The Politics of Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Europe: The Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization of Citizens?

In the wake of the fall of the Daesh Islamic State “Caliphate” in 2019, the international community has been faced with the fact that thousands of displaced persons are stranded in Iraqi and Syrian detention centers. This article interrogates the governmental policies of ten Western European countries toward their nationals and legal residents held in the prisons and camps. We analyze the discourse and the practices of deterritorialization and reterritorialization of the “foreign-terrorist-fighter-citizens.” We find that the Western European governments have engaged in different types of deterritorialization and reterritorialization moves which have acted to position their foreign fighter nationals and dependents at the liminars of the body politic in a way that runs the risk of perpetuating the foreign fighters’ and their dependents’ confinement in, what some practitioners have denounced as, “Europe's Guantanamo.” We also argue that the deterritorialization and reterritorialization moves reveal the emptiness of the current-day liberal state project at its core. The discourses and practices place the liberal democratic state at odds with its own declared values and with the basic human rights of the foreign-terrorist-fighter-citizen in a manner that is corrosive to other citizens and to the ideals inherent to “good life” of the political community.