and death),[22] politics of indifference,[23] crisis of European migration policies,[24] crisis of liberal values in Europe,[25] crisis of solidarity,[26] and fear of Islam and terrorism,[27] and as a product of biopolitical governmental rationalities of biological and emotional care of host populations enacted through the humanitarian government of refugees. I discuss how this conceptual framework can advance our understanding of the European refugee crisis by analysing two key events: the UK decision to suspend search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean in 2014, and the different British and German responses to the plight of Syrian refugees following the death of Alan Kurdi
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