People, Privilege and Pity

Abstract

This chapter considers the intertwinement of relations of privilege with a politics pity through examining humanitarian exhibitions of discarded migrant belongings. It distinguishes between interventions that seek to make visible the plight of migrating people and those that render visible the violence of contemporary bordering practices. Squire shows how the former can lead to an engagement with migrants as subjects that pose a danger unto themselves and to others, while also producing knowledge of clandestine migration that can violate the politics of such an act. The chapter thus draws attention to the limitations of a humanitarianism that dwells within loss and assumes innocence, exploring how a universalist ethics of care that invests in a ‘common humanity’ ultimately becomes exclusionary at heart.