Abstract
This chapter contrasts the work of two of the most influential contemporary international voices on behalf of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers: Giorgio Agamben and Pope Francis. The work of Giorgio Agamben is at the centre of contemporary critical theory on the political status, treatment and plight of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. Agamben identifies issues that impede progress in the contemporary understanding and response to refugees and the challenge their presence brings to the modern nation-state. The first part of the chapter locates the figure of the refugee within Agamben’s larger philosophical, legal and political project, identifying how that figure brings the principles of the nation-state to radical crisis. The second part of the chapter examines a selection of Pope Francis’ statements and comments on the status of migrants and refugees in light of Agamben’s analysis of the refugee crisis and its integral connection to the nation-state. This section highlights the limitations and inherent problems in the way that Pope Francis seeks to address this crisis, focusing on three topics: his appeal to Universal Human Rights; his use of liberal humanitarian (and theological) discourses; and the relation of the Holy See (the Vatican) to the nation-states of the world.
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Notes
- 1.
“Beyond Human Rights” (1993) was first published in English in Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota, 2000), 15–26. This chapter was included with some adaptations in Giorgio Agamben’s ground-breaking book, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University, 1998). The Italian edition of Homo Sacer was published in 1995.
- 2.
The Roman Catholic Church has celebrated the World Day of Migrants and Refugees since 1914. For a compilation of related documents and resources, see the “Migrant and Refugees Section” of the Vatican, https://migrants-refugees.va, accessed 17 January 2020.
- 3.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951), 293. In the response to the refugee crises that followed the Second World War, international apparatuses and humanitarian organizations such as the 1951 “International Convention Relating to the Status of Human Rights” and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees were established to deal with displaced persons who were citizens of no particular sovereign state.
- 4.
This derivation is also evident in the English word native.
- 5.
Agamben, Means Without End, 21.
- 6.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 133.
- 7.
Agamben, Means Without End, 19 and x. See also, Agamben, Homo Sacer, 134.
- 8.
Agamben, Means Without End, 19. See also, “What is a People,” in idem, 28–44.
- 9.
Ibid., 16.
- 10.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 127. Agamben writes, “The same bare life that in the ancien régime was politically neutral and belonged to God as creaturely life and in the classical world was (at least apparently) clearly distinguished as zōe from political life (bios) now fully enters into the structure of the state and even becomes the earthly foundation of the state’s legitimacy and sovereignty.”
- 11.
Ibid., 71ff.
- 12.
Agamben notes that he employs figures such as the homo sacer, the state of exception and the concentration camp “as paradigms whose role was to constitute and make intelligible a broader historical-problematic context.” See Giorgio Agamben, The Signature of All Things: On Method, trans. Lucio D’Isanto with Kevin Attell (New York: Zone, 2009), 9. Agamben further states that: “a paradigm is simply an example, a single case that by its repeatability acquires the capacity to model tacitly the behaviour and research practices of scientists.” See Agamben, The Signature of All Things, 11. For a helpful explanation of the use of paradigms in Agamben’s writings, see William Watkin, “The Signature of All Things: Agamben’s Philosophical Archaeology,” MLN 129/1 (2014): 139–161 and Watkin, Agamben and Indifference: A Critical Overview (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014).
- 13.
Patricia Owens, “Reclaiming Bare Life: Against Agamben on Refugees,” International Relations 23/4 (2009): 567–582, see especially 567–568. See also Agamben, Means Without End, 16.
- 14.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 171.
- 15.
Ibid., 181. Agamben writes of those in the camp: “Precisely because they were lacking almost all the rights and expectations that we customarily attribute to human existence, and yet were still biologically alive, they came to be situated in a limit zone between life and death, inside and outside, in which they were no longer anything but bare life. Those who are sentenced to death and those who dwelt in the camps are thus in some way unconsciously assimilated to homines sacres, to a life that may be killed without the commission of homicide.” See also idem, 159. See also Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005), 1.
- 16.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 174–175.
- 17.
