Citizens and exceptions: illegal immigration, citizenship and the state: does the theory of the state of exception provide a useful framework for examining how citizenship is understood, constructed and regulated in contemporary South Africa?
Date
2009-09-04T07:55:08Z
Authors
Mosselson, Aidan
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Abstract
Citizens and Exceptions is a theoretical examination of South Africa’s current approach
to immigration and citizenship. The work utilises Agamben’s theory of the state of
exception to analyse the laws and policies put in place to regulate immigration in South
Africa and to examine the methods and practices used to enforce these laws. It also
studies the xenophobic riots of May 2008 from this perspective. This is done in order to
understand the discourses, practices, and modes of state power at work in the
immigration sphere. The underlying theme in the work is based on Schmitt’s assertion
that the norm depends on the exception. Thus, a study of illegal immigration in South
Africa – the exception – provides a lens through which the norm of citizenship can be
understood. For Agamben, the state of exception is ‘a legal no-man’s land’ in which law
and illegality blur. The current South African state’s approach to immigration constructs
illegal immigrants as exceptions and places them within this no-man’s land. This is done
in several ways, which are explored in this work. At the same time, the establishment of a
boundary, of an exceptional category, gives form to another category, that of citizenship
and the nation. This is asserted in the thesis, and is done through the use of the state of
exception, as well as Foucault’s concepts ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopolitics’. All of these
are revealed as informative concepts through which contemporary citizenship,
immigration regimes, and processes of population production can be understood. At the
same time, flaws within these concepts are exposed and discussed.