A Critique of the Humanitarian (B)order of Things

Abstract

The reification of humanitarian borders generates a politics of crisis that weakens the capacity to produce structural political changes and legitimizes exceptionalism and the reproduction of hierarchized borders. In this article, I argue that a critique of crisis implies the possibility of thinking about migration beyond the limits of humanitarian borders, therefore locating debates about political action and change within the realm of ordinary politics rather than that of emergency and exceptionalism. In contemporary Europe, a critique of crisis is a critique of power. It is thus a way to develop a political vision of borders and mobility beyond the humanitarian order of things.