Description
Reflecting on biopolitical technologies used in Palestine Jasbir Puar has contended that states do not only capitalise on life and death but they also “weaponize the determination and capacity not to die” (Puar, 2021: 396) impinging on spatial freedom and on people’s life-time. Individuals are targeted by “infrastructural and corporeal debilitation” (397) and their time is “held hostage” (404), their lives are slowed down and chocked. This presentation draws on this analytical framework for rethinking carcerality and harm in refugee governmentality, investigating modes of violence that tend to remain invisible or that do not trigger mobilizations as they do not lead to migrants’ death. The first part of the presentation engages with scholarly debates on border violence and draws attention to modes of governing through chocking and harming migrants. The second part investigates how carceral mechanisms are enforced through the implementation of technologies that are less used for surveilling migrants than for obstructing their access to rights and asylum. The final part interrogates how to re-craft a critique of the border regime in light of modes of violence that act through spatial harassment and temporal disruptions.
