Sans-papiers

The rising number of non-status migrants is one of the central political issues of our time. This essay argues that if we want to understand the political and philosophical importance of this phenomenon, the contributions of Alain Badiou, his militant group L'Organisation politique (OP), and the struggle of the sans-papiers movement in France are absolutely crucial. This is the case because, I will argue, Badiou, the OP, and the sans-papiers created a new kind of migrant justice struggle in the mid-1990s that in many ways remains at the practical and theoretical roots of much of non-status migrant organizing today. However, this essay also argues that Badiou's theoretical and political work with the sans-papiers also needs to be revised and updated in light of certain developments in more recent migrant justice struggles.

The paper discusses Derrida's concept of hospitality which perfectly describes the experience of loosing the sense of feeling at home and reveals the disintegrating entrance of the Otherness into a coherent home space. Jacques Derrida's theory makes it possible to deconstruct the familiar home space, which, however, does not constitute in any case its destruction. Revealing a complex and ambiguous nature of the challenge of hospitality, he perceives the sense of feeling at home as one of the necessary conditions of a stable subject. This is the subject that most fears the Otherness which could disrupt, unsettle their permanent structure and a sense of certainty. Therefore, the Author follows closely the fear of strangeness and the nostalgic longing for the sense of feeling at home as depicted by David Lynch and Michael Haneke in their films. Then he passes on to the field of contemporary art which not only reveals the fact that something has happened to the house we have known so far, but it also allows for creative deconstruction of the feeling at home. The artistic works selected by the Author break the binary oppositions: one’s own/someone else’s, familiar/strange (Jessica Sue Layton), close/distant (Shizuka Yokomizo) and finally the most important one: interior/exterior (Marja Pirilä, Eve Dent).

The twenty-first century will be the century of the migrant. At the turn of the twenty-first century, there were more migrants than ever before in recorded history. Today there are over 1 billion migrants. Each decade, the percentage of migrants as a share of total population continues to rise, and in the next twenty-five years, the rate of migration is predicted to be higher than in the last twenty-five. More than ever, it is becoming necessary for people to migrate due to environ- mental, economic, and political instability. In particular, climate change may even double international migration over the next forty years. What is more, the percentage of total migrants who are non-status or undocumented is also increasing, thus posing a serious challenge to democracy and political representation.

This volume brings together new anthropological research on the recent crisis in Greece and provides valuable ethnographic explorations of a period of radical social change. With contributions from scholars based both in Greece and abroad, the book addresses a number of key issues such as the refugee crisis, far-right extremism, new forms of resistance to crisis, and the psychological impact of increased poverty and unemployment. It provides much needed ethnographic contributions and critical anthropological perspectives at a key moment in Greece's history, and will be of great interest to readers interested in the social, political, and economic developments in Europe. It is the first collection to ethnographically explore this period of radical social change and its impact on anthropological understanding of Greece, and Europe overall.

Dealing with Derrida’s ethic of hospitality, this paper proceeds in three steps. First, I look back at the criticism Magali Bessone addresses to the “paradigm of hospitality”, targeting Derrida in particular for his assertion, in the middle of the 1990s, of a principle of unconditional hospitality in support of (undocumented) migrants’ struggles. I subsequently argue that Bessone’s criticism does not take into account the case in point for Derrida; “case” referring here to both the contextual circumstances and a specific judicial case. If Derrida appeared to put the emphasis on “private” hospitality, it was largely because of a peculiar legal case, “L’affaire Jacqueline Deltombe”. Derrida was instrumental in bringing this case to the public’s attention and in shaping its public perception and understanding. Finally, tracing back the Heideggerian and Levinasian backdrops of his work, I further argue that his philosophy of hospitality overlooks some fundamental dimensions of hospitality, neglecting the pole of reception and hypertrophying the pole of donation.

Centré sur l’éthique de l’hospitalité de Jacques Derrida, cet article procède en trois temps. D’abord, j’y reviens sur les critiques que Magali Bessone adresse au "paradigme de l’hospitalité", ciblant spécialement Jacques Derrida qui avait fait valoir un principe d’hospitalité inconditionnelle, dès le milieu des années 1990, en soutien aux luttes des sans-papiers et migrants. Je montre ensuite que les critiques de Magali Bessone ne tiennent pas compte de ce qui était le cas pour Jacques Derrida : cas s’entend ici comme circonstances et comme affaire. L’apparente centration de Jacques Derrida sur l’hospitalité « privée » faisait écho à une affaire, « l’affaire Jacqueline Deltombe », dont il a informé la compréhension publique. Enfin, via un retour à son arrière-plan heideggerien et levinassien, j’essaye de montrer en quoi la philosophie derridéenne de l’accueil oublie d’essentielles dimensions de l’hospitalité, en négligeant tout spécialement le pôle de la réception au profit d’une hypertrophie du pôle de la donation.

