What is the relationship between law/state and self? Studies of subjectivity, which refers to the relationship between self and power, seek to answer this question. Subjectivity compels us to consider how state power imposes norms, categories, and regulations through which selves are made up and become recognizable. Through this subjectivation process, we reproduce, legitimize, or at times challenge the power of law and state. To foreground the stakes of inclusion/exclusion and recognition/nonrecognition embedded in questions of subjectivity, we review literature on people at the margins of citizenship—migrants, welfare recipients, and criminalized people—where law/state is forcefully and pervasively present, even in the deep corners of their selves. We explore four levels of the subjectivation process: ( a ) bureaucratic, organizational, and knowledge infrastructures; ( b ) fragmented and uncoordinated subjectivation processes; ( c ) predicaments experienced by migrants and marginalized citizens in establishing their deservingness; and ( d ) complex relationships between strategic performance and self-transformation.
Kim et al. (Fri,) studied this question.