‘No One Is Illegal!’ Resistance and the Politics of Discomfort

Abstract

This work attempts to recast conceptions of global/ised political resistance. Instead of following systematic accounts of actors seeking global social transformation, it is shown how a Foucauldian understanding of power and resistance—here developed into a ‘politics of discomfort’—can help illuminate more situated and cautious approaches to expressions of dissent. It is illustrated how undocumented migrants, or sans-papiers, with the support of the German activist network No One Is Illegal (NOII) can assume political subjectivity to confront and resist the dominating power of sovereign state agencies that attempt to marginalise and silence acts of contestation. I argue that NOII's practical resistance, although local, nonetheless has important dimensions ‘beyond’, as it critiques through its creative actions (global) sovereign hypocrisy, violence, and the ‘governmentality of documentation’.

Este trabajo trata de reformular las nociones de la resistencia política global/izada. En lugar de seguir los informes sistemáticos de los actores buscando la transformación social global, se ha demostrado cómo un entendimiento foucauldiano de poder y resistencia—convertido aquí en una ‘política de incomodidad’—puede ayudar a aclarar los planteamientos más radicados y prudentes a expresiones de disidencia. Se ilustra cómo los migrantes indocumentados, o sin papeles, con el apoyo de la red activista alemana Nadie es Ilegal (NOII, por sus siglas en inglés) pueden asumir una subjetividad política para confronta y resistir el poder dominante de las agencias estatales soberanas que tratan de marginalizar y silenciar los actos de protesta. Sostengo que a pesar de ser local, la resistencia práctica de la red NOII, no obstante, tiene unas dimensiones importantes que van ‘más allá’, al criticar a través de sus acciones creativas (globales) la hipocresía soberana, la violencia y la ‘gubernamentalidad de la documentación’.

本文试图重塑全球化政治阻力的概念，并不是系统性地考量行为者寻求全球社会转型，而是解释了福柯是如何理解权力与制衡的——这里已经发展为一种“不安政治”—能帮助说明更为合适和谨慎的途径以便表达不同观点。它说明了非法移民或无证移民是如何在德国激进网络组织“无人非法”(NOII)的支持下，能够承担起反抗和抵制主权国家机构支配性权力的政治主体性，这些机构一心试图排斥和平息争议行为。我认为“无人非法”（NOII）的现实抵抗，尽管是地方性的，但具有重要的延伸意义，因为它通过其创造性活动批评了（全球）主权虚伪性、暴力和“文本治理术”。

이 글은 지구적/지구화된 정치적 저항 개념을 제시하고자 한다. 전지구적 사회변혁을 추구하는 행위자들에 대한 체계적인 설명 대신에, 여기에서 ‘불편의 정치’로 발전시킨 권력과 저항에 대한 푸코적인 이해가 반대의 표현에 대한 보다 상황적이고 조심스러운 접근을 보여주는데 어떻게 도움이 되는지를 보여준다. 독일 운동가 네크워크인 불벌적인 사람은 없다(No One Is Illegal, NOLL)의 지원으로 서류가 없는 이민자들이 어떻게 저항을 주변화시키고 침묵하게 만들려는 주권 국가 행위자들의 권력에 대항하고 저항하는 정치적 주체가 되는지를 보여준다. 나는 비록 NOLL의 실천적 저항이 국지적일지라도 창조적인 행동을 통해서 주권 국가의 위선, 폭력과 기록의 통치성에 대한 비판을 가하면서 ‘넘어서는” 중요한 차원을 지니고 있다는 점을 주장한다.

Keywords:

• No One Is Illegal
• undocumented migration
• resistance
• social movements
• heterotopia
• Foucault
• discomfort

Notes

Transversal, here, is understood as proposed by Bleiker (2000, p. 7) as the acceptance that contemporary struggles and political dynamics transgress local, national, and international spheres.

The term ‘illegal im/migration’ describes the unlawful crossing of the state border and/or an unauthorised stay in a country. This work proposes the term ‘undocumented’ or ‘sans-papiers’ both because the term ‘illegality’ criminalises and because ‘immigration’ relates to a one-sided perception of migration. Also, although Squire et al. (2011, p. 4) cautiously employ the notion of ‘irregular migration’, irregularity is only used here when discussing the state discourse and its production of ‘spaces of irregularity’. Other than that, ‘undocumented’ is preferred as it points to the mere lack of certain documents rather than value-laden images of irregular, thus abnormal, and suspicious beings.

Following the 1963 Tokyo Convention, an international treaty regulating offences against penal law while ‘in-flight’, airline companies are directly responsible for the mistreatment of deportees by either state police forces or the airline's security personnel (UN, 1963).