A Dislocated Territorial Order? Introducing the Asylum ‘Problem’

Abstract

This book tells two stories. The first story has as its primary character a sovereign state. This state strives to protect its citizens against the negative imposition of uninvited non-citizens, while the latter risk life and limb in order to steal the benefits of which the former are the rightful recipients. As we will see, there is seemingly no end to this story, because the sovereign state effectively generates the ‘problem’ or ‘threat’ to which it is opposed. The second story has as its primary figure the ‘asylum seeker’, who is defined according to his or her ‘unauthorised’ entrance into a foreign territory. This mobile character, in risking life and limb, serves as an exemplary figure that renders visible the exclusionary practices employed by the state in its attempt to maintain a territorial order. The ending of this story remains unclear. Will the asylum seeker be consigned to the role of a scapegoat, or will s/he constitute herself/himself as a political agent within a broader movement towards a ‘post-national’ or ‘post-territorial’ citizenship?