Czy homo sacer może zostać obywatelem?

Doświadczenie migracji drogą do budowy obywatelskości w meksykańskiej społeczności transnarodowej

Abstrakt

Can Homo Sacer Become a Citizen? The Experience of Migration as a Means to Construct Citizenship in a Mexican Transnational Community

The article is a part of a discussion about the efforts of the modern nation‑state to control individuals by circumscribing their mobility. The case study concerns a community from Mixteca region in Oaxaca, Mexico. The exclusion from the labor market contributed to national and international mobility of the community members. Because of their border crossing without the required state authorization migrants are labeled “illegal”. The U.S. nation‑state reduces them to what Giorgio Agamben has called “bare life”. Deportation is manifestation of total power that nation‑state holds over a deportable alien. In the first decade of the 21st century the number of removals equaled deportations during the Great Depression. Members of the transnational community, excluded both by “sending” and “receiving” states, seek ways to build the community’s welfare on their own. It is possible due to collective monetary remittances, which enable the realization of the communitarian goals. That is an example of political culture that constitutes the emerging transnational citizenship.