form of valued life against some form of threat : a productive relation of making life live .” 7 This notion of ‘ making life live ’ is especially relevant here when discussing the treatment of refugees by sovereign states . In order to ‘ make life live ’ and protect the population “ there must be a distinction between a valued life that is productive and a devalued life that threatens .“ 8 To this end , the justification of strict or extreme immigration policies is often grounded in the concept of biopower , the need to control the movement and circulation of those who threaten . As will be discussed below , the image of the refugee has been transformed into this ‘ threat ’ and therefore must be destroyed or detained in order to protect the valued life .
Having discussed the areas of ‘ biopolitics ’ and ‘ biopower ’, the concepts advanced by Giorgio Agamben that will be used to analyse the actions of both Australia and the private companies on Nauru will be examined . Firstly , Agamben notes that all power is essentially biopower that “ is constituted by its ability to suspend itself in a state of exception and determine who lives and who dies ” 9 . An example here is the Auschwitz concentration camp whereupon human bodies were declared to be merely biological . Consequently , prisoners were stripped of all rights and transformed into HomoSacer . This concept of the HomoSacer is derived from Roman law , where a person labelled as such is expelled from both “ human and divine law ” 10 leaving their life “ bare or depoliticised ” 11 . In this bare state the HomoSacer may be killed with no repercussions , yet the person would remain subject to the sovereign power and are included via their exclusion . This state of bare life is achieved within a state of exception ; a created biopolitical space within which the actions of the sovereign power are justified . Here , such policies which would only be justified during a state of emergency , a temporary phenomenon enacted when the state is perceived to be under threat therefore justifying the suspension of the normal legal order and the suspension of political rights from the population - are allowed due to the creation of a ‘ permanent state of exception ’. It can thus be argued that this permanent state of exception exists today due to the impact of continuing global conflicts .
State of Migration / Attitudes Towards Refugees
Towards the latter part of the 20 th century we begin to see new discourses arising . The economic crisis in the 1970s as well as refugees “ producing conflict in the 1980s and the end
7
Ibid ., 30 .
8
Ibid ., 30 .
9
Ibid ., 36 .
10
Steven , DeCaroli . “ Boundary Stones : Giorgio Agamben and the Field Of Sovereignty ” in On Agamben : Sovereignty and Life ”, ed . Mathew Calarco and Steve DeCaroli ( Stanford University Press , 2007 ), 46
11
Prem Kumar , Rajaram , and Carl Grundy‐Warr . " The irregular migrant as homo sacer : Migration and detention in Australia , Malaysia , and Thailand ." International Migration 42 , no . 1 ( 2004 ): 33-64 , 34
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