This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Lj ublj ana] On: 27 Novem ber 2013, At : 06: 36 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Citizenship Studies Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ ccst 20 Citizenship practices of non-citizens in Slovenia: ‘ you cannot fight the system alone’ Jelka Zorn a a Facult y of Social Work, Universit y of Lj ublj ana, Topniška 31 1000, Lj ublj ana, Slovenia Published online: 09 Nov 2013. To cite this article: Jelka Zorn (2013) Cit izenship pract ices of non-cit izens in Slovenia: ‘ you cannot f ight t he syst em alone’ , Cit izenship St udies, 17: 6-7, 803-816, DOI: 10. 1080/ 13621025. 2013. 834132 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 13621025. 2013. 834132 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . However, Taylor & Francis, our agent s, and our licensors m ake no represent at ions or warrant ies what soever as t o t he accuracy, com plet eness, or suit abilit y for any purpose of t he Cont ent . Any opinions and views expressed in t his publicat ion are t he opinions and views of t he aut hors, and are not t he views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of t he Cont ent should not be relied upon and should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources of inform at ion. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem ands, cost s, expenses, dam ages, and ot her liabilit ies what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h, in relat ion t o or arising out of t he use of t he Cont ent . This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. Term s & Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm sand- condit ions Citizenship Studies, 2013 Vol. 17, Nos. 6–7, 803–816, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2013.834132 Citizenship practices of non-citizens in Slovenia: ‘you cannot fight the system alone’1 Jelka Zorn* Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana, Topniška 31 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 (Received 23 April 2012; final version received 24 October 2012) In the period of state formation (1991 – 1992), the Slovene Ministry of the Interior erased, that is, excluded from legal status, those immigrants from other parts of the former Yugoslavia who did not become Slovene citizens when citizenship was available under initial simplified criteria. Compared with the processes of independence in Estonia and elsewhere, exclusion in the form of erasure from the register of permanent residents in Slovenia extended beyond the creation of foreigners within the country (i.e. foreign citizens with the right to remain and support themselves); this exclusion created outlaws, legal freaks (Arendt) or homines sacres (Agamben) – bare human beings who were expunged from society and deprived of all former rights and roles. This article discusses the citizenship practices of the victims of the erasure and interprets these practices as emancipation processes: the erased used grass roots and legal means to attempt to obtain the right to dignity, the right to stay and the right to compensation for their ‘lost years’. The effects of their struggle went beyond matters of mere utility: by publicly defining themselves as ‘the erased’ and acting upon injustice; the erased challenged the boundaries of citizenship in terms of membership and content. Keywords: the erased; erasure; undocumented; human rights; exclusion; activism Introduction In 1991, the Republic of Slovenia declared its independence and seceded from the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. The creation of the new state brought a redefinition of the citizenship population. One of the residual outcomes of the transformation of citizenship was the erasure from the register of permanent residents. The erasure resulted in denying human, social and political rights to 25,671 people, who constituted more than 1% of the population of the Republic of Slovenia. In the period of state formation, the Ministry of the Interior erased, that is, excluded from legal status those immigrants from other parts of the former Yugoslavia who did not become Slovene citizens when citizenship was available under initial simplified criteria. Immigrants were mostly workers who had moved to Slovenia in the 1970s and 1980s, when the migrant and domestic population shared the same (Yugoslav) citizenship. It was a time when Slovene industry was growing, and the demand for workers from outside the borders of Slovenia was constant. During the independence period, an anti-Yugoslav environment hostile to immigrants enabled an interpretation according to which failure to claim Slovene citizenship represented a ‘moral’ crime – lack of loyalty to the new nation state. Instead of making these new non-citizens legal aliens, the Ministry of the Interior robbed them of any legal status whatsoever. Under the cover of Slovenia’s new status as a *Email:jelka.zorn@fsd.uni-lj.si q 2013 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 804 J. Zorn champion of democracy and human rights it violated their very basic right to stay in Slovenia, in their homes, with their families. As several researchers have shown, the right to belong and the right to have rights can be considered integral both to leading a dignified life and to