The Migrant as ‘Ungrievable’ Life and ‘Bare Body of Exception’ in The Farming of Bones

Migrant populations often exist not only at the geographical, social, and economic peripheries of society but also at the peripheries of public discourse. Framed as illegitimate members of and threats to society, time and again, migrants have had to endure states of exception, whose seemingly preliminary character is often in effect long-lasting and at times permanent. One example thereof would be the Algerian tent camps that have housed displaced Western Saharans for over forty years now. With the installation of new and possibly permanent ‘provisional’ camps in the last years, for instance at the EU’s borders, the issue has only gained relevance. Giorgio Agamben calls the camp ‘the materialization of the state of exception’ and the ‘creation of a space in which bare life and the juridical rule enter into a threshold of indistinction’. His theorisations on the function(s) of the state of exception and its manifestations serve as status quo for most discussions of the phenomenon today.