Shidi fu hts

On the Figure of the Refugee

--From the refugee crisis towards an extraterritorial political structure Shidi Fu Tutor: Roberta Marcaccio Architectural Association School of Architecture

Introduction 4 Syrian Refugee Crisis 5 The Concept of the Political and State 8 The Space of Exception—Nahr al-Bared 9 Extraterritoriality—the coming juridical-political structure 12 Conclusion 14

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Introduction For the past two decades, Europe has experienced a series of dramatic changes at its border. Such as, the enlargement of European Union to 25 nations, the crisis of booming asylum and the diversification of influx. Essentially, the issue has come to be how to assimilate the population movement into a security challenge.1 According to a study, around 1.4 million annual immigration occurs in Europe besides the fact that those emigration from south and East Europe have becoming countries of immigration. As a result, the massive scale of immigration has inevitably cause a series of issues in terms of social security, sovereignty, identity and well-being of the citizens.2 Nonetheless, an ageing Europe is experiencing a lack of employees in both skilled and unskilled sectors, which has led Europe to involuntarily seek a solution to the immigration problem.

In addition, according to further study, form 1950 to 2000, the Mediterranean has tripled its population from 73 million to 244 million, whereas in Europe the number has only increased from 158 million to 212 million. However, in terms of GDP, Europe has developed fourteen times faster than Mediterranean region.3 Thus, it is not difficult to imagine that, for Mediterranean immigrants, immigration is not only an economic liberation, but more importantly, it is a social resource and a factor of modernisation. The crucial points here is that to regard the immigration not as a rather short or contemporary solution for the lack of employee, in other words, Europe needs a long, active and mutually beneficial relationship with its immigration countries.

The Euro-Mediterranean relationship is always an asymmetrical one, since the EU imposes its cultural, economic and value dynamism upon its all member states.4 Therefore, it is not difficult to see that the international relations are generally operated according to power relations, an unbalanced power structure in favour of the EU would naturally generate a biased relationship. Thus, to challenge this based on a short-time relationship, a reformation in its economic, cultural and intellectual structure is calling, in other words, it should aim not only at a free-trade zone, but a zone of Co-prosperity. Especially, it should challenge the opposition between ‘them’ and ‘us’.5 This essay will firstly regard the current Syrian refugee crisis as a departure point to trigger a broader discussion about the issue of border, territory and state. From then, it aims to open the discourse about the concept of space of exception by examining the destruction case of Palestinian refugee camp—Nahr al-Bared, which contributes to investigating the juridical-political nature of a state of exception and the political consequence on its inhabit-

1 Wihtol de Wenden, C. (2007). Does Europe Need New Immigration?. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

2 Fabre, T. (2007). The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: reformulating a process. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

3 ibid.

4 Filali-Ansary, A. (2007). Identity Crises and Value Conflicts. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

5 ibid.

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ants—refugee (bare human life). Finally, throughout the analysis on concepts of citizenship and nation-state, it attempts to suggest a radical replacement of the citizen as the fundamental element instituting our current declining nation-state political structure. This essay argues that a new political community based on the figure—stateless refugee, could potentially operate on an aterritorial or extraterritorial space, which to certain extents, possess the insight to turn the current European refugee crisis into a priceless advantage.

Syrian Refugee Crisis The current Syrian refugee crisis occurring in Europe has not only revealed Europe’s fragile and problematic immigration issues, it also has posed a more profound question on the fundamental relation between the concept of the citizen and nation-state. An estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their home since the outbreak of the civic war in march 2011, while over 3 million have fled to Syria’s immediate neighbours, such as, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq and 6.5 million are internally displaced within Syria. Around 150,000 Syrias have declared sought in the European Union, while member states have pledged to resettle a further 33,000 Syrians.1 The Syrian refugee crisis has triggered furious discussion on the border issues. There are people urge to open the European border and form a super-state organisation, while others are totally against this idea. Nevertheless, the discussion here is about the nature of a border itself, in other words, the concept of the state. In the past, the most common definition of a state is the status of a political organisation in an enclosed territory.2 It is clear that the idea of enclosure is one of defining feature of the state. However, in an era of globalisation, the rapid proliferation of circulation and communication has dissolved the enclosed border. Moreover, with the emergence of supranational or transnational corporation, issues of one state or nation are involuntarily participated with other states.3 Thus, this issue forwards the question is the era of a truly globalised world without any restriction of nation happening now? If so, why the refugee issues would triggered those debates.