basic survival (e.g. Arendt [1948] 2004, Agamben 1998, Sawyer and Blitz 2011). The erasure – meaning the violation of the right to belong and denying the right to have rights – appears to contrast with the general aim of the modern state: if we understand the source of legitimacy of state power as lying in the creation of conditions for the reproduction of life and welfare, then, from the perspective of the state, rightlessness appears to be an illogical situation. Why would the state want to deliberately oppress individuals and their families and thus deprive them of the rights that are normally afforded to members of a society? Furthermore, why would the state place some people outside of the protection of the law? As noted by Foucault (2004, p. 28), power must not be analysed at the level of intentions or decisions; rather, power must be analysed in the field of its application, where it produces its real effects. Applying this principle to the issue of the erasure requires researching the countless consequences in the daily lives of undocumented individuals and their families, and examining how a lack of status (as an exception to the norm) gives meaning to the notions of belonging; political, social and human rights; state sovereignty; and agency of the excluded. Such methodological perspective was taken into account in both previous studies (Dedić et al. 2003, Kogovšek et al. 2010, Lipovec Čebron and Zorn 2011, Zorn 2011) and present paper. Specifically, this article draws on two complementary research methods: long-term participant observations in the struggle of the erased and new reading of four studies in which 132 interviews with erased persons were conducted (Dedić et al. 2003, Kogovšek et al. 2010, Lipovec Čebron and Zorn 2011, Zorn 2011). The analyses of research material were undertaken by applying concepts firmly established in academic field, such as Arendt’s notions of statelessness and rightlessness, Foucault’s notion on biopower, Étienne Balibar’s insights on borders and Agamben’s concept of bare life. Building on Arendt’s right to have rights and Foucault’s biopolitics, Agamben (1998) developed a concept of bare life, applicable to the erased. On the other hand, Balibar (2004) showed that precisely people without formal rights – undocumented or de facto stateless – entered politics as Sans-Papiers and thus gained their political subjectivity and challenged perception of the French citizenship. Not exclusively the state, but also those who lack formal membership can enter processes of citizenship transformation. This article highlights the fact that oppressive discourses and practices of the erasure were followed by creation of a community of resistance. Considering the concept of citizenship, I draw from Kim Rygiel’s reading of Foucault’s governmentality understanding citizenship as globalising regime of government. Her conceptualisation of citizenship is useful because it ‘[i]nvolves viewing citizenship as having to do with the practices, discourses, technologies, forms of power, and political subjectivities used in governing of individuals and populations’ (Rygiel 2010, p. 11). Such view of citizenship is applicable to my understanding of the Slovene postindependence period revealing the ways in which restructuring of rights in the new state occurred through citizenship. The story of the erasure reveals both the individualisation of the erased as victims (concealment of their legal and social situation and their suffering) and their collective mobilisation to win recognition and justice. In discussing their liberation, collectiveness will be emphasised; this focus is already apparent in the title of the article – ‘You cannot fight the system alone’, which was borrowed from one of the activists at the forefront of the movement. The effects of the struggle went beyond matters of mere utility: by publicly defining themselves as ‘the erased’ and acting upon injustice; the erased challenged the boundaries of citizenship in terms of membership and content. Thus, the erased can be Citizenship Studies 805 viewed in terms of ‘activist citizens’ (differentiated from ‘active citizens’ – Isin 2009) since their actions initiated political conflict, accompanied by a brake and a rupture in perceptions of the right to belong and power relations. Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 Secession, the new border regime and Slovenia’s path towards Europe The erasure occurred in February 1992, that is shortly after Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia and became an independent state (June 1991). In a political move that was nearly concurrent with the independence process, the Slovene political elite initiated the process of acquiring European Union (EU) membership by claiming that Slovenia had always belonged to ‘Europe’ and thus did not belong to ‘the Balkans’ (Močnik 1999). This notion of claimed belonging is important to emphasise because the victims of the erasure were viewed as belonging to the Balkans. At the time (the beginning of the 1990s), the EU was already crafting harsher measures for the detention and deportation of asylum seekers and migrants without status. In the process of harmonising Slovene legislation with European legislation and subsequently with the EU’s migration management system, legal