Review: Miriam Ticktin's 'The Casualties of Care'

 

Miriam Ticktin’s Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France is an ethnography which offers a vast range of insight into the processes and contradictions that are embedded in France’s humanitarian approach to immigration. Ticktin outlines three separate but interrelated aims which she details throughout the course of her work. The overall aim to is to invoke what she refers to as a “politics of care” (3), an articulation which addresses a particular phenomenon related to nation-state ascriptions of compassion and benevolence embedded in its immigration policies, or, in other words, the evocation of what she refers to as the “illness clause” (3). To do so, she first gives a historical framework for her study with the aim to show how the state has managed to interweave nation-state immigration policies with humanitarian action. Subsequently, she explores the implications surrounding this shift by focusing on contradictions and inconsistencies created by it, where she finds that the merging of state power with a humanitarian rationale of care has created a new space which sees its main task in identifying the “morally legitimate suffering body” (3) and differentiating it from others. Transformations in immigration policy are closely tied to social visibility, EU-politics dependency and France’s wavering self-image in relation to its imperialist past. Her evocation of care as a system is marked by her successful attempts to frame both the defining aspects of this shift toward a “new humanitarianism” and the “illness clause” by showing its embedded structures of contradiction. France’s memory of its colonial past as well as its notions of social responsibility are directly tied to its self-image as a humanitarian nation-state that demands structural reinforcements which counter humanitarian universalism. Therefore, she explains that the universal value of the suffering body cannot be categorized within a political realm without creating a system of exceptionalism. This fundamental contradiction and its causes lead the reader through the exploration of results and effects of the shift: The many layers of consequences created by this process are illuminated by Ticktin’s efforts to highlight which suffering bodies fall into the category of “exceptional” (3) and which do not. She finds that the legitimization of care is generally based on whether or not the suffering body can serve French public perception as a humanitarian nation. In the last three chapters of the six-chapter book, she explores consequences of the illness clause by focusing on the categories by which the “exceptional” suffering body is granted legalization in three separate focus fields: Violence against women, modern slavery and the willingness of subjects to engage in self-harm to gain legal status.

Ticktin utilizes an array of documentary research and ethnographic fieldwork, conducted within a time frame of nine years in Paris and the banlieues, including interviews and engagements with political and humanitarian actors within the field as well as undocumented immigrants seeking legalization and actors within the immigration system. Her work moves within a vast range of empirical frameworks, including political economy, political science, sociology and psychology, but focusing mainly on concepts within the realm of humanitarian reason in moral and medical anthropology as well as an investigation of political transformations within the study of global capitalism. However, first and foremost, she follows the historical development of the “politics of care” (3) through the eyes of institution and (non)-citizen alike. Her study of the banlieues and French immigrant self-perception further develops prevalent accounts of marginalization within the field as well, offering compelling insights into the causes and effects of migration in the West and its post-colonial implications.

Consequently, her work develops significant conclusions including a call for a change of approach when concerning humanitarian government. She explains, explicitly, that she is not attempting to make a case against care but rather to re-evaluate the concepts connected to it, or to, first and foremost, stop differentiating between who is worthy of care and who is not. Elaborating further, she explains that the temporal and spatial limitations connected to a focus on emergency support and exceptional cases weakens persistent efforts regarding any real social change (223-4).

These developments have a significant impact on further study within the realm of moral and medical anthropology in the field of humanitarianism, which has been greatly expanding in the last few decades beginning with the rise of Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) as well as influencing the political and social debate surrounding the issue(s) of immigration which have received an influx of steady focus heightened in the last ten years. Contemporary notions of humanitarianism and, perhaps on a more personal level, real-life impacts of perceived political and personal morality are poignantly questioned, leading into fields of gender and race-based marginalization and the political conquest of global capitalism, hence offering a historical value. While Ticktin moves within these different realms, she does not neglect her pre-determined framework, which is focused on the phenomenon of immigration policy and its causes and effects. She maintains this focus throughout the study by establishing a clear direction while building a vast field of inquiry. She develops an assemblage holding in place the social complexities surrounding the issue of French immigration policy by focusing on social and political transformations, institutional policy and real-life subjective experience and manages to accumulate and arrange this set of complex structures into one manifest system supported by its own contradictions.