Essentially, the Syrian refugee crisis is revealing the conflict between coherent identity and value system. Identity is both inherited and imposed, such as, the physical appearance and self-projected images, which the ideal and imagined combined with the reality, while value is always expressed in particular one language and rooted in particular system.4 Events like massive demographic change and globalisation are resulting in the mobilisation and de-mobilisation of identity. For exampel, A particular identity can melt and become part of a defence system for a certain collective, while it is also possible that individual take their

1 Syrianrefugees.eu. (2016). Syrian Refugees. [online] Available at: http://syrianrefugees.eu [Accessed 24 Apr. 2016].

2 Schmitt, C. (1985). Political theology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

3 ibid.

4 Fabre, T. (2007). The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: reformulating a process. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

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Along the Tracks.1

1 CHUN, H. (2016). Along the Tracks. [image] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic. com/2015/09/150924-syrian-refugees-photos-germany-europe/#/17migrationchun.ngsversion.1443070804475.jpg [Accessed 6 Mar. 2016].

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On the Lookout.1

1 CHUN, H. (2016). On the Lookout. [image] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic. com/2015/09/150924-syrian-refugees-photos-germany-europe/#/03migrationchun.ngsversion.1443070801592.jpg [Accessed 9 Mar. 2016].

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immediate interest and detached it from certain collective when their individual identity overtook the collective identity.1 Besides, the collective identity is very easy to be politically manipulated in the name of cultural and linguistic identity and common history.2 What is at stake is to keep the balanced or binary existence between the individual and collective identity. Without the former, the integration of individual difference may ultimately lead to the homogenisation of identity, without the latter, there would not be any form of cultural and economic exchange.3

The Concept of the Political and State To define the state is essentially to comprehend the political, since the state has penetrated into society to a degree that an affair of the state would essentially become a social matter and vice versa. According to Carl Schmitt, the inherently objective and truly autonomous nature of the political can only come into concrete shape by understanding the friend-enemy relationship independently without other moral, social, justice antithesis.The political can derive its energy from all sort of human grouping, e.g. religious, moral and economic one.4 In other words, those antithesis could transform to political ones when they have enough power to group people according to friend-enemy relationship. For example, a political war occurs in the name of humanity, it is not for the sack of humanity, it is simple a political entity attempt to hijack an universal concept to against its enemy or military opponent. Besides, No war should flight for humanity, because humanity is not a political concept and there is no political entities corresponding to it.5 Thus, the enemy in the political sense need not to hated personally and vice versa. For Carl Schmitt, the friend-enemy grouping is the ultimately rationality for human being to form a political organisation without deriving from any other antithesis.

For the concept of enemy, it embodies the very present possibility of combat, while war is the combat between armed political entities. As Schmitt said: war is neither the aim or the purpose nor even the very content of politics, but as an ever present possibility it is the leading presupposition, which determines human action and thinking in a characteristic way and thereby creates specific political behaviours.6

Here, it is irrelevant for one to reject or accept that the friend-enemy grouping is a remnant of barbaric age that nations are still continuing to grouping themselves according to friend-enemy relationship. But the real concern here is the real possibility to form such rationality for the state without the help of other antithesis, such as, good or bad, beautiful or

1 Filali-Ansary, A. (2007). Identity Crises and Value Conflicts. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

2 ibid.

3 ibdi.

4 Schmitt, C. (2007). The concept of the political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

5 ibid.

6 ibid.

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ugly and profitable or unprofitable.1 Such a distinctive formation could essentially answer the question that whether do we need another organisation apart from economic, cultural and religious one. For this simple reason, the friend-enemy grouping is the political motive that can be mostly reduced.

Although having something in common can briefly or permanently form a collective but nothing can share the same statue as the one the state possessed. Thus, it is important for this essay to briefly discuss the concept of the state and its challenging issues. According to Max Webb, the State has four essential characteristics. Firstly, it represents a different set of institutions and embodied personnels, but it is not merely the combination of those, but rather superior than any of its components. Secondly, it possesses a centrality in a sense that political relations radiate outwards from centre. That is, it has centralised power sources, where the highest authoritative order is executed. Thirdly, it has territorially demarcated area, where it can exercise its power unconditionally. Fourthly, it has the monopoly of rule-making power, backed up by the monopoly of the means of physical violence.2 Indeed, what differentiating the state from other kind of economic, cultural, civil and religious grouping is that the state has the institutional, territorial and centralised nature.

