Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the ways in which the overlapping care and security concerns of liberal rationality have influenced the racialization of the welfare system, the industries of care, humanitarianism and development, and the internationalization of social care policy.

Paper long abstract:

Although an impressive production amidst the social sciences have focused in the resistance and integration difficulties of immigrants, the complex 'dispositifs' of care targeting deprived immigrant populations have drawn substantially less interest. Yet it could be argued that while less self-evident, this set of programs of care show the pivotal importance of looking after the conditions of the racially and culturally different surplus life in motion in 'Western' governmental activity in the past few decades, triggering ambiguous calls for protection and correction, empowerment and contention. While it is clear that it reveals overlapping care concerns with a security agenda, the discourse and approach of compassion and intervention towards specific populations do not hide immanent contradictions or functions of social control, but is rather part and parcel of the very liberal-cosmopolitan global governance of our times. This paper will discuss the ways in which liberal rationalities have influenced the racialization of the welfare system, the industries of care, humanitarianism and development, and the internationalization of social care policy.