Migration and the politics of ‘the human’: confronting the privileged subjects of IR
| Author | Vicki Squire |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820946380 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820946380
International Relations
2020, Vol. 34(3) 290 –308
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117820946380
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Migration and the politics of
‘the human’: confronting the
privileged subjects of IR
Vicki Squire
University of Warwick
Abstract
In what ways has migration as a field of scholarship contributed to the discipline of International
Relations (IR)? How can migration as a lived experience shed light on international politics as a
field of interconnections? And how might migration as a political and analytical force compel IR to
confront its privileged subjects? This article addresses these questions by focusing specifically on
precarious migration from the Global South to the Global North. It shows how critical scholars
refuse the suggestion that such migrations pose a ‘global challenge’ or problem to be resolved,
considering instead how contemporary practices of governing migration effectively produce
precarity for many people on the move. It also shows how critical works point to longer standing
racialised dynamics of colonial violence within which such governing practices are embedded, to
emphasise both the limitations of liberal humanitarianism as well as the problematic politics of ‘the
human’ that this involves. By building on the insights of anti-racist, indigenous and postcolonial
scholarship, critical scholars of migration are well placed to draw attention to the privileging of
some subjects over others in the study and practice of international politics. The article argues
that engaging IR while rejecting the orthodoxies on which the discipline is built remains critical
for such works in order to advance understanding of the silences and violences of contemporary
international politics.
Keywords
interconnectedness, International Relations, migration, politics of ‘the human’
Introduction
In what ways has migration as a field of scholarship contributed to the discipline of
International Relations (IR)? How can migration as a lived experience shed light on
international politics as a field of interconnections? And how might migration as a
Corresponding author:
Vicki Squire, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
Email: v.j.squire@warwick.ac.uk
946380IRE0010.1177/0047117820946380International RelationsSquire
research-article2020
Article
Squire 291
political and analytical force compel IR to confront its privileged subjects? This article
addresses these questions by focusing specifically on precarious migration from the
Global South to the Global North. Precarious migration has emerged as an issue of
increasing concern over recent years in political and public debate, as well as in IR schol-
arship and the social sciences more broadly. The article explores precarious migration
from a critical perspective, refusing its labelling as a ‘global challenge’ in light of the
political dangers associated with the securitisation of migration. Drawing on works that
address migration as a field of struggle rather than simply as a site of freedom and/or
control, it highlights how critical scholars have focused on the ways in which precarity
is produced through contemporary practices of governing migration. By exploring in
particular those governing practices that are orientated towards preventing South-North
migration, the article shows how critical scholars point to longer standing racialised
dynamics of colonial violence within which such practices are embedded. It shows how
such an emphasis is important both in emphasising the limitations of liberal humanitari-
anism as well as the problematic politics of ‘the human’ that it involves. By building on
the insights of anti-racist, indigenous and postcolonial scholarship, critical scholars of
migration are well placed to draw attention to the privileging of some subjects over oth-
ers in the study and practice of international politics. The article argues that engaging IR
while rejecting the orthodoxies on which the discipline is built remains critical for such
works in order to advance appreciation of the silences and violences of contemporary
international politics.
Interconnections
As a discipline that has grown out of a concern with the relations between different col-
lectives on a global scale, questions of connectedness have long been important to
International Relations (IR) (see the Introduction to this Special Issue1). Such intercon-
nections have been understood in a distinctive way through the discipline, namely as
relations between states that embody the collective will of ‘the people’ and that thus
entail a territorial form of sovereignty demanding non-interference on the part of other
states.2 Kerem Nisancioglu describes this ‘orthodox’ conception as a historical abstrac-
tion, which structures many of the foundational debates within IR and which elides the
role that colonial relations of mobility and immobility have played in the racialised con-
stitution of sovereignty.3 Indeed, it is this orthodox conception of sovereignty that many
scholars of migration have sought to challenge over recent decades, in particular, through
highlighting the exclusionary and contested nature of sovereign power manifest in vari-
ous bordering practices.4 By undertaking such work, such scholars have played a key
role in advancing a critical trajectory of IR research that rejects conventional assump-
tions about the existence of discrete states and contained societies. They have problema-
tised both the nationalist worldview and the combative ethics that such assumptions
implicate, as well as cosmopolitan alternatives that overlook histories of hostility and
violence.5 Providing pioneering examples of scholarship that has engaged IR without
remaining caught within its orthodoxies, migration scholars have thus contributed to the
expansion of IR into a broad, diverse and inter- or transdisciplinary field of research.
Such a field is increasingly appreciative of the ways in which interconnections across
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