However, one may argue that all those characters have been dramatically challenged since the very first day of the era of globalisation. The state in the globalised capitalist society becomes simultaneously ‘weaker’ and ‘stronger’.3 It is weak because of, unlike in most historic societies, its impossibility to have an autonomous society, while it is strong because of its capacity to penetrate the civil life through the rapid inclusion of human life into its management of politics. Ultimately, globalisation poses a profound question to our interpretation of the state, if the total globalised world requires for the total de-politicalisation throughout the planet inasmuch as eliminating political entities and thus no friend-enemy grouping relations, then what would be the difference between a social entity and the tenant in the tenement house or people happen to take the same bus home.4

The Space of Exception—Narl al-Bared The refugee crisis is able to pose a substantial question on the relationship between the citizen and nation-state so long as one start to investigate the space associated with those stateless noncitizen. Refugee camp is the common temporary settlement for people who have to flee from their home-nations due to various emergent reasons, which ranged from a warfare to natural disasters.5 One of the longest and biggest refugee camp in modern history is the Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon—Nahr al-Bared.

In 2007, the camp experienced a complete destruction during a two-month long conflict

1 2 Mann, M. (2003). The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results. In: N. Brenner, ed., State/space : a reader, 1st ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

3 ibid.

4 Schmitt, C. (1985). Political theology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

5 Ramadan, A. (2009). Destroying Nahr el-Bared: Sovereignty and urbicide in the space of exception. Political Geography, 28(3), pp.153-163.

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between the Lebanese Internal Security force and a group of Fatah-al-Islam militant.1 What is important here is that the analysis of the destruction of Nahr al-Bared have provoked profound questions on the concept of space of exception and the discourse of citizenship. Since the act of including up to 400,00 Sunni Muslim would add 10 per cent population to Lebanon’s sensitive and fragile ethnic balance, thus Lebanese government refuse to extend those Palestinian refugee basic rights, which including work restriction, exclusion from its social welfare system, civil and political right and possession of property.2 In a way, inhabitants of the refugee camp are not only marginalised from Lebanese society, but more importantly, they have been stripped away nearly all their human rights possessed by a normal citizen, which reduced them to the pure existence of human life.3 Refugee camp, military base, occupied zones and heterogeneous space outside the norm of territoriality, those space are in an abnormal condition, they tend to be temporary and mobile, and normally are resulted from a series of splitting of pre-existing political structure.4 In order to crystallised the sovereignty issues related the refugee camp, one should continue to asking questions, i.e. what is a camp and what sort of juridical-political structure would allow such event, such as, urbicide, to occur. According to Agamben, this inquire concerns precisely about the intersection between the juridico-institional and biopolitical models of power.5 The analysis about these two concepts cannot be separated precisely because the inclusion of bare life into the political realm constitute the original nucleus of sovereign power. Agamben also states that the concentration camp is a physical manifestation of the suspension of the law. For instance, from his study on meaning of concentration camp, Agamben argues, the juridical foundation for Schatzchen (Protective custody) was the proclamation of the state of siege or of exception and the corresponding suspension of the article of the German constitution that guaranteed personal liberties. As Article 48 of the Weimar constitution evidently proved: the president of Reich may, in the case of a grave disturbance or threat to public security and order, make the decisions necessary to reestablish public security, if necessary with the aid of the armed forces. To this end, he may provisionally suspend the fundamental rights contained in articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153.6 Similarly, what is essential in the case of refugee camp is that although the space is a temporary suspension of the rule of law, but it has eventually gained its permanent spacial arrangement and legitimacy.7 As a result, the urbicide (According to, it is used to refer to the violence and killing

1 Sheikh Hassan, I. (2010). Reconstructing the Oxymoron: The Palestinian Refugee Camp of Nahr el Bared, North Lebanon. In: V. D’Auria, ed., Human settlements : formulations and (re)calibrations, 1st ed. Amsterdam: SUN Academia.

2 Ramadan, A. (2010). In the Ruins of Nahr al-Barid: Understanding the Meaning of the Camp. Journal of Palestine Studies, 40(1), pp.49-62.

3 Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

4 Weizman, E. (2005). On extraterritoriality. In: Archipelago of exception. [online] Available at: http://www. publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/b011-on-extraterritoriality [Accessed 15 Mar. 2016].

5 Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

6 Agamben, G. (2016). Beyond Human Rights. In: M. Amir and R. Sela, ed., Extraterritorialities in Occupied Worlds, 1st ed. Punctum Books.

7 ibid.

