Governing Refugees: The Relevance of Governmentality to Understanding the International Refugee Regime

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, and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power.1 Developed in response to neo-Marxist criticisms of Foucault's apparent preclusion of the state,2 this approach differs from conventional state-centered perspectives in several important ways. One concerns the state itself. Colin Gordon writes: