Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Refugee of Protection

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Rethinking International Protection

Part of the book series: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship ((MDC))

Abstract

The question of defining who the refugee of protection is—or paraphrasing Rancière, who is the subject of protection—a demanding task as forced migrants have been traditionally perceived as apolitical. If we continue to approach the political from the sovereign perspective, only the citizens are to be recognised as political subjects. By looking at politics from a Rancièreian perspective, the focus is on individuals’ capacity to contest the given, away from current conceptualisation of public life, identity and citizenship. Forced migrants’ constant appeals to respect the law, and especially to respect human rights and human dignity, is extremely important as it highlights the way in which forced migrants represent themselves as bearers-of-rights, that is, as subjects who, claiming rights and equal respect of the law, act politically. They are, however, legal and political subjects whose struggles, acts of protest and/or coping strategies tend to emerge from conditions of (forced) encampment, conditions which are nonetheless strongly resisted.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 23 May 1969, entered into force on 27 January 1980.

References

  • Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life (Daniel Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Al Assad, M. (2002). Asylum. Borderlands E-Journal [online], 1(1). Available from http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol1no1_2002/alassad_asylum.html

  • Amoore, L. (2005). Introduction: Global resistance – global politics. In L. Amoore (Ed.), The global resistance reader. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andrijasevic, R. (2013). Acts of citizenship as methodology. In E. F. Isin & M. Saward (Eds.), Enacting European citizenship. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aradau, C., Huysmans, J., & Squire, V. (2010). Acts of European citizenship: A political sociology of mobility. Journal of Common Market Studies, 48(4), 945–965.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arendt, H. (1967a). Vita activa. Munich: Piper.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arendt, H. (1967b). The origins of totalitarianism (3rd ed.). London: George Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, R. (2009). Up against the wall: Bare life and resistance in Australian immigration detention. Law and Critique, 20(2), 113–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. (2004). Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. (2005). Liquid life. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beltrán, C. (2009). Going public: Hannah arendt, immigrant action, and the space of appearance. Political Theory, 37(5), 595–622.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benhabib, S. (Ed.). (1996). Democracy and difference: Contesting the boundaries of the political. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biesta, G. (2010). A new logic of emancipation: The methodology of Jacques Rancière. Educational Theory, 60(1), 39–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bigo, D. (2007). Detention of foreigners, states of exception, and the social practices of control of the banopticon. In P. K. Rajaram & C. Grundy-Warr (Eds.), Borderscapes: Hidden geographies and politics at territory’s edge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bleiker, R. (2000). Popular dissent, human agency and global politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bosworth, M. (2011). Deportation, detention and foreign national prisoners in England and Wales. Citizenship Studies, 15(5), 583–596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bosworth, M., & Guild, M. (2008). Governing through migration control: Security and citizenship in Britain. British Journal of Criminology, 48(6), 703–719.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bosworth, M., & Kaufman, E. (2011). Foreigners in a carceral age: Immigration and imprisonment in the US. Stanford Law and Policy Review, 22(1), 101–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boujbiha, A. (2002). My name is asylum and other poems. Borderlands E-Journal [online], 1(1). Available from http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol1no1_2002/boujbiha_poems.html

  • Browning, J. (2007). The only thing they have to bargain with is their own self: Masculinity and protesting immigration detention. Transforming Cultures eJournal, 2(1), 78–95.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cane, L. (2015). Hannah arendt on the principles of political action. European Journal of Political Theory, 14(1), 55–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Canovan, M. (1985). Politics as culture: Hannah arendt and the public realm. History of Political Thought, 6(3), 617–642.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caravan: For the Rights of Refugees and Migrants. (2015). Letter of the refugees initiative Schwäbisch Gmünd to Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann: ‘Persistent repressive prosecution for civil disobedience against the so-called “Residence Obligation”’. Accessed February 26, 2015, from http://thecaravan.org/node/4273

  • Cissé, M. (1997). The Sans-Papiers—A woman draws the first lessons: The new movement of asylum seekers and immigrants without papers in France (S. James, N. Lopez-Jones, & H. West, Trans.). London: Crossroads Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, P. (2000). Philosophies of exclusion. Liberal political theory and immigration. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Commissione de Mistura. (2007). Rapporto de Mistura. Il rapporto della Commissione per le verifiche e le strategie dei centri di accoglienza e permanenza temporanea. Ministero degli interni. http://www.interno.it/mininterno/export/sites/default/it/sezioni/sala_stampa/documenti/immigrazione/Rapporto_De_Mistura.html_1603681444.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2015.

  • Crisp, J. (2013). In search of solutions: Refugees are doing it for themselves, keynote speech presented at RSC 2014 Conference, Refugee Voices, Oxford. http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/news/in-search-of-solutions-refugees-are-doing-it-for-themselves-refugee-voices-opening-plenary-jeff-crisp

  • Crome, L. (1988). Unbroken: Resistance and survival in the concentration camps. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. Rendall, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Genova, N. (2010). The queer politics of migration: Reflections on “illegality” and incorrigibility. Studies in Social Justice, 4(2), 101–126.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dembour, M. B., & Kelly, T. (Eds.) (2011). Are human rights for migrants? Critical reflections on the status of irregular migrants in Europe and the United States. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diken, B. (2004). From refugee camps to gated communities: Biopolitics and the end of the city. Citizenship Studies, 8(1), 83–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edkins, J. (2000). Sovereign power, zones of indistinction, and the camp. Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance, 25(1), 3–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eley, G. (1992). Nations, publics, and political cultures: Placing habermas in the nineteenth century. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere. Boston: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellermann, A. (2010). Undocumented migrants and resistance in the liberal state. Politics and Society, 38(3), 408–429.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fassin, D. (2001). The biopolitics of otherness. Anthropology Today, 17(1), 3–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fenélon, F. (2008). Ad Auschwitz c’era un’orchestra (P. Pacca, Trans.). Firenze: Vallecchi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzpatrick, P. (2005). Bare sovereignty: Homo sacer and the insistence of law. In A. Norris (Ed.), Politics, metaphysics, and death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s Homo sacer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1994). Power: Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984 (J. D. Faubion, Ed., Robert Hurley et al., Trans.). London: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25(26), 56–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregory, D. (2006). The black flag: Guantánamo bay and the space of exception. Geografiska Annaler, 88-B(4), 405–427.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society (T. Burger with F. Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayter, T. (2000). Open borders: The case against immigration controls. London: Pluto.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hyndman, J. (2000). Managing displacement refugees and the politics of humanitarianism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isin, E. F. (2002). Being political: Genealogies of citizenship. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isin, E. F. (2008). Theorizing acts of citizenship. In E. F. Isin & G. M. Nielsen (Eds.), Acts of citizenship. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isin, E. F. (2009). Citizenship in flux: The Figure of the Activist citizen. Subjectivity, 29(1), 367–388.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isin, E. F., & Nielsen, G. M. (Eds.) (2008). Acts of citizenship. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, H. L. (2015). These fine lines: Locating noncitizenship in political protest in Europe. Citizenship Studies, 19(8), 951–965.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krause, M. (2008). Undocumented migrants: An arendtian perspective. European Journal of Political Theory, 7(3), 331–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laclau, E. (2007). Bare life or social indeterminacy? In M. Calarco & S. DeCaroli (Eds.), Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty and Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landes, J. (1988). Women and the public sphere in the age of the French revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langbein, H. (1994). Against all hope: Resistance in the Nazi concentration camps 1938–1945 (H. Zohn, Trans.). New York: Paragon House.

    Google Scholar 

  • La Repubblica. (1991, March 5). Fuga dall’Incubo Albanese. Sbarcano a Otranto 640 “Boat People”.

    Google Scholar 

  • Magnette, P. (2005). Citizenship: The history of an idea (K. Long, Trans.). Colchester: ECPR Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mah, H. (2000). Phantasies of the public sphere: Rethinking the habermas of historians. The Journal of Modern History, 72(1), 153–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malkki, L. H. (1992). National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 24–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marr, D., & Wilkinson, M. (2004). Dark victory. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marrus, M. R. (1995). Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. Journal of Contemporary History, 30(1), 83–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGregor, J. (2011). Contestations and consequences of deportability: Hunger strikes and the political agency of non-citizens. Citizenship Studies, 15(5), 597–611.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGuaran, K., Hudig, K. (2014) ‘Refugee protests in Europe: Fighting for the right to stay’, Statewatch Journal, 23 (3/4). http://database.statewatch.org/article.asp?aid=33230. Accessed 26 Feb 2015.

  • McNevin, A. (2011). Contesting citizenship. Irregular migrants and new frontiers of the political. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mezzadra, S. (2006). Diritto di fuga. Migrazioni, cittadinanza, globalizzazione. Verona: Ombre Corte.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mezzadra, S. (2011). The gaze of autonomy. capitalism, migration and social struggles (R. Nunes, Trans.). In V. Squire (Ed.), The contested politics of mobility. Borderzones and irregularity. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minca, C. (2006). Giorgio agamben and the new biopolitical nomos. Geografiska Annaler, 88-B(4), 387–403.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moorehead, C. (2005). Human cargo: A journey among refugees. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mouffe, C. (Ed.) (1992). Dimensions of radical democracy. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mountz, A. (2011). The enforcement archipelago: Detention, haunting, and asylum on islands. Political Geography, 30(3), 118–128.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nair, S. (2010). Sovereignty, security, and migrants. Making bare life. In S. Biswas & S. Nair (Eds.), International relations and states of exception. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyers, P. (2006). Rethinking refugees: Beyond states of emergency. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyers, P. (2008a). In solitary, in solidarity: Detainees, hostages, and contesting the anti-policy of detention. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(3), 333–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nyers, P. (2008b). No one is illegal between city and nation. In E. F. Isin & G. M. Nielsen (Eds.), Acts of citizenship. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyers, P., & Rygiel, K. (Eds.) (2012). Citizenship, migrant activism and the politics of movement. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Owens, P. (2009). Reclaiming “bare life”? Against Agamben on refugees. International Relations, 23(4), 567–582.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Owens, P. (2011). Beyond “bare life”: Refugees and the “right to have rights”. In A. Betts & G. Loescher (Eds.), Refugees in International relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Papastergiadis, N. (2006). The invasion complex: The abject other and spaces of violence. Geografiska Annaler, 88-B(4), 429–442.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Passerin d’Entrèves, M. (1992). Hannah arendt and the idea of citizenship. In C. Mouffle (Ed.), Dimensions of radical democracy. Pluralism, citizenship, community. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perera, S. (2002). ‘What is a camp?’, Borderlands E-Journal, 1 (1). http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no1_2002/perera_camp.html

  • Perrone, L. (1999). Diari dai Centri di Prima Accoglienza. Critica Marxista, 1–2, 38–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puggioni, R. (2006a). Resisting sovereign power: Camps in-between exception and dissent. In J. Huysmans, A. Dobson, & R. Prokhovnik (Eds.), The politics of protection. Sites of insecurity and political agency. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puggioni, R. (2014a). ‘Against camps’ violence: Some voices on Italian holding centres. Political Studies, 62(4), 945–960.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Puggioni, R. (2014b). Speaking through the body: Detention and bodily resistance in Italy. Citizenship Studies, 18(5), 562–577.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quassoli, F. (1999). Migrants in the Italian underground economy. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23(2), 212–231.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rajaram, P. K., & Grundy-Warr, C. (2004). The irregular migrant as homo sacer: Migration and detention in Australia, Malaysia and Thailand. International Migration, 42(1), 33–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ramadan, A. (2013). Spatialising the refugee camp. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38(1), 65–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, J. (1999). Dis-agreement. Politics and philosophy (J. Rose, Trans.). Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, J. (2001). Ten theses on politics. Theory & Event, 5(3).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, J. (2004). Who is the subject of the rights of man? The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103(2/3), 297–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, J. (2007). What does it mean to be un? Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 21(4), 559–569.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reyneri, E. (1998). The role of the underground economy in irregular migration to Italy: Cause or effect? Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 24(2), 313–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rigby, J., & Schlembach, R. (2013). Impossible protest. Noborders in calais. Citizenship Studies, 17(2), 157–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rovelli, M. (2006). Lager italiani. Milan: BUR.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rutherford, J. (Ed.) (1990). Identity: Community, culture, difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, M. P. (1990). Women in public: Between banners and ballots, 1825–1880. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, M. P. (1992). Gender and public access: Women’s politics in nineteenth century America. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere. Boston: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rygiel, K. (2011). Bordering solidarities: Migrant activism and the politics of movement and camps at calais. Citizenship Studies, 15(1), 1–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rygiel, K. (2014). In life through death: Transgressive citizenship at the border. In E. F. Isin & P. Nyers (Eds.), Routledge handbook of global citizenship studies. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaap, A. (2011). Enacting the right to have rights: Jacques Rancière’s critique of Hannah Arendt. European Journal of Political Theory, 10(1), 22–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schuster, L. (2005). The continuing mobility of migrants in Italy: Shifting between places and statuses. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(4), 757–774.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shafir, G. (Ed.) (1998). The citizenship debates. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. (2004). Warehousing refugees: A denial of rights, a waste of humanity. InWorld refugee survey. Washington, DC: US Committee for Refugees.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soguk, N. (1999). States and strangers: Refugees and displacements of statecraft. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stadtler, B. (1975). The holocaust: A history of courage and resistance. West Orange, NJ: Behrman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stefanova, S. (1999). Lettera dal lager di via Corelli: qui è un inferno! Accessed February 20, 2010, from http://www.altrodiritto.unifi.it/ricerche/migranti/dimauro/appendix.html

  • Steiner, N., Gibney, M., & Loescher, G. (Eds.) (2003). Problems of protection. The UNHCR, refugees, and human rights. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stolcke, V. (1997). The “nature” of nationality. In V. Bader (Ed.), Citizenship and exclusion. London: MacMillan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swyngedouw, E. (2011). Interrogating post-democratization: Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. Political Geography, 30, 370–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tagma, H. M. (2010). Biopower as a supplement to sovereign power: Prison camps, war, and the production of excluded bodies. In S. Biswas & S. Nair (Eds.), International relations and states of exception. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • UNHCR (2012). The state of the world’s refugees. In search of solidarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, I. (1995). The insurmountable contradictions of liberalism: Human rights and the rights of peoples in the geoculture of the modern world-system. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 94(4), 1161–1177.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the poor: The neo liberal governance of social insecurity. London: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Walters, W. (2002). Deportation, expulsion, and the international police of aliens. Citizenship Studies, 6(3), 265–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weber, L., & Pickering, S. (2011). Globalization and borders: Death at the global frontier. Basingstoke, MD: Palgrave MacMillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, G. (2015). Disclosure and responsibility in Arendt’s the human condition. European Journal of Political Theory, 14(1), 37–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zevnik, A. (2009). Sovereign-less subject and the possibility of resistance. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 38(1), 83–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ADA University, Baku, Azerbaijan

    Raffaela Puggioni

Authors
  1. Raffaela Puggioni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Puggioni, R. (2016). The Refugee of Protection. In: Rethinking International Protection. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48310-2_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48310-2_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-48309-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48310-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation