Table Of ContentAsylum Seekers, Sovereignty, and
the Senses of the International
The confrontation between asylum seeking and sovereignty has mainly focused
on ways in which the movement and possibilities of refugees and migrants are
limited. In this volume, instead of departing from the practices of governance and
surveillance, Puumala begins with the moving body, its engagements and rela-
tions, and examines different ways of seeing and sensing the struggle between
asylum seekers and sovereign practices.
P uumala asserts that our political imagination is being challenged in its ways
of ordering, practicing and thinking about the international and those relations we
call international. The issues relating to asylum seekers are one example of the
deficiencies in the spatiotemporal logic upon which these relations were origi-
nally built; words such as ‘nation’, ‘people’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘community’ are
challenged. Conventional methods of governing, regulating and administering
increased forms of mobility are in trouble, which gives rise to the invention of
new technologies at borders and introduces regulations and spaces of exception.
B ased on extensive fieldwork that sheds light on a range of Europe-wide prac-
tices in the field of asylum and migration policies, this book will be of interest to
scholars of IR theory, biopolitics and migration, as well as critical security more
broadly.
Eeva Puumala is a post-doctoral researcher at the Tampere Peace Research Insti-
tute at the University of Tampere, Finland.
Interventions
Edited by: Jenny Edkins, Aberystwyth University and
Nick Vaughan-Williams, University of Warwick
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Disorienting Democracy
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Democracy Promotion as Foreign Policy
Temporal Othering in International Relations
Cathy Elliott
Asylum Seekers, Sovereignty, and the Senses of the International
A Politico-corporeal Struggle
Eeva Puumala
Global Powers of Horror
Security, Politics, and the Body in Pieces
François Debrix
Asylum Seekers, Sovereignty,
and the Senses of the
International
A politico-corporeal struggle
Eeva Puumala
First published 2017
by Routledge
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© 2017 Eeva Puumala
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Puumala, Eeva, author.
Title: Asylum seekers, sovereignty, and the senses of the international :
a politico-corporeal struggle / Eeva Puumala.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series:
Interventions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016037869 | ISBN 9781138944886 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315671215 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Refugees—Government policy—European Union
countries. | Asylum, Right of—European Union countries. |
Human body—Political aspects. | Biopolitics.
Classification: LCC HV640.4.E8 P88 2017 | DDC 362.87/561094—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037869
ISBN: 978-1-138-94488-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67121-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Preface x
The international xii
Relational ethics xiii
Collaging research xiv
Responsible scholarship xv
EVENT 1
Ethnographic experiences 1
1 Exposure 5
Points of departure 5
The field 6
Research motivation 9
The demand 10
Sensuous scholarship and ethnographic seduction 13
Lines of life 18
The writing ‘I’ 22
A hermeneutics of the ontologically potent body 25
EVENT 2
Political lives, professional ethics, and sovereign practices 29
2 Sovereignty, mobility, the body 33
In search of solid ground 33
Sovereign control and the body 35
Approaching asylum through exposure 38
A politics of voice, the politics of the body 41
The ontological body 44
vi Contents
Compearance – beyond essentialist politics 46
Exploring the event of exposure 48
Towards the senses of the international 51
EVENT 3
Asylum, a monologist narrative of the state? 55
3 A struggle over the body 59
Contestation and connection 59
Gaping discord 60
Equal discontent towards the process 65
Representation and articulation 70
The body as a point of reflection 73
The dynamics of asylum interviews 76
Evented positionalities 80
The body matters 89
In-different positionalities 93
EVENT 4
Passages and dislocations 97
4 Moving (in) space 101
Seeing movement like a state 101
Movement as corporeal articulation 105
Sovereignty in transition 108
The body as a limit 111
Seeing states through movement 114
Sensing space 121
The bodily event of the political 128
EVENT 5
The feltness of sovereignty 133
5 Sensuous politics, political sentiments 137
On sense and sensing 137
Local colour 141
Making sense of the senses and sentiment 145
Sensuous protests 148
Contents vii
A shared sense of vulnerability 153
Corporeal refusals and aversion 157
Sensuous articulations of the political 160
Collage of a politico-corporeal struggle 165
References 171
Appendix 190
Index 191
Acknowledgements
F or me, writing this book in this way with this particular emphasis has seemed
a necessity. The necessity emerged on the one hand from the belief and enthusi-
asm that my research participants showed towards my work. Asylum seekers who
over the years shared their experiences with me hoped to see their stories finally
in print. The vague promise of that happening brought them a sense of making a
difference, seeing some kind of a purpose in what they were going through. On
the other hand, the necessity has represented a disciplinary effort with regard to
International Relations. The ultimate focus of this book results from a circular
process that started with my doctoral dissertation. This book builds on, widens
and systematises the methodological input that began to take shape in the thesis.
