When humanitarian assistance becomes a public security problem: a study towards the control of bodies in the case of evacuation operations of refugee camps in Paris

• Grant number: 19/11315-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2019
• End date: October 11, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Luís Antônio Francisco de Souza
• Grantee: Thainá Letícia Sales
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 19/25848-9 - Mises à l'abri and centres d'hébergement, d'accueil e d'orientation in Paris: the creation, execution, management and control of refugees' bodies, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

The present project of scientific initiation intends to analyze the transformation of the discursive practice of humanitarian assistance for refugees into a problem of public security, which treats the refuge as an internal threat, when investigating the disciplinary process of control of bodies in urban environments, applying a study case of French police operations to evacuate refugee camps in Paris between 2015 and 2018. Based on a discursive analysis in the style of Michel Foucault, the research seeks the use of the refugee by Western institutions (the French government and the UNHCR), in a discursive dynamic that, in the first moment, the humanitarian assistance predominates for the promotion of the government nationally and internationally and that, when it considers necessary, it reallocates the refugee until it disappears from the urban surroundings to the extent that actions are taken to contain the possible circulation of these subjects. The growing importance of critical studies on the treatment that refugees receive in International Relations for a possible and desirable formation of refuge autonomy with political and discursive subjects justifies the present research project.