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21 Whitehead J. Dipl. & Int'l Rel. 62 (2019-2020)
Human Right - Which Human; What Rights? Biopolitics and Bare Life in Migration and COVID-19

handle is hein.journals/whith21 and id is 162 raw text is: HUMAN RIGHT - WHICH HUMAN; WHAT RIGHTS? BIOPOLITICS AND BARE LIFE IN MIGRATION AND COVID-19 Randolph B. Persaud, Ph.D. Associate Professor, School of International Service, American University Jackson Yoder B.A. in International Studies, School of International Service, American University Abstract: This article argues that human rights are outcomes of relations of power. Invariably, the privilege of enjoying state protected rights are at the expense of vulnerable and marginalized populations. We apply the concepts of homo sacer and bare life to interrogate differential rights in the Europe and the United Sates with specificfocus on two issue areas - migrants/refugees! asylum seekers, and the effects of Covid-19 on African Americans. INTRODUCTION T his paper argues that what are generally known as human rights are really relational forms of power where some must be denied rights for others to have them. Human rights go beyond juridical rights; rather, they are one of the conditions of emergence and reproduction of state sovereignty, where the denial and guarantee of rights are not disconnected instances, but are outcomes of different constellations of social forces within a social formation. In what follows we draw on the work of Michel Foucault1 and Giorgio Agamben2 both of whom have broached the reduction of the human to 'bare life' (zoe) in order to make possible life as bios, which is life within a political community where rights are granted and protected. We show that there are relations of antagonism between zoe and bios and that these relations are an essential part of life in liberal democracies. Zoe amounts to the reduction of the human to a position of overdetermined insecurity, while bios is constituted in the language and symbols of the dominant social forces. Accordingly, we argue that unless the human in toto becomes the referent object of security, liberal democracies and other forms of socio-economic and political configurations will not be able to establish rights as a generalized condition. We look at recent and current developments in European and American security policies and practices, with emphasis on migrants who come from marginalized populations. We also analyze current developments around COVID-19, not only because the pandemic has revealed the unevenness in human rights, but because it is indicative of the idiom of the bare life thesis-that some must die for others to live. One must recall that as the COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc, Texas Vol XXI, No.2 Spring/Summer 2020

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