Welcome, its suppression, and the in-between spaces of refugee sub-citizenship – commentary to Gill
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.70999Abstract
This article argues that geographies of welcome complicate simple binary oppositions between fully enfranchised citizenship and what is often theorized as the ‘bare life’ of refugee rejection in ‘spaces of exception’. Ranging from sanctuary cities and squats to clinics, classrooms, kitchens and gardens, spaces of welcome instead offer islands of limited enfranchisement, agency and hope amidst seas of sub-citizenship, subjugation and fear. The concept of sub-citizenship can be used thus to elucidate how welcome and its suppression create a spectrum of intermediate experiences between the abstract poles of biopolitical belonging and necropolitical rejection. Geographies of welcome thereby become legible as in-between spaces in which the damage done by the suppression of welcome is contested and countered, however incompletely.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2018 Matthew Brookman Sparke

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with Fennia agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. The license of the published metadata is Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a doctoral dissertation or book compilation), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
.png)



