Institutional Racism Within the State of Exception. A Study of the Impact of Law in Migrants’ Everyday Lives in Belgium

Orsini, Giacomo;et.al.
(2018) Transformations of Citizenship — Location: Institute for International Law and International Relations, University of Graz (Austria) (20.November.2018)

Files

No attached file found for this publication.

Details

Authors
Abstract
To study how Agamben’s state of exception became the new normal of the governance of migration in Europe, many have focused on migrants’ detention centres (De Genova, 2017; Andrijasevic, 2010). Yet, these centres are just the most visible manifestations of a continuous of laws, regulations, institutional and non-institutional tactics developed to keep unwanted migrants outside the margins of the polis – and, consequently, of the rule of law. Presented as necessary measures to preserve the European and national integrity, a series of illiberal norms were promoted by liberal governments to regulate the lives of third country nationals present in their territories (Guild, Groenendijk and Carrera, 2009). Yet, a close look at the everyday interactions between migrants and these legal norms reveals their racist nature (Alpes and Spire, 2014). General rules, may have discriminatory effects on certain groups of third-country nationals. For instance, social and economic integration criteria are not neutral as they prevent individuals in a precarious situation from accessing citizenship, thus reinforcing inequalities and precariousness (Morris, 2003). By adopting a mainly qualitative top-down and bottom-up approach, we analysed the ways in which legal frameworks influence the everyday lives of Congolese, US and Indian migrants residing in Belgium. The selection of these three groups allowed us to deal with the greatest variability of legal statuses, enabling us to put the effect of these diverse normative frameworks in relation with a series of other variables such as for instance ethnicity. As we analyse the complex interplay between the law and individual everyday choices, we show how migrants of different nationality but with same legal status experience diverse degrees of discrimination and exclusion. By combining law, demography and sociology, we thus bring to light the functioning of those liminal spaces where the boundaries of citizenship are constantly redefined against a “dangerous other”, forcing migrants to negotiate their short and long-term trajectories. From this ground-level angle, the racist nature of the ‘state of exception’ becomes evident as it is exercised on migrants.
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

Orsini, G., & et al. (2018). Institutional Racism Within the State of Exception. A Study of the Impact of Law in Migrants’ Everyday Lives in Belgium. Transformations of Citizenship, Institute for International Law and International Relations, University of Graz (Austria). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/127774