This article sets out to consider the prefix “geo-” and its potential role in advancing research on the relationship between migration, power, and the environment. “Geo-” highlights the current orientation toward understanding migration through the field of ecology and its critico-philosophical premises. Notions such as geopower or geontopower have been suggested to unpack how geomorphological environments are co-opted and weaponized into deterring, debilitating, and killing migrant people in a way that seems, by official accounts, somewhat less intentional: the trope of a pu tatively inert and empty Nature legitimates the appropriation of geo as the inhuman ground of biopower. The prefix “geo-”, moreover, aptly captures the scale of the Earth as being proper to migration, in light of the urgency of conceptualizing migration as a condition and governmental logic proper to the Anthropocene, understood as a vast technological and commercial operation that ultimately posits the Earth as an appropriable object of power. These claims will be substantiated by looking at a specific case of geo-physical weaponization in the context of migration management in a peripheral(ized) region of Europe, that is, an extensive felling operation on the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. From an exploration of this peripheral(ized) border environment, the paper will try to highlight the inhumanity of the Earth as an avenue for rethinking contemporary migration and environmental struggles.
“Geo-”: Weaponization, Power and the Geo-Politics of Migration
Richard Lee Peragine
2025
Abstract
This article sets out to consider the prefix “geo-” and its potential role in advancing research on the relationship between migration, power, and the environment. “Geo-” highlights the current orientation toward understanding migration through the field of ecology and its critico-philosophical premises. Notions such as geopower or geontopower have been suggested to unpack how geomorphological environments are co-opted and weaponized into deterring, debilitating, and killing migrant people in a way that seems, by official accounts, somewhat less intentional: the trope of a pu tatively inert and empty Nature legitimates the appropriation of geo as the inhuman ground of biopower. The prefix “geo-”, moreover, aptly captures the scale of the Earth as being proper to migration, in light of the urgency of conceptualizing migration as a condition and governmental logic proper to the Anthropocene, understood as a vast technological and commercial operation that ultimately posits the Earth as an appropriable object of power. These claims will be substantiated by looking at a specific case of geo-physical weaponization in the context of migration management in a peripheral(ized) region of Europe, that is, an extensive felling operation on the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. From an exploration of this peripheral(ized) border environment, the paper will try to highlight the inhumanity of the Earth as an avenue for rethinking contemporary migration and environmental struggles.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
