National Security Immigration Market in the United States Following 9/11

Abstract

Coined by Giorgio Agamben, the ‘State of Exception’ refers to the paradoxical predicament of exceptional measures. By virtue of their application, such proposals authorise an ‘extra-legal’ executive capacity that, despite probable affront to constitutional integrity, are nevertheless acknowledged as essential in political crises. Profound threats to national security – such as 9/11 – thus stipulate the authoritative exertion of extraconstitutional competency-manifested in the unique conditions of President Bush’s declaration of double state emergency. Although discourse on military privatisation is abundant, the logic of post-9/11 preventative intervention, and the classified alliance with private actors, remains overlooked despite provoking complex questions regarding valid democratic governance. By eroding the boundary of traditionally state-circumscribed functions, outsourced intelligence is argued as the most discerning debasement of emergency power; calling for a revised understanding of exceptionalism and catalysing axiomatic displacement of principled policy-making by promoting a national security immigration market.