Markus Gunneflo

Discourse or Merely Noise? Regarding the Disagreement on Undocumented Migrants

Drawing on Jacques Ranciere’s theorising of the political this article analyses the disagreement on undocumented migrants in recent legislation in Sweden and within the European Union as well as in Swedish labour union practice. Both the consensus understanding of the issue of undocumented migrants and the materialisation of dissensus through the political activities of undocumented migrants are studied. The aims of the article are: firstly, to show that undocumented migrants in Sweden engage in a political struggle that is not recognised as such, to analyse the structure or conditions of possibility of this non-recognition, and finally, to analyse the ways in which these conditions might be undone through the political activities of undocumented migrants. The theoretical claim is that the issue of undocumented migrants involve intimately core aspects of both politics and law and that the struggle of undocumented migrants is a process in which our understanding of political and legal subjectivity is called into question. In conclusion we reflect on the question of political change against the background of the theoretical and empirical findings of the analysis.

Targeted Killing in the History of Israel, the United States and International Law

Current debates among critics of targeted killing suggest that the extraterritorial killing of designated terrorists has a tenuous relationship to law at best. This has led many to the conclusion that what is needed is to infuse more law and legal work into the practice; to ask the states engaging in targeted killing to articulate the legal framework in which they are conducted, perhaps even make decision-making in relation to such killings subject to judicial review. Numerous law scholars have also taken up the task of explaining the proper limits of such practices, whether the sources of those limits are found in constitutional law, international human rights law, the norms on the use of force or the law of armed conflict. This questionable relation to law has prompted yet other critics to conceptualise targeted killing in terms of sovereignty or exception, rather than law. Contesting an assumption shared by these different responses, this book argues that targeted killing is steeped in law from the outset and that law, particularly international law, has both shaped and been shaped by this practice. In both Israel and the United States – the two states that have pioneered this practice – targeted killing did not emerge despite, or even necessarily in opposition to, law. In any case, it emerged through extensive legal work. Indeed, both the concept and the practice of targeted killing depend entirely on the ability to distinguish between legal ‘targeted killing’ and extra-legal ‘political assassination’. This book offers a history of this ability. It allows us to see how targeted killing has emerged through a much longer and mutually productive relationship with law, particularly international law, than the contemporary debate and the prevailing focus on 9/11 and the second Intifada, suggests.1