State of exemption: migration policy and the enactment of sovereignty

ABSTRACT

Migration is a policy area through which current nationalist governments enact territorial state sovereignty. This paper builds on Giorgio Agamben’s work to suggest that the liberal territorial state enacts itself as sovereign by claiming to be exempt from its own liberal principles. While enlightenment philosophies provide little guidance on the link between sovereignty, territory and migration, a materialist perspective offers valuable insights into how migration policy asserts sovereignty. Using the case of the United States, the paper illustrates how control over migration has always been important to enact this settler society as a sovereign state, and how migration policy has continued to maintain state sovereignty. The plenary power doctrine has facilitated this practice by permitting the state to disband the liberal domestic norms engrained in the US Constitution. Migration policies that blatantly violate liberal principles render the state sovereign by demonstrating its unaccountability.

KEYWORDS:

• territory
• state of exception
• migration
• plenary power doctrine
• migration policy
• nation-state
• national sovereignty

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks Dayana Andrea Gonzalez Mateus and Daniel Hailemariam for research assistance; John Agnew, Reece Jones, Fabian Georgi and Nandita Sharma for helpful comments and insightful discussions; and four anonymous referees for their constructive reviews.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.