Ticktin’s field study includes interviews and reports surrounding the sans-papiers movement, to establish a timeline of historical events pertaining to transformations in immigration policy and discussions, interviews and a profile of Médécins Sans Frontières as well as SAMU Social, an emergency medical relief service in Paris, which she employs to outline the political rationale behind humanitarian emergency relief care. It also includes close interviews with representatives of immigration offices such as the Refugee Appeals Board, state-approved medical offices and activist focus groups such as the Committee against Modern Slavery (CCEM) and the people making use of them.

Ticktin does not explicitly outline her method of data analysis. However, it is safe to assume that she focused mainly on creating a linear and coherent system of transformation focusing on the rationale attested to by all interviewed and observed parties, all the while developing frameworks which offer sensible constructions for further understanding, such as defining aspects of prevalent shifts regarding phenomena such as the illness clause and new humanitarian reason. By offering this framework, Ticktin is adding not only to the substance of discourse surrounding national concepts but also global transformations by relating her findings to changes in EU and global immigration policies. It would have been helpful, for the small target group of students and researchers to elaborate on her data analysis methods, but I do not consider it a significant lack of information.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Ticktin’s work is her ability to maintain an objective distance in dealing with the sensitive topic surrounding people’s livelihoods while in close relation to their suffering. She does not do this by seeming cold or neglecting valid accounts of individuals or fields of inquiry. She does it by maintaining a balanced perspective between her ethnographic authority and a position of basic observation. It seems to me that people felt compelled to communicate their concepts and ideas to her. Her textual work is clear and structured coherently. It is apparent that she maintained a steady position of professionalism in her fieldwork and a clear focus during the writing process of the ethnography. When communicating the position of others she usually sticks to their actual words by means of direct speech but also makes statements about her own emotional responses to something said as part of indirect speech, adding a layer of self-reflection which makes the author more relatable, humanizes her and adds her to the plot of her own book, one which is investigating vast levels of political and social transformation, a field which is much more believably judged by someone who experienced it.

The current debate surrounding political transformations in a time of humanitarian reason in Europe is clearly addressed with this ethnography. Ticktin works to eliminate a contradictory political rationale from the field of care and evokes not only possible solutions but also outlines the fundamental reasons for the paradoxical rationalizations connected to it. Her work greatly adds to Didier Fassin’s concept of the interconnection between “the suffering body” and “the racialized body” (Fassin 2001: 7) by giving it ethnographic merit with her focus on the concept of “armed love” (166) and “biological involution”, showing how both humanitarian actors as well as institutional actors engage in the same system of intervention. Her work has the potential to greatly add to discussions surrounding the precarious effects of moralization within a nation-state- and non-nation state humanitarian realm. Fassin’s recent work within in the realm of moral anthropology (2015) is therefore greatly expanded upon in her work and her findings as part of her connection to the sans-papiers movement might add some new layers of thought to pro-immigration movements within and outside of France, by proposing a universal and thereby individual-centered perspective. It explicitly adds to the fabric of recent questions pertaining to immigration policy on a transnational scale, connecting economic and political developments with the realm of individual welfare, while opening a space for further considerations within the philosophical realm of ethics as well. Post-development concepts (Herzfield 2002) are clearly supported by adding an ethnographic insight to institutional rationales and decision-making and offering access to inside knowledge. Also, clearly further contextualizing Ferguson’s work on antipolitics (1994) and the inexplicable connection of humanitarian intervention with colonial intervention, Ticktin offers a practical rhetorical backdrop to contemporary progressive social and political agendas on a state and non-state level. Redfield’s investigation of the idea of witnessing, or témoignage (2006) finds its place in Ticktin’s work as well, in the form of a contextualization of its problematic origins as part of the defining aspects of contemporary humanitarian intervention, but also by relating it to current events and showing how the rise in mediatization has had a defining effect on the establishment of humanitarianism as a transnational apparatus. The conceptualization of nation-state vs. non-nation state humanity (Rees 2014) in context to the question of universalism in humanitarianism producing a significant contradiction connected with negative effects on a social scale, aligns with Ticktin’s conclusions as well, outlining a specific need for true universalism in the humanitarian realm. Furthermore, Ticktin’s methods clearly follow the pattern of thought also clarified by Rottenburg (2013) regarding critical ethnological observation in times of heightened focus on eurocentrism: Ticktin works her way along the complex colonialist structures connected to the issue while maintaining a balanced relationship of distance and focus which is necessary in maintaining a position of meta-criticism. Ticktin’s evocation of humanitarian subjectivity as part of her conversations with and observations of the individuals involved in the structures surrounding the field of immigration policy, or rather, its internal, sub-structured actors clearly establishes this field of vision.