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Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan.1

1 Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan. (2016). [image] Available at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/An_Aerial_View_of_the_Za’atri_Refugee_Camp.jpg [Accessed 24 Feb. 2016].

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against the city) occurred in the Nahr el-Bared gained its legal ‘justification’.1 In other words, the urbicide was made more possible by the very nature of political space of the camp, which is in Lebanon, but not in Lebanon. Consequently, within the space of exception the normal laws and rules governed the war and the treatment of human beings are suspended. So to speak, civilian and enemy fighters are reduced to the ‘bare life’ and can be killed with impunity and without sanctions.2 Thus, the destroying of Nahr el-Bared was a case of urbicide in the space of exception. In addition, the actual entity operating the authoritative power inside the camp is as much complex as fragmented. Since 1987, Lebanese government has officially declared its total control on the camp, which in reality, has never been fully exercised. Instead, power inside the camp exercised by complex networks of institutions and organisations, such as, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency), Palestinian political factions, Lebanese army and other varies international NGOs and charities.3 In a way, the camp remain as the space of exception precisely because Lebanese government does not enforce its law directly and exercise its sovereignty unconditionally.

Extraterritoriality—the coming juridical-political structure Undoubtedly, the existence and the space of exception have added another layer of complexity to the existing understanding of sovereignty, state and territory. To capture its comprehensive meaning, one need to form a radical perspective, which is distinguished from the traditional view of a world that consists of a series of more or less homogenous states separated by clear border in a continuous spatial flows.4 Eval Weizman’s study on the concept of extraterritoriality may shed some lights on this discourse. As weizman proposed to used a metaphor—archipelago—to describe a multiplicity of extraterritorial zones existing in today’s geopolitical map, i.e. the physical manifestation of a series of exceptions.5 He continues, ‘They are like ‘islands’—externally alienated and internally homogenised extraterritorial enclaves and political void floating outside the jurisdiction that surrounds them’.6 However, this archipelago of space of exception may not be a modern invention. The Catholic church provided perhaps the clearest example of power operating in a de-territorialised political system, simply because churches, palaces and monasteries are placed outside the influence of the political entity in whose territory they located.7 Within the trajectory of the decline of Nation-State and the general corrosion of the conventional juridical-political structure, the figure—refugee, whose human rights has been stripped off and reduced to a bare-life existence, has cause a rather radical crisis of the concept of sovereignty, state and territory. Simple because refugee breaks the con-

1 Ramadan, A. (2009). Destroying Nahr el-Bared: Sovereignty and urbicide in the space of exception. Political Geography, 28(3), pp.153-163.

2 ibid.

3 Ramadan, A. (2010). In the Ruins of Nahr al-Barid: Understanding the Meaning of the Camp. Journal of Palestine Studies, 40(1), pp.49-62.

4 Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus?. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

5 Weizman, E. (2005). On extraterritoriality. In: Archipelago of exception. [online] Available at: http://www. publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/b011-on-extraterritoriality [Accessed 15 Mar. 2016].

6 ibid.

7 Agamben, G. (2016). Beyond Human Rights. In: M. Amir and R. Sela, ed., Extraterritorialities in Occupied Worlds, 1st ed. Punctum Books.

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The destruction of Nahr al-bared.1

1 The destruction of Nahr al-bared. (2016). [image] Available at: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jZt-l7LnnlI/VNS0SndZScI/AAAAAAAAnXw/f-s5wyCLKs8/s1600/nahr-el-bared_02.jpg [Accessed 24 Feb. 2016].

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nection between human being and the citizen. By doing so, it reveals and disturbs the foundation of the concept of nation-state, which is the inclusion of bare life (human being) into the management of the state.1 Thus, it embodies the disquieting element in the constitution of modern nation-state. In addition, the current refugee crisis has radically challenged the indissoluble relationship between the citizen and the nation-state. As Agamben states, in the system of nation-state, the inalienable human rights lost its scared protection precisely because people who embodied them is no longer conceived as the citizen of the state.2 According to Arendt, that the concept of human right based on the supposed existence of human being, has became so untenable when it actually been applied to people who really have lost every quality except of the pure fact of being human.

