Visible yet invisible: the disciplinary mechanism of self-surveillance among undocumented South Asian male migrants in rural Greece

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article relates the Foucauldian theorisation of self-surveillance to the contradictory (non)presence of racialized labouring bodies of South Asian men in rural Greece. The disciplinary mechanism of temporary labour and migration regimes, exercised through migrant illegality and threat of deportations, works efficiently to make the men conform to a certain set of societal behaviours, erase their presence from Greek public spaces, and extract productive labour efficiently from them. By drawing on interviews of undocumented Indian and Pakistani male migrants in Greece, the article shows how ‘illegality’ and potential deportability shapes their strategies of staying in the country. The men self-surveil and regulate their movements by ‘containing’ themselves in their dormitories after work. This self-imposed isolation, through spatial segregation, deflects attention away from Greece’s restrictive immigration and labour regimes, based on differential exclusion based on class, skills, and professional education. It prevents local Greeks from building solidarity with them and, in doing so, avoid dismantling deep-rooted and widely prevalent discourses of Islamophobia and xenophobia.