The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 269THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE DENIAL OF CITIZENSHIP AS A PARADIGM OF EMANCIPATORY POLITICS269cracy, meaning that it always refers to the postulates of democracy while at thesame time problematizing its existence. They showed that the concept of humanrights can never be a simple or one-directional warranty of legal equality, i.e. civiland citizen rights, however important this is, but it must necessarily broaden themeaning and value of human rights and if possible, re-invent these repeatedly ascitizen rights, continually conceptualizing, proclaiming and exposing these (cf.Balibar, 1991). It is precisely this process of permanent broadening of the conceptof human rights i.e., “the reinvention of rights” (ibid., 226) that represents somethingwithout which the concept of the politics of human rights is largely withoutmeaning. This process invariably implies, whether we like it or not, an act of criticalquestioning of the existent social order, even when (or rather, primarily when) itis the democratic and legal order that is expected to guarantee freedom andequality. This act cannot but be rebellious, since it opposes the stability of thedemocratic constitution, while at the same time establishing it.The concept of emancipation (as “the right to resist” inscribed in the juridicalrules of contemporary nation-states, which is also an instance of its nullification)is understood as the implementation of true democracy, i.e. true citizenship status.The emancipation, which, however, does not occur by itself but must alwaysbe achieved through the struggle of various categories of people, gives rise to aspecific universalism, contained in Balibar’s concept of “equal freedom” (2004b,78). If people are free (and therefore must be treated as such by a political institution),it is so because they are equal, and if they are equal (and therefore mustbe recognized as such), it is so because they are free. When this maxim is part ofpolitical and social reality, its direct consequence is that exclusion from citizenshipcan no longer be interpreted and justified in any other way except by stating thatit is an instance of exclusion from humankind or from the human norm. Therefore,an emancipation struggle is necessarily the struggle of those who are denied citi -zenship (cf. also Balibar 2004a and Rancière 1999, 97-101).It is clear that the aim of “immigration control politics” or the “politics ofimmigration management” is not to end “illegal” employment and immigration,or workforce trafficking in order to meet the needs of employment, or unlawfulsituations that are the result of these. On the contrary, it is rather the reproductionof illegality that is at work there, which indirectly justifies the necessity ofrepressive measures. Illegality is first produced and then becomes the reasonfor the existence and implementation of security measures, creating in this waythe “danger syndrome” that affects the entire country. This is one of the institutionaldriving forces behind the current production of neo-racism and apartheid,or the maintenance of the situation in which an immigrant always remains animmigrant – remains permanently the Other. Balibar’s point of departure (cf.2004b, 82-84) is that a nation-state, with its legal rules and instruments andthrough the concept of citizenship as a substance of sovereignty, divides humanidentity into legal and universal aspects, into citizens and human beings. Sucha concept turns citizenship of a country into a privilege, honor and excess of