For example, one of the most crucial rule that Nazis obeyed throughout the course of the War is that Jews could only be sent to the concentration camp after being fully denationalised, that is to say, to eliminate their already second-class citizenship.3 One could argue that the current pervasion of residential mass of noncitizen/refugee, has posed unprecedented challenge to most capital advanced countries, however, Agamben states, this condition of de facto statelessness could also be regarded as a rather fortunate opportunity to abandon the fundamental concept of state, which is builded upon citizenship, human rights and sovereign power.4 That is to say, replacing the concept of citizen with noncitizen/refugee, establishing a radical political order, which is not based on nation-state, but instead transcend the concept of territory, inasmuch as nations could operate themselves in an aterritorial or extraterritorial space. As Agamben continues, the space of extraterritoriality would coincide neither with the homogenous national territory nor the combination of their topography. Instead, it should be able to act upon them by articulating specially and topically.5 To certain extent, refugee could offer the potential answer for the crisis of citizenship and the decline of the nation-state political structure.

Conclusion The current refugee crisis is the summit of an accumulation of a series of ongoing immigration issues between Europe and its surrounding nations. It is clear that a temporary, short and job-oriented relation is not sufficient enough to couple with the comprehensive issues behind those territories. Therefore, it is time, perhaps, to abandon the declining nation-state political structure based on the problematic concept of citizenship. Instead, refugee or noncitizen—the figure dissociated with human rights and nation-state could be the fundamental element to constitute an extraterritorial community and a coming political order. Inasmuch as, European cities would find the potential answer to the unprecedented refugees crisis by rediscovering their ancient form of city state, whose relationships are operating on a reciprocal extraterritoriality.

1 Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

2 Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

3 ibid.

4 Agamben, G. (2016). Beyond Human Rights. In: M. Amir and R. Sela, ed., Extraterritorialities in Occupied Worlds, 1st ed. Punctum Books.

5 ibid.

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References: Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus?. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Agamben, G. (2016). Beyond Human Rights. In: M. Amir and R. Sela, ed., Extraterritorialities in Occupied Worlds, 1st ed. Punctum Books.

Fabre, T. (2007). The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: reformulating a process. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

Filali-Ansary, A. (2007). Identity Crises and Value Conflicts. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

Holston, J. and Appadurai, A. (2003). Cities and Citizenship. In: N. Brenner, ed., State/ space : a reader, 1st ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

Mann, M. (2003). The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results. In: N. Brenner, ed., State/space : a reader, 1st ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

Ramadan, A. (2009). Destroying Nahr el-Bared: Sovereignty and urbicide in the space of exception. Political Geography, 28(3), pp.153-163.

Ramadan, A. (2010). In the Ruins of Nahr al-Barid: Understanding the Meaning of the Camp. Journal of Palestine Studies, 40(1), pp.49-62.

Schmitt, C. (1985). Political theology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Schmitt, C. (2007). The concept of the political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sheikh Hassan, I. (2010). Reconstructing the Oxymoron: The Palestinian Refugee Camp of Nahr el Bared, North Lebanon. In: V. D’Auria, ed., Human settlements : formulations and (re)calibrations, 1st ed. Amsterdam: SUN Academia.

Syrianrefugees.eu. (2016). Syrian Refugees. [online] Available at: http://syrianrefugees.eu [Accessed 24 Apr. 2016].

Weizman, E. (2004). The Geometry of Occupation. In: Borders. [online] Available at: http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/a024-the-geometry-of-occupation [Ac-

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Weizman, E. (2005). On extraterritoriality. In:Â Archipelago of exception. [online] Available at: http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/b011-on-extraterritoriality [Accessed 15 Mar. 2016].

Wihtol de Wenden, C. (2007). Does Europe Need New Immigration?. In: T. Fabre and P. Sant-Cassia, ed., Between Europe and the Mediterranean : the challenges and the fears, 1st ed. Hampshire: Palgrave.

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Image References: CHUN, H. (2016). On the Lookout. [image] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150924-syrian-refugees-photos-germany-europe/#/03migrationchun. ngsversion.1443070801592.jpg [Accessed 9 Mar. 2016].

CHUN, H. (2016). Along the Tracks. [image] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150924-syrian-refugees-photos-germany-europe/#/17migrationchun. ngsversion.1443070804475.jpg [Accessed 6 Mar. 2016].

The destruction of Nahr al-bared. (2016). [image] Available at: http://4.bp.blogspot. com/-jZt-l7LnnlI/VNS0SndZScI/AAAAAAAAnXw/f-s5wyCLKs8/s1600/nahr-elbared_02.jpg [Accessed 24 Feb. 2016].

Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan. (2016). [image] Available at: https://upload. wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/An_Aerial_View_of_the_Za’atri_Refugee_ Camp.jpg [Accessed 24 Feb. 2016].

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