(English below) À partir d’une enquête réalisée à Montréal dans un groupe militant pour le droit à l’éducation pour les enfants sans-papiers, on discutera de la place de l’enquêteur en terrain militant et des problèmes, classiques en ethnographie et décisifs dans l’étude des mobilisations, qui se nouent autour de son double statut d’observateur et de participant. On commencera par décrire certaines contraintes qui ont configuré l’enquête comme une participation-observante à découvert, comme la politique d’enquête des enquêtés qui confronte l’enquêteur à un impératif participatif. Ensuite, on défendra l’idée que l’implication de l’enquêteur, qui s’éloigne d’une « épistémologie de la non-perturbation », ouvre des voies d’investigation intéressantes ; on abordera en même temps la question des limites de sa participation. Enfin, on formulera des propositions de solutions à deux dilemmes rencontrés au fil de cette enquête in situ : le respect des règles des comités d’éthique et « l’enclicage » de l’enquêteur.
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In this work based on the study of a group fighting for the right to education for the undocumented children in Montreal, the place of the investigator on an activist field and the problems induced by his double status of observer and participant, classic in ethnography and decisive in social movements study, will be discussed. First, constraints resulting in an open participative observation type of investigation will be described, in particular the investigation policy of the investigated, demanding the investigator participation. Then, we will show how the investigator leaving the non-perturbation epistemology accesses otherwise hidden data. In parallel, we will discuss the question of the investigator’s investment limits. Finally, we will propose solutions to two dilemmas encountered along this in situ study: the respect of the ethics committees’ rules, and the phenomenon of the investigator getting « caught up in a clique ».

First paragraph: "Mustafa Dikeç’s new book, Space, Politics and Aesthetics, lends momentum to a now frequent accommodation of aesthetics in political-geographical analyses of spaces of politics. To date, the relevant geographical literature has tended to take its cues from the post-Althusserian political theories of Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou. This is especially evident in a recent spate of publications on depoliticization, the post-political, the police, and so on. Dikeç’s previous work is notable here. Citations of his 2007 book Badlands of the Republic and several articles from that project (a Rancièrian analysis of urban policy in France) reveal that he plays a significant role in facilitating the current traffic between political geography and post-Althusserian theory. Dikeç’s new book, anticipated by several articles (in, e.g., Antipode, Society and Space, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers), pushes its readers beyond the now familiar theoretical touchstones of his previous book to examine complementary conceptions of politics in key works by Hannah Arendt, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Rancière. Engagement with the former two thinkers is of course not without precedent in Anglophone human geography. But geographers have not yet examined the particular distinctions and intersections among Rancière, Arendt, and Nancy to which Dikeç now devotes sustained attention. And the book is novel not only for demonstrating the underexplored relevance of each of these thinkers for geography and cognate fields, but also for exploiting productive connections between these thinkers to identify, as the ‘sublime element in politics,’ the disruption of inherited modes of sensing and relating to the world by phenomena unaccommodated by the spatial-temporal order given to them."

Dans un contexte où le capitalisme globalisé est suspecté d'infléchir l'autorité des législations nationales, il importe d'observer que ces dernières accordent à la création artistique un statut protecteur la distinguant de toute autre production commerciale. Appliqué à l'échelle internationale, ce régime spécifique constitue une exception notable au regard des principes de régulation de l'économie mondiale. Reconnue pour son apport essentiel au patrimoine collectif, « l'oeuvre de l'esprit » échappe-grâce au droit-aux logiques strictes de la privatisation des biens et des bénéfices liés à leur exploitation.

In deze bijdrage argumenteer ik dat het verloren gewaande emancipatorisch en democratisch potentieel van de civiele maatschappij zich niet zozeer binnen gevestigde ‘middenveldorganisaties’ bevindt, maar eerder in autonome zelforganisaties die opereren in de marges van de democratie. Het is in de kleine initiatieven van diegenen die niet alleen uitgesloten, maar zelfs niet erkend worden als politieke actoren door de staat, dat het potentieel voor democratiserende actie gezocht moet worden. Als het in vraag stellen van de huidige maatschappelijke orde het hoofddoel is en de civiele maatschappij het instrument waarmee dit kan gebeuren, dan moet er een meer onderbouwde reflectie plaatsvinden over wie het best geplaatst is om rechtmatig vragen van deze aard te stellen. Niet diegenen die reeds ingeschakeld en geïncorporeerd zijn binnen beleidsnetwerken, maar zij die het radicale ‘buiten’ van deze netwerken belichamen, vormen de speerpunt van maatschappelijke verandering. Anders gezegd: de democratie zit in de marges, of, in de marges zit democratie.  Dit staat niet gelijk aan beweren dat de organisaties die het traditionele ‘middenveld’ bevolken überhaupt geen rol te spelen zouden hebben binnen een progressieve sociale beweging. Maar dit heeft wel implicaties voor de discussie rond de (her)invulling van haar rol en het herdenken van haar politieke opdracht.
De strijd voor erkenning van mensen zonder papieren in België en de interne conflicten rond representatie die de afgelopen jaren binnen de beweging woedden zijn een perfecte casus om deze stelling verder te onderzoeken. Ik put hierbij uit vier jaar sociologisch onderzoek verricht bij activisten zonder papieren in het kader van mijn doctoraatsthesis.

En Suisse comme en Europe, les sans-papiers sortent de l'ombre. La reconnaissance de leurs droits et de leur dignité passe en particulier par la régularisation de leur statut de séjour et par une remise en question des politiques migratoires, véritables fabriques de sans-papiers.

Les procédures d’asile reposent sur un tri des réfugiés et donc sur une catégorisation. La vérification des critères de catégorisation impose une série d’épreuves et de questionnements intensifs, qui transforme la procédure en un « test de résistance au stress ». Témoignage et analyse.