Where Governmentality Ends: Border Control Officers and Deportations of Sojourners in Israel

Oded Korczyn

International Labor and Working-Class History, 2011, vol. 79, issue 1, 81-102

Abstract: This paper will shed light on the deportation process of visaless sojourners staying and working in Israel. I will explain how state bureaucrats, specifically border control officers of the Enforcement Unit of the Interior Ministry (in Hebrew, hamemune al bikoret hagvulot beyekhidat ha'akhifa, misrad hapnim) are able to conduct activities that cause suffering to sojourners while still viewing themselves as moral human beings, by breaking down the decision-making process into a series of dichotomic categories, by defining Zionism as a context that justifies deportation, and by governing their emotions. I claim that in Israel, state bureaucrats view sojourners as unmanageable and incorrigible. Consequently, deportation becomes a logical course of action. Such an approach, which stresses the bureaucratic aspect of national projects, enables a better understanding of how the “State” is able to perform large-scale projects that cause suffering to individuals.

Date: 2011
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