Toward a Critical Phenomenology of “Illegality”: State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel
Toward a Critical Phenomenology of “Illegality”: State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel
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走向“非法”的关键现象：以色列特拉维夫无证移民工人的国家权力、刑事定罪和卑鄙感
DOI：
10.1111/j.1468-2435.2007.00409.x
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发表时间：
2007
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
S. Willen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Willen
鉴于在当前的历史时刻，所谓的“非法”移民现象的广泛范围和严重性，本文认为，现象学参与的人种学不仅可以在使人类学家，而且在政策制定者、政治家和更广泛的公众中敏感地认识到与“非法移民的状况”相关的复杂的、往往充满焦虑和可怕的现实，无论是在特定的东道国社会环境中，还是相对在全球范围内，都具有至关重要的作用。在理论方面，这篇文章是一种初步尝试，一方面将法律人类学和跨国移徙人类学领域的紧迫问题与关注经验人类学的现象学学者最近的工作联系起来。文章呼吁无证跨国移徙的民族志学者通过应用一种可以被称为“批判现象学”的方法来研究移徙的“非法性”，从而弥合这些学术领域(Willen，2006；另见DesJarlais，2003)。这种批判性的现象学方法涉及一个违法性的三维模型：第一，作为一种司法地位的形式；第二，作为一种社会政治条件；第三，作为一种存在于世界上的模式。在开发这一模式时，本文利用了2000至2004年间在以色列特拉维夫的西非(尼日利亚和加纳)无证件移民和菲律宾移民社区内进行的26个非连续月的人种学实地研究。在这一时期的前半部分，以色列的“非法”移民通常被视为良性的、被排除在外的“其他人”。然而，从2002年年中开始，一场由政府支持的资源密集型大规模逮捕和驱逐运动重新改变了以色列境内移民“非法”的状况，实际上将这些善良的“其他人”变成了通缉犯。通过对这一转变的分析，文章强调了不仅要研究“非法”的司法和社会政治层面，而且要审视它对移民生存方式的影响的深远意义。
Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so-called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety-ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three-dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being-in-the-world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non-consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid-2002, however, a resource-intensive, government-sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being-in-the-world.