Biopolitics, borders, and refugee camps: exercising sovereign power over nonmembers of the state^†

† The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2015.

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between the concepts of national identity and biopolitics by examining a border-transit camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers in Germany. Current studies of detention spaces for migrants have drawn heavily on Agamben’s reflection on the “camp” and “homo sacer,” where the camp is analyzed as a space in a permanent state of exception, in which the government exercises sovereign power over the refugee as the ultimate biopolitical subject. But what groups of people can end up at a camp, and does the government treat all groups in the same way? This article examines the German camp for repatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers as a space where the state’s borders are demarcated and controlled through practices of bureaucratic and narrative differentiation among various groups of people. The author uses the concept of detention space to draw a theoretical link between national identity and biopolitics, and demonstrates how the sovereign’s practices of control and differentiation at the camp construct German national identity through defining “nonmembers” of the state. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork at the Friedland border transit camp and on a discourse analysis of texts produced at the camp or for the camp.

Keywords:

• refugees
• refugee camp
• biopolitics
• spaces of detention
• borders

Notes

† The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2015.

1. Simmel’s writing on space is featured in two articles, “The Sociology of Space” and “On the Spatial Projections of Social Forms,” both published first in 1903, and subsequently united into a chapter in his 1908 book Sociology (Shields 2013, 76).

2. Biographical interviews were conducted with co-ethnic migrants from across Germany, selected through theoretical sampling (based on place of residence in Germany, country of origin, education level, and level of engagement in politics).

3. Landesaufnahmebehörde Niedersachsen – Standort Genzdurchgangslager Friedland. http://www.grenzdurchgangslager-friedland.niedersachsen.de/portal/live.php?navigation_id=12831&_psmand=47.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.