Abstract
In Western societies, asylum politics is a highly debated issue, as modern nation states come under increasing pressure from globalization and find it more difficult to remain homogeneous institutions for ruling. In the context of these pressures, asylum-seekers constitute political and constitutional dilemmas deeply embedded in the issue of bordering, securing and sustaining nation state sovereignty. According to Giorgio Agamben, one solution to this dilemma is the creation of ‘camps’ as institutionalized ‘states of exception’, i.e. asylum centres, where asylum-seekers are deprived of not only some of the legal rights accorded citizens but also human rights. In Denmark, while the political focus is on increasingly restrictive asylum policies, studies show that asylum-seeking families suffer from deteriorating psychological and physical health and social life. Drawing on Agamben, this article examines the underlying reasons for and the dynamics of illness and family breakdown in Danish asylum centres, particularly given the claims by some that these problems are self-inflicted. The article analyses illness and family breakdown as individualized manifestations of both the camp's dissolution of normal social and symbolic distinctions, and of the (bio-) politicization of the private lives and bodies of asylum-seekers. Understanding asylum centre life through these concepts clarifies the ambivalent and paradoxical nature of illness and family breakdown in asylum centres, and leads to the article reframing the epistemological question of how one can determine asylum-seekers' social and mental health condition to the ontological question of what kind of existence is possible for people living in asylum centres.
Published Version
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