Michael R. Fisher, “Invoking ‘Fear’ Studies,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 22/4 (2006): 51. See also Michalinos Zembylas, “Agamben’s Theory of Biopower and Immigrants/Refugees/Asylum Seekers: Discourses of Citizenship and the Implications for Curriculum Theorizing,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 26/2 (2010): 33–34.
- 18.
Zembylas, “Agamben’s Theory of Biopower,” 34. Zembylas cites Imogen Tyler, “Welcome to Britain: The Cultural Politics of Asylum,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 9/2 (2006): 196.
- 19.
Tyler, “Welcome to Britain,” 196. See also Zembylas, “Agamben’s Theory of Biopower,” 34.
- 20.
Zembylas, “Agamben’s Theory of Biopower,” 34.
- 21.
Imogen Tyler observes that, “The central paradox facing humanitarian appeals and interventions on behalf of asylum seekers is that they conform to the law by situating their appeals within the language of the law which they nevertheless contest.” See Tyler, “Welcome to Britain,” 196.
- 22.
Zembylas , “Agamben’s Theory of Biopower,” 34. Agamben writes, “The separation between humanitarianism and politics that we are experiencing today is the extreme phase of the separation of the rights of man from the rights of the citizen. In the final analysis, however, humanitarian organizations – which today are more and more supported by international commissions – can only grasp human life in the figure of bare or sacred life, and therefore, despite themselves, maintain a secret solidarity with the very powers they ought to fight.” See Agamben, Homo Sacer, 133.
- 23.
Zembylas, “Agamben’s Theory of Biopower,” 34.
- 24.
Agamben, Means Without End, 24.
- 25.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 134. See Zembylas, “Agamben’s Theory of Biopower,” 37–38.
- 26.
Agamben, Means Without End, 24.
- 27.
Ibid., 24.
- 28.
See Giacchino Campese, CS, “You are Close to the Church’s Heart: Pope Francis and Migrants,” in Church in an Age of Global Migration: Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, eds. Susanna Snyder, Agnes M. Brazai and Joshua Ralston (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 23–34.
- 29.
Pope Francis, “Homily of Holy Father Francis: Visit to Lampedusa, ‘Arena’ sports camp, Salina Quarter (Monday, 8 July 2013),” http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130708_omelia-lampedusa.html, accessed 17 January 2018.
- 30.
Pope Francis, “Address of his Holiness Pope Francis to the Members of the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See for the Traditional Exchange of New Year Greetings (January 8, 2018),” https://migrants-refugees.va/mr_article/address-of-his-holiness-pope-francis-to-the-members-of-the-diplomatic-corps-accredited-to-the-holy-see-for-the-traditional-exchange-of-new-year-greetings, accessed 17 January 2020.
- 31.
Ibid., n.2.
- 32.
Ibid., n.3.
- 33.
Agamben, Means Without End, 21. See also Agamben, Homo Sacer, 131.
- 34.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 127.
- 35.
Pope Francis, “Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate of the Holy Father Francis on the Call to Holiness in Today’s World,” n.102, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20180319_gaudete-et-exsultate.html, accessed 17 January 2020. Francis cites the Rule of Benedict 53: 1, 7 and 15. See J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina, Vol. 66 (Paris 1878–90), 749, 750 and 751.
- 36.
Pope Francis, “Diplomatic Corps,” 8.
- 37.
Pope Francis, “Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops, Clergy, Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World,” n.210, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html, accessed 17 January 2020.
- 38.
Agamben, Means Without End, 135. For a more detailed examination of Agamben’s critique of the Roman Catholic Church, see Craig A. Phillips, “The Reign of God and the Church: Giorgio Agamben’s Messianic Critique of the Church,” in Mark Chapman, ed., Hope in the Ecumenical Future: Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 63–81.
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Phillips, C.A. (2021). The Refugee as “Limit-Concept” in the Modern Nation-State. In: Dias, D.J., Skira, J.Z., Attridge, M.S., Mannion, G. (eds) The Church, Migration, and Global (In)Difference. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54226-9_11
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