This course undertakes a semester-long inquiry into the repressive government of human mobilities. It examines how migration is socially constituted as a security threat and interrogates the effects of power that such construction generates. The analytical focus is on bodies – an object overlooked in IR – both as a surface on which ‘regimes of truth’ are inscribed and as a material site where domination operates and forms of resistance appear. The course sheds light on the (in)securitization of migration from above through the study of the dispositifs put in place by the authorities to force the incorporation of security logics, but also from below by highlighting the embodied experiences of (in)security that migrants have. While the empirical domain of the course is global, the Swiss case will serve as a privileged launching pad for the discussions.
- Teacher: Victor Santos Rodriguez