In so doing, it draws less on the discipline of IR and focuses more on compre-
hending the politico-corporeal struggle that characterises asylum seeking. Hence,
it is not so much what I had to say that kept the sometimes agonising research
process alive, but how I wanted to write about that struggle and the sensed value
of such exploration. The book is perhaps best characterised as a theoretico-
methodological exploration into the inadequacy of both learnt concepts and ways
of conceptualising in describing what is at stake in the struggle between asylum
seeking and the enactments of sovereignty. The pressing question of the book is:
could a different methodology also account for a different ontology?
I am indebted to all those who have shared their stories and perspectives with
me: asylum seekers, failed asylum seekers and detainees, as well as legal advis-
ers, interpreters, mental health workers, migration officials and professionals at
the various reception centres for asylum seekers. Furthermore, I wish to express
my deep appreciation particularly to Tarja Väyrynen, Stephen Chan, Anitta Kyn-
silehto and Elina Penttinen. Your comments, support and belief in my work has
encouraged me to carry on with it. In addition, your courage and uncompromising
passion towards research have greatly inspired me and also urged me to challenge
my own ways of thinking and knowing.
The research community at the Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) at
the University of Tampere has been an academic home for me for the greater part
of this project. I have learned a lot during the discussions and debates with both
former and current Taprians. My sincere thanks go to Samu Pehkonen, Tiina Vait-
tinen, Frank Möller, Matti Jutila, Élise Feron, Alina Curticapean, Ruth Illman,
Acknowledgements ix
Unto Vesa and Pirjo Jukarainen. Besides my colleagues at TAPRI, I am indebted
to colleagues whom I have met on various occasions and with whom I have had
the pleasure to discuss: Roland Bleiker, Jyrki Käkönen, Anna-Kaisa Kuusisto-
Arponen, Elina Niinivaara, Riitta Ylikomi, Vicki Squire, Saara Särmä, Jaana
Vuori, Taina Kinnunen, Marja Alastalo, Susanna Lindberg, Marjaana Jauhola and
Kirsi Pauliina Kallio.
I wish to express my gratitude also to the resarch seminar on Corporeality,
Movement and Politics for providing a collegial and constructive environment
for reading and discussing research, and to the participants in the data sessions
organised by Johanna Ruusuvuori and Aija Logren at the University of Tampere.
The organisation and people behind the Floating Platforms project by New Per-
formance Turku Festival and Aboagora Symposium also deserve a heartfelt thank
you. I was very privileged to be invited to participate in such a collaboration
between the arts and sciences and to have an opportunity to work with a brilliant
young artist and curator, Márcio Carvalho. My talks with Márcio and the overall
experience continues to inspire and puzzle me.
M y research assistant Hanna-Leena Ristimäki deserves a special thank you. I
appreciate tremendously her help during data collection in 2014–2015 and her
efforts in transcribing the data from asylum interviews. In addition, I have learned
a lot from her and greatly enjoyed our interdisciplinary discussions concerning
the interactional play of institutional frameworks and personal experiences. Fur-
thermore, I am grateful to my editorial assistant, Lydia DeCruz, at Routledge,
and series editors Jenny Edkins and Nick Vaughan-Williams for their patience
with me and my work and the support that they have given me throughout the
process. In the final phases of the process, Michael Owston did a wonderful job
with proofreading the text.
This research has been funded by the Tampere Peace Research Institute, the
Kone Foundation, the University of Tampere Foundation and the Academy of
Finland projects “The Body Politic of Migration” (132403) and “The Body as
a Vocabulary of the Political” (266009). I consider myself very lucky that these
organisations have seen a value in what I do.
However, if it was not for the support from my family, this work would have
never been completed. I am deeply grateful to my parents, Helmi Puumala and
Reijo Reuna, for always supporting me, to my husband Juha Koskela for his lov-
ing patience and to Severi, Eljas and Aarni for adding so many senses to my life.