status became the main classification criterion and created a strong division between citizens and non-citizens or rather between citizens and outcasts. Activist and researcher Sara Pistotnik (2010, p. 53) wrote that the erased who had suddenly lost their legal status became a sort of testing ground for the structural violence that was anticipated for asylum seekers and undocumented migrants within the new Slovene regime of immigration control. This observation was also made by the activist and academic Andrej Kurnik (2008, p. 136), who wrote that Slovenia had normalised the criminality of the erasure by ratifying European immigration and asylum policy, whereas the EU had normalised the criminality of its immigration policy in Slovenia by integrating autochthonous forms of exclusion, such as erasure. Thus, the simultaneous establishment of national and European sovereignty led to the mutual normalisation and integration of exclusionary practices (Kurnik 2008). More explicitly, although the protection of human rights ranks highly on the list of European values, the erasure from the register of permanent residents, which caused the legal disintegration of 25,671 people, was not a serious obstacle for Slovenia in the process of acquiring EU membership (Slovenia became an EU Member State in 2004). In the case of asylum seekers and migrants, legal exclusion occurs when these individuals cross state borders (i.e. migration), whereas in the case of the erased, the opposite is true: the erased did not cross borders; rather, the borders crossed them. This assertion is possible if the meaning of the term border is not limited to the territorial line between states. As argued by Balibar (2004, p. 2), the borders are no longer entirely situated at the outer limit of territories – ‘they are dispersed a little everywhere, wherever the movement of information, people, and things is happening and is controlled’ – for example, in cosmopolitan cities or agencies of the welfare state. One of the effects of borders is discrimination against the global poor; passports and identity cards function as a systematic criterion. In this sense, the European citizenship appears as a ‘citizenship of borders’ (Balibar 2004). The following sections describe how borders and immigration control were introduced inside of the Republic of Slovenia and resulted in the disintegration and oppression of a large group of former citizens. The initial citizenship policy in Slovenia: a combination of the ius sanguinis and ius domicili principles To discuss the erasure from the register of permanent residents, we must explain parts of the secession legislation. Because no state can exist without citizens, the newly Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 806 J. Zorn independent state of Slovenia needed to define its citizenry. The initial citizenship policy was based on a combination of the residence principle (ius domicili) and the blood relation principle (ius sanguinis). The principle of ius sanguinis ensured that ethnic Slovenes automatically became Slovene citizens in 1991 when Slovenia declared its independence. However, the question of how the state could define who was and who was not an ethnic Slovene arises. By applying the ius sanguinis principle, the Republic of Slovenia expanded the concept of administratively defined ethnic belonging that had been introduced in the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974. This constitution introduced republican citizenship that had no significant meaning at the time and that went unnoticed by the vast majority of Yugoslav citizens. From today’s perspective, this republican citizenship appears to be an inroad to the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, as this citizenship fostered ethnic identification that later encouraged hatred and led to war in ethnically mixed republics. This previously obscure category assumed great significance as Slovenia embarked upon the establishment of an independent state in 1991. Persons who had been registered in the Republican Book of Citizens of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia automatically became citizens of the newly independent state. The vast majority of Slovenia’s residents (approximately 90%) were eligible for this automatic transformation of their citizenship status. The second method for obtaining citizenship in the independent Republic of Slovenia was based on the ius domicili principle. Permanent residents of Slovenia who had emigrated from other republics of Yugoslavia and their Slovenia-born children could apply for citizenship in the new state in 1991, and their applications were typically approved. In this manner, approximately 171,000 persons (8.5% of the total population) obtained citizenship. Because immigrants could apply for Slovene citizenship under greatly simplified conditions, Slovenia displayed an image of a liberal state for both the domestic and international public. Moreover, compared with other republics of the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia presented itself as the only success story because it was the most economically developed and because it avoided war. The transition from former Communist rule to democracy in Slovenia was peaceful, and its economic transition (from collective property