A atual questão migratória na Europa a partir do pensamento de Foucault

Abstract

The present study discusses the issue of current migratory flows towards Europe based on some concepts formulated in the genealogical period of Foucault's analyses. Thus, it was sought to show how the interventions of the Governments of European States, focused on migration, have an essentially securitary character, sustained by xenophobic discourses and practices directed to migrants, indistinctly, even to those who would be entitled to refuge, according to international conventions. These discourses and practices seek to stimulate fear of danger, have as political justification the maintenance of the current order and end up producing two figures: the dangerous subject (the migrant) and the subject in danger (the populations of the European countries). Thus, irregular migration is criminalized and the migrant becomes a criminal. Within this logic, governmental interventions, which are also worth significant technological resources, act as barriers that, by promoting the ordination of a medium, aim to limit the circulation of migrants to and from the European territory. Therefore, it is about regulating the multiplicities through safety devices correlated to a specific form of power – the biopolitics – which, since the eighteenth century, is unthinkable outside the framework of liberal governmentality. This form of power assumes, as its highest task, to manage life, to make living more and better, to stimulate and control the living conditions of a certain population (in this case, the populations of the European countries), even if it is necessary to expose countless other lives to death.