The Coloniality of Asylum

This book offers a critique of asylum in Europe from the standpoint of autonomous border struggles, enacted both by refugees and those in solidarity with them.

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Through the main concepts of ‘the coloniality of asylum’ and ‘solidarity as method’, this book links the question of the state to the one of civil society; in so doing, it questions the idea of ‘autonomous politics’, showing how both refugee mobility and solidarity are intimately marked by the coloniality of asylum, in its multiple ramifications of objectification, racialisation and victimisation.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, The Coloniality of Asylum bridges border studies with decolonial theory and the anthropology of the state, and accounts for the mutual production of ‘refugees’ and ‘Europe’. It shows how ‘Europe’ politically, legally and socially produces ‘refugees’ while, in turn, through their border struggles and autonomous movements, ‘refugees’ produce the space of ‘Europe’.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hamburg in the wake of the 2015 ‘long summer of migration’, the book offers a polyphonic account, moving between the standpoints of different subjects and wrestling with questions of protection, freedom, autonomy, solidarity and subjectivity.