Casualties of Care : Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France

This book explores the unintended consequences of compassion in the world of immigration politics. Miriam Ticktin focuses on France and its humanitarian immigration practices to argue that a politics based on care and protection can lead the state to view issues of immigration and asylum through a medical lens. Examining two "regimes of care"—humanitarianism and the movement to stop violence against women—Ticktin asks what it means to permit the sick and sexually violated to cross borders while the impoverished cannot? She demonstrates how in an inhospitable immigration climate, unusual pathologies can become the means to residency papers, making conditions like HIV, cancer, and select experiences of sexual violence into distinct advantages for would-be migrants. Ticktin’s analysis also indicts the inequalities forged by global capitalism that drive people to migrate, and the state practices that criminalize the majority of undocumented migrants at the expense of care for the exceptional few. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Politics and Antipolitics of Care Part One The Context: Politics and Care 1. Sans-Papiers and the Context of Political Struggle 2. Genealogies of Care: The New Humanitarianism Part Two: On the Ground: Compassion and Pathology 3. The Illness Clause: Life and the Politics of Compassion 4. In the Name of Violence against Women Part Three: Antipolitics: Diseased Citizens and a Racialized Postcolonial State 5. Armed Love: Against Modern Slavery, Against Immigrants 6. Biological Involution? The Production of Diseased Citizens Conclusion: Engaging the Political Notes Bibliography Index This work explores the unintended consequences of compassion in the world of immigration politics. In particular it looks at two regimes of care, humanitarianism and the movement to stop violence against women.