Abject Cosmopolitanism: the politics of protection in the anti-deportation movement

Abstract

The securitisation of migration in Western states has resulted in an array of restrictive laws and policies that raise important questions about the relationship between protection and the political. New technologies of control (such as detention) and strategies of exclusion (such as deportation) are rapidly undermining—indeed, effectively criminalising—national cultures of asylum. This article critically analyses how these measures are being contested and countered by the anti-deportation activism of undocumented non-citizen people in Canada. How are these campaigns re-casting the question of ‘protection’ in the face of deportation efforts by the Canadian state? This is a significant issue because the capacity to decide upon matters of inclusion and exclusion is a key element of sovereign power. In the case of asylum seekers, the ability to decide who will and will not be provided with protection is interpreted in this paper as a focal point where the state (re)founds its claim to monopolise the political. Consequently, disputes over who has the authority to protect, who will be protected, and under what terms and conditions, can reveal new problematisations as well as new ways of thinking and acting politically. Employing the conceptual framework of abject cosmopolitanism, this article seeks to understand how these campaigns are, and are not, reformulating the terms of political community, identity and practice.