Sights of Violence: Self-Immolation at the Border

Abstract

As violent forms of border control have become increasingly diverse and prevalent, migrants and their allies have struggled to find adequate techniques for resistance. Without much notice from scholars and analysts, self-immolation has become part of this repertoire of resistance. Because migrant self-immolations take place in different countries and are committed by individuals of diverse nationalities, these events are treated as disconnected incidents: conflicts between specific migrants and the states which deny them entry. I argue that it is politically and analytically essential that we be able to “read” these events together. Towards this end, I propose one possible framework for analysis: reading these events as a form of migrant counterconduct that is produced by and responsive to specific modalities of border violence. In this article, I focus on migrant self-immolations “addressed” to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—the most visible international symbol of migrant management. Examining border violence through the politics of visibility and visuality, I show how borderwork makes it impossible to see, count, and account for the pain and death that result from violence at the border. Closely reading administrative procedures and border policing strategies, I show how self-immolation responds directly to these modes of violence and their attendant politics of visibility. Self-immolation brings migrant death into view, manifests the violence of the border, and powerfully counters state claims to “rescue” migrants.