TY - JOUR
AU - Lippert, Randy
AB - Alternatives 24 (2999), 295-328 Governing Refugees: The Relevance of Governmentality to Understanding the International Refugee Regime Randy Lippert“ Studies of national policy domains informed by social theory have usually adopted state-centered approaches. An alternative to such approaches is one inspired by Michel Foucault’s later writings on “governmentality,” which he describes as the “ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses, apd reflections, the calcula- tions and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power.”’ Developed in response to neo-Marxist criticisms of Foucault’s apparent preclusion of the state,2 this approach differs from con- ventional state-centered perspectives in several important ways. One concerns the state itself. Colin Gordon writes: State theory attempted to deduce the modern activities of gov- ernment from essential properties and propensities of the state, in particular its supposed propensity to grow and to swallow up or colonize everything outside itself. Foucault holds that the state has no such inherent propensities; more generally, the state has no essen~e.~ In his later writings, Foucault was not seeking a general theory of the state, but was instead advocating analysis of how govern- mental power works.4 In the governmentality literature, the state is seen less as 
TI - Governing Refugees: The Relevance of Governmentality to Understanding the International Refugee Regime
JF - Alternatives: Global, Local, Political
DO - 10.1177/030437549902400302
DA - 1999-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/governing-refugees-the-relevance-of-governmentality-to-understanding-2SF6SnC1VT
SP - 295
EP - 328
VL - 24
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -