Author:

Antonio De Lauri (Chr. Michelsen Institute)

Paper short abstract:

Through a critique of crisis, this paper discusses the link between the management of mobility and the proliferation of humanitarian borders in Europe.

Paper long abstract:

The proliferation of humanitarian borders generates a politics of crisis that weakens the capacity to produce structural political change but also legitimizes exceptionalism and the reproduction of hierarchized borders. In this paper, I argue that a critique of crisis implies the possibility of moving beyond humanitarian borders and of re-collocating political change within the realm of ordinary politics. In contemporary Europe, a critique of crisis is a critique of power. It is a way to develop a political vision of borders and mobility beyond the humanitarian order of things. Ultimately, it is a way to give ordinary politics back the capacity to project the future by freeing it from humanitarian contingency.