Governing Global Subjects? Border-crossers and the Limits of (Global) Governmentality

ABSTRACT

This article argues that ‘border-crossers' — those still in the process of crossing borders — might not be governable. It suggests to move away from the Foucauldian perspective and investigate border-crossers not through the prism of power relations but through their capacity to dream another future. It argues that we should integrate “how questions” — “how to govern oneself, how to be governed, how to govern others” — with ‘who questions' – that is ‘who is the subject to be governed?' In other words, technologies of control should be discussed together with analyses that investigate the subjects upon whom those technologies operate. Which practices, power relations and institutional settings ‘make up' border-crossers? What if border-crossers are more than the result of power relations? What if what drives mobility is not power relations but by the dream of another future? What if border-crossers are not the liberal subjects of governmentality but the ‘dreaming subjects of mobility’?

KEYWORDS:

• Governmentality
• migrants
• liberal subject
• dreaming subject
• Foucault
• Sartre

Acknowledgement

A different version of this paper was originally presented at EISA 2017 in Barcelona and a revised version discussed at the (University of) Sussex Rights & Justice Centre and at the University of Durham in occasion of the workshop on “Governing (Im-)Mobilities: International Borders, Borderlands and Border Cities”. Special thanks go to Louiza Odysseos, David Karp, Zdenek Kavan, and Stef Jensen, who have all made me question ‘how Foucauldian I was’ and to the two anonymous reviewers for their challenging comments, especially for making me refine the concept of “border-crossers”. A special thanks go as well to the editorial team at Global Society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 In this article, I refer to ‘global subjects’ rather than ‘migrants’ in order to highlight the agentic capacity that migrants possess as active subjects who make choices irrespectively of institutional constraints.

2 I refer to ‘liberal and national’ subjects as a way of highlighting that Foucault elaborated on the concept of governmentality in light to Western (national and liberal) citizens.

3 Although all international migrants are also border-crossers, in my use of ‘border-crossers’, I am trying to distinguish between those who have crossed borders and are living in the country of destination, who are normally identified as (regular/irregular) migrants — including second and third generation even if they might have not migrated at all — and border-crossers who have started their journey but are still in the process of crossing (multiple) borders and have not yet reached the country of destination. My use of the concept of ‘border-crossers’ aims at highlighting the process of crossing rather than the (migratory) process of living, adapting, adjusting, or integrating with the host country.

4 By suggesting that the process of crossing is prior to the process of adjusting and (partially or totally) integrating with the society of destination, I am implicitly suggesting not only that border-crossers might not become migrants, but most importantly, that global subjects go through different processes of subjection, and thus different process of becoming, during each migratory stage. As Lasse Thomassen articulates in the foreword to La Barbera’s edited volume (2014): “the identities of migrants are […] in a constant process of re-articulation and inherently linked to processes of inclusion and exclusion. Migrants migrate — across territories and borders of all sorts. Their identities migrate with them, but are also rearticulated in the process”. Regarding migratory stages, see also Griffiths, Rogers, and Anderson 2013; de Haas 2010; Kley 2011; Paul 2011.

5 Foucault himself clarified that “one never governs a state, a territory, or a political structure. Those whom one governs are people, individuals, or groups” (2007b, 167).

6 Although Foucault recognised that different rationalities dominated during each historical stage, one should not refer to any linear process of modernisation. Foucault maintained that “sovereignty–discipline–government” had to be understood as a “triangle […] which has as its primary target the population and as its essential mechanism the apparatuses of security”. See Foucault 1991; 102. See also Legg 2005 and Philo 2001.

7 In his chapter, Macherey clarifies that this formulation — “to be a subject is to ‘belong’” — is a formulation that Foucault himself used during a lecture at the Collège de France, dedicated to Kant’s treatise on “The Enlightenment”. The lecture has been published in May 1984, in the Magazine Littéraire, no. 207.

8 English in original.

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Notes on contributors

Raffaela Puggioni

Raffaela Puggioni (PhD Kent – UK) is Associate Professor at the School of International Affairs, O.P. Jindal Global University, India. Her research interest cuts across International Relations and Migration Studies and includes issues of (forced) mobility, subjectivity, political change and resistance.