ownership to state and private ownership) was efficient. The creation of a state based on the rule of law became an important political project. However, beneath the surface of this appealing image, the situation was more complicated. The post-independence period was marked by strong anti-Yugoslav sentiments, and the question of who was a Slovene and who was not became tremendously important. Respect for human rights and the rights of minorities – principles that were widely promoted before and during the independence process – underwent a profound change when implemented in practice after secession. An ethnic Slovene became the absolute normative; all other individuals, such as the Roma people, first- and second-generation immigrants (citizens and non-citizens) and refugees from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, became the targets of various types of racist oppression. In an interview pertaining to his personal experiences, activist Aleksandar Todorović remembered this change in the attitude towards immigrants: I had only good feelings when I came in 1977. [ . . . ] Everything changed during the independence movement, and I was under enormous pressure. [ . . . ] I felt guilty and less worthy because I was not a Slovene. The psychosis, the division into Slovenes and nonSlovenes, was terrible. To others, I was first and foremost a Serb. (Aleksandar Todorović in Beznec 2008, p. 22) Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 Citizenship Studies 807 The erasure The erasure occurred on 26 February 1992, one and a half year after Slovenia declared its independence. The erasure was a secret measure of the Ministry of the Interior (Dedić et al. 2003, Zorn 2009). Persons who were erased from the register of permanent residents had either failed to apply for citizenship or had had their applications rejected. The reasons that individuals did not apply for Slovene citizenship were diverse; however, there was a general belief among this group that they would be entitled to the rights of registered aliens on the basis of their permanent residency and work in Slovenia, their marital relationships with Slovenes and their full integration into Slovene society. Because the individuals of this group did not become Slovene citizens, they began to be legally treated as foreigners. The problem with the erasure was that the Ministry of the Interior interpreted the Aliens Act as annulling all of the rights that these residents once possessed; in the eyes of the law, these individuals became equated with undocumented migrants. Persons who were erased from the register were divested of the right to reside in Slovenia and the right to cross state borders, and if they departed from the country, they were denied the right to return, the right to employment and all other social and political rights. Some people were even detained and deported. Roma people (one of the most oppressed minorities in Slovenia) were also among the erased. In effect, the state produced illegality, deprived thousands of their legal status and prevented many individuals from obtaining a new status. In their attempts to become legal residents again, many individuals reported that they found themselves in a vicious circle of administrative demands. For several years or even a decade, many of these individuals continued to reside in Slovenia as undocumented and de facto stateless persons. ‘The stateless person, without the right to residence and without the right to work, had of course constantly to transgress the law’, wrote Arendt ([1948] 2004, p. 363), more than 60 years ago in her critical analysis of the nation state concept. If we agree (Arendt [1948] 2004, p. 368) that ‘the nation-state cannot exist once the principle of equality before the law has broken down’, then we observe that the erasure reveals that the legitimacy of the Republic of Slovenia as an independent state rested on a rather shaky foundation. The quasi-legality of the erasure: juridical exception rather than law Both legislative and executive power played a role in the erasure. Rather than a law that would define the legal status of new non-citizens, rule by decree was created. During the adoption of the new legislation, an amendment to the Aliens Act was proposed. If passed, this amendment would have enabled new non-citizens to retain their right to live in Slovenia by making them aliens with permanent residence permits. It would have effectively prevented the erasure. But it was not passed, and resulting lack of legal definition enabled the executive power, the Ministry of the Interior, to invent its own method of handling this particular group of non-citizens. An exception within the legal system was created by filling a legal void through rule by decree. Exceptions are conceptually derived from a state of emergency (war, for example) and are characterised by a suspension of basic rights (Agamben 1998). One exception concerned the validity of personal documents: the documents of the erased were decreed invalid although these documents had not expired and had been issued in Slovenia (Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia 1992a). The second exception (which also eliminated regular legal norms and basic rights) concerned detentions and deportations from the state. Because there was a legal void, the police were Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 808 J. Zorn given the power to decide whom to detain and deport from the state (Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia 1992b). Especially in its initial development, the case of the erasure reveals the rule of executive power (the police and the Ministry of the Interior) in matters in which legislative power (Parliament) is supposed to render decisions. Agamben (1998) argues that an essential characteristic of a state of exception is the provisional abolition of the distinction among legislative, executive and judicial powers. This author also claims that the state of exception has a tendency to become an enduring practice of government. The illegalisation of people and the normalisation of detention and deportation centres in our societies are clear examples of such enduring practices (Wilsher 2012). Moreover, similar to undocumented migrants in general, the erased were detained and deported without reference to criminal records. Here, we are confronted with the institution of the camp – in this case, a detention and deportation centre. Historically, the camp was developed as an exception from normal legal rule to protect the society from alleged danger, for example, by political opponents and later refugees, Jews and other ‘undesirable’ people of Europe (Agamben 1998). In the camp, executive power – the police – dominates, and the state of exception becomes the rule (Agamben 1998, p. 169, Wilsher 2012). By analysing the juridico-political structure that enables such exclusions (confinement in concentration camps or detention centres), Agamben revealed the concept of homo sacer. Homo sacer is an aspect of archaic Roman law in which human life was included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, in its capacity to be killed) (Agamben 1998, p. 169, Wilsher 2012). Homo sacer refers to the life of a human being who could be killed but not sacrificed. Agamben referred to this concept when describing deployments of power by which human beings are completely deprived of their rights and prerogatives to the extent that killings in the Nazi camps did not have the status of criminal acts. Similar to the denaturalised prisoners of the concentration camps, today’s refugees, writes Agamben (1998, p. 131), represent a disquieting element in the order of the nation state because they constitute an interruption of the implicit continuity among humans and citizens, nativity (birth) and nationality (membership in the political community). Agamben’s point of departure was the theory of Arendt ([1948] 2004), who reflected on declarations of the rights of humans and citizens. She stated that a stateless person is truly ‘the man of rights’, the first and only real appearance of rights outside of the fiction of the citizen that always covers them. The erased found themselves in the same structural position as the stateless people described by Arendt or the homo sacer introduced by Agamben. The question is thus: is it possible to transform this aspect of the nation state that obstructs the right to belong and denies the right to have rights. If so, how? I argue that this oppressive structure can be undermined if homo sacer – an outlaw, someone whose opinion and experiences are not part of the universal – manages to emancipate himself or herself through collective mobilisation. The second part of this article discusses resistance of the erased and analyses the effects of their collective actions. Self-definition: from being erased to the erased Regardless of this or that result, the most important thing was that people became more human through the struggle; we had been totally dehumanised, not only on the administrative level but also as people in our personal lives and in our relationships with friends and relatives. It seems that this struggle, this exposure, the public proclamation of the erased, standing up to the stereotypes of the majority [ . . . ] this is what brings a kind of humanisation. (Aleksandar Todorović in Beznec 2008, p. 31, my emphasis) Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 Citizenship Studies 809 The public proclamation of the erased has been constitutive for the movement and has served as a powerful weapon of the struggle. Initially, before their collective resistance, the term ‘erased’ had been used by governmental officials to inform people that they had lost their right to live in Slovenia. The officials also used other expressions with the same meaning: ‘You no longer live here’, ‘You don’t exist here anymore’ or ‘You are a foreigner now and must get foreign documents’ (Kogovšek et al. 2010). Naming themselves as the erased does not mean that the stateless individuals accepted the language of their oppressors. On the contrary, the movement could only begin when administrative change of status was recognised as oppression called the erasure. The name was provocative enough to gain public attention. When the activists started to use the term ‘erasure’, the government’s response was denial: there was no erasure and no erased in Slovenia. Denial of the erasure has been the government’s longest running, most persistent defence. Over the years of struggle, the term erased assumed a completely new meaning and connotation. A