Ticktin explores previously discussed notions of humanitarian thinking while maintaining a safe distance to any polemical value-judgements. She focuses strictly on the subject matter and dares to ask questions which might compare immigration policies to a regime. She does not make that differentiation and establishes her position as being generally critical of all given rationales, humanitarian and non-humanitarian, by focusing on the effects on subjective experience and critically assessing the formation of all surrounding discourse without taking sides. However, she does adhere to a universalist regard of well-being, which she manages to focus in her conclusion as a true possibility for humanitarian intervention in nation-state policy.

Ticktin’s ability to maintain a clear position while mingling in the many fields connected to the field of study is that which I believe to be significant and that which makes her work unique. She focalizes individuals without neglecting collective perception and political contexts. Her work is neither moralizing nor nihilistic or even morally apathetic. She evokes fields of real-life events and their implications without drifting too far into personal interpretation while still managing to come to logical conclusions. Webs spun by collective social action are centered around the individual’s personal struggle. The ethnography offers a vast range of insights into the systems surrounding the topic of immigration policy in France, while simultaneously allowing for a neutral perspective which may differ from her own critiques. By consistently delineating a summary of linear events as well as allowing for a detailed contextualization of subject experience, she does not finalize any position.

The theoretical developments of Ticktin’s work are related to empirical findings, first and foremost, by offering practical contexts for previously conceptualized theories of a growing field of anthropology. While clearly establishing a well-rounded field of empirical data which she ties to her own thought-processes, she neither neglects the non-academic field of focus, such as news articles and their signification of public perception, nor does she overload the reader with complex concepts without making lights of how her thought processes are embedded in the evocation of a certain concept - another reason to applaud her focus.

The ethnography clearly aligns with the content of the seminar. As previously mentioned, she very much adheres to lines of thinking within new directions of anthropological methodology and concepts, especially in context to ethnographic authority and conceptualizations of overarching implications such as ontological definitions of ‘humanity’ and ‘care’, which she may not have even known about at the time of writing the ethnography.

I personally find her work compelling and inspirational, especially regarding her ability to focus a vast field of information by maintaining a strict centralization of individual experience and separating internal and external meaning-making processes involved, as well as her ability to align distance and closeness to maintain a position of professional observation to form concepts, outline genealogies and relate contexts regarding the politics of care in the French immigration system.

Bibliography

Fassin, Didier (2001): “The Biopolitics of Otherness: Undocumented Foreigners and Racial Discrimination in French Public Debate” in: Anthropology Today 17 (1): 3-7.

Fassin, Didier (2015): A Companion to Moral Anthropology, Oxford.

Ferguson, James. (1994). The Anti-Politics Machine. “Development” and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho in: The Ecologist, 24 (5): 176-181.

Herzfeld, Michael (2001): “Developmentalism” in: Herzfield, Michael (ed.), Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Malden: 152-170.

Redfield, Peter (2006): A less modest witness: Collective advocacy and motivated truth in a medical humanitarian movement. In: American Ethnologist. 33 (1): 3-26.

Rees, Tobias (2014): Humanity/ Plan; or, on the “Stateless” Today (Also Being an Anthropology of Global Health) in: Cultural Anthropology 29 (3): 457-478.

Rottenburg, Richard (2013): Ethnologie und Kritik. In: Krings, Matthias / Lentz, Carola (Hg.): Ethnologie im 21. Jahrhundert. Berlin: 55-76.

Ticktin, Miriam (2011): Casualities of Care. Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism. Berkeley.