Doświadczenie deportacji: Przemoc orężem suwerenności
The Experience of Deportation: Violence as a Weapon of Sovereignty

Summary/Abstract: Researchers (Walters 2002; De Genova 2010) argue that deportations and their sheer possibility – the deportability of migrants – produce state sovereignty against the uncontrolled border-crossings, which are perceived by states as a disturbing symptom of ‘losing control’ (Sassen 1996). This article assumes a micro-perspective and, drawing upon the phenomenologically-informed concept of ‘state as lived experience’ (Correa 2013), it explains how state sovereignty is localized in the experience of a deportee. The narratives of 27 former deportees, expelled from the United States between 2006 and 2012 and interviewed back in their Mexican hometown, are the basis for the analysis. The author argues that a continuum of violence experienced by the migrants throughout the process of deportation reconstructs US sovereignty in lieu of an extralegal zone, the corollary of migrants’ unauthorized border crossings.

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