Asylum Seekers, Sovereignty, and the Senses of the International: A Politico-corporeal Struggle (Interventions)

The confrontation between asylum seeking and sovereignty has mainly focused on ways in which the movement and possibilities of refugees and migrants are limited. In this volume, instead of departing from the practices of governance and surveillance, Puumala begins with the moving body, its engagements and relations and examines different ways of seeing and sensing the struggle between asylum seekers and sovereign practices. Puumala asserts that our political imagination is being challenged in its ways of ordering, practicing and thinking about the international and those relations we call international. The issues relating to asylum seekers are one example of the deficiencies in the spatiotemporal logic upon which these relations were originally built; words such as 'nation', 'people', 'sovereignty' and 'community' are challenged. Conventional methods of governing, regulating and administering increased forms of mobility are in trouble, which gives rise to the invention of new technologies at borders and introduces regulations and spaces of exception. Based on extensive fieldwork that sheds light on a range of Europe-wide practices in the field of asylum and migration policies, this book will be of interest to scholars of IR theory, biopolitics and migration, as well as critical security more broadly. -- Provided by publisher Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Preface......Page 11 The international......Page 13 Relational ethics......Page 14 Collaging research......Page 15 Responsible scholarship......Page 16 EVENT 1 Ethnographic experiences......Page 18 Points of departure......Page 22 The field......Page 23 Research motivation......Page 26 The demand......Page 27 Sensuous scholarship and ethnographic seduction......Page 30 Lines of life......Page 35 The writing ‘I’......Page 39 A hermeneutics of the ontologically potent body......Page 42 EVENT 2 Political lives, professional ethics, and sovereign practices......Page 46 In search of solid ground......Page 50 Sovereign control and the body......Page 52 Approaching asylum through exposure......Page 55 A politics of voice, the politics of the body......Page 58 The ontological body......Page 61 Compearance – beyond essentialist politics......Page 63 Exploring the event of exposure......Page 65 Towards the senses of the international......Page 68 EVENT 3 Asylum, a monologist narrative of the state?......Page 72 Contestation and connection......Page 76 Gaping discord......Page 77 Equal discontent towards the process......Page 82 Representation and articulation......Page 87 The body as a point of reflection......Page 90 The dynamics of asylum interviews......Page 93 Evented positionalities......Page 97 The body matters......Page 106 In-different positionalities......Page 110 EVENT 4 Passages and dislocations......Page 114 Seeing movement like a state......Page 118 Movement as corporeal articulation......Page 122 Sovereignty in transition......Page 125 The body as a limit......Page 128 Seeing states through movement......Page 131 Sensing space......Page 138 The bodily event of the political......Page 145 EVENT 5 The feltness of sovereignty......Page 150 On sense and sensing......Page 154 Local colour......Page 158 Making sense of the senses and sentiment......Page 162 Sensuous protests......Page 165 A shared sense of vulnerability......Page 170 Corporeal refusals and aversion......Page 174 Sensuous articulations of the political......Page 177 Collage of a politico-corporeal struggle......Page 182 References......Page 188 Appendix......Page 207 Index......Page 208