In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Anthropological Quarterly 78.1 (2005) 213-246



[Access article in PDF]

Essential Crises:

A Performative Approach to Migrants, Minorities, and the European Nation-state

University of British Columbia
Chaos, "the other of order," is pure negativity. It is the denial of all that the order strives to be. It is against that negativity that the positivity of order constitutes itself. But the negativity of chaos is a product of order's self-constitution: its side-effect, its waste, and yet the condition sine qua non of its (reflective) possibility. Without the negativity of chaos, there is no positivity of order; without chaos, no order.
—Zygmunt Bauman (1991:7)

Introduction

The nation-state is frequently cast as an entity in crisis, as a relic that cannot withstand the shock of globalization.1 Its viability and legitimacy are threatened by instant global communications, push-button investment strategies, outsourced manufacturing, increased international migration, and vociferous national minorities. Europeans, in particular, have challenged the nation-state through the deepening and widening of the European Union (EU). While far from denying the veracity of these observations, this article attempts to develop a more nuanced characterization of the relationship between the [End Page 213] nation-state and the threats it encounters from globalization. Focusing on the case of Soviet-era migrants and national minorities in Estonia, the article suggests that the key task is not determining the extent to which the state is (or is not) retreating from the pressure of globalization. This question ultimately reifies the state. Instead, favoring a performative approach, this article asks how the nation-state is constituted in the banal legal and diplomatic practices that reproduce, and are produced by, such binary oppositions as citizen/alien, majority/minority, security/crisis, safety/threat, and domestic/foreign. Performativity posits a radical negation of the autonomous actor. It focuses on how subject positions are constituted as effects of reiterative and citational practices that construct fundamental differences between subjects and conceal those subjects' lack of ontological foundations. As such, that which the nation-state (or, more accurately, the individuals authorized to act in its name) identifies as an objective, external intrusion into its territorial/cultural space, performativity sees as a discursively-produced encounter that generates the effects of pre-given and mutually exclusive "sovereign nations" and "immigrants." Each subject position—nation-state and migrant—is only viable and intelligible in relation to the other. Thus, the "crisis" resulting from the latter's entry into the former's sovereign space is, counter-intuitively, essential to the nation-state because its identity can only be articulated in relation to the differences (i.e. threats) that it inscribes in its own bureaucratic practices. Far from inducing the nation-state's demise, "crisis" (and globalization by extension) is the condition of its possibility.

This article focuses on international migrants and national minorities for two inter-related reasons. First, despite the decomposition of the Weberian state in Europe brought on by neoliberalism, global capitalism, and an increased European integration, citizenship remains firmly in the competence of EU member-states. Relinquishing this prerogative would deprive the state of the legitimacy to speak in the name of the nation for which it exists. This legitimacy depends upon the state's ability to control the distinction between "national" and "non-national." International migrants—justly or unjustly—intrude upon the intimate relationship between the citizen and the nation-state. Even if they are welcome, immigrants always leave the state vulnerable to the charge that it is failing to prioritize its own nationals. Second, and closely related, within this logical frame immigrants constitute an inherent national security risk insofar as they wedge themselves between the nation and the state. This problematic continues into the next phase of an immigrant's life: the acquisition of citizenship and the subsequent attainment of national [End Page 214] minority status. According to European minority rights agreements, only upon gaining citizenship -after they have naturalized the identity of the nation-state—are immigrants eligible for national minority rights, which themselves are subordinated to the nation-state's sovereignty, territorial...

pdf

Share