Migratory Victims of War: Syrians as the Homines Sacri

Abstract

The civil war broke out on March 15, 2011 with the political tension between either domestically legitimate or illegimate actors in Syria so that many people had impelledly or forcedly to migrate neighboring countries via crossing the land or maritime boundaries. These demographic transitions, in which many people, particularly children lost their lives, led admittedly European and Middle Eastern authorities to pursue the state of migratory exception policies. The state of exception revealing the homo sacer through including the exclusion of bodies, considering the use of Giorgio Agamben, corresponds to the temporary suspension of de facto legal norms, but the permanent state of this temporality. By problematizing the exemplary cases from European and Middle Eastern countries, this paper therefore copes not only with the exclusion of Syrians as homines sacri who are the subject of inclusionary techniques with regard to the spatial management of boats, cities and camps but the outlawry of existing juridico-political capabilities, also which may flexibly rule over the ways encompassing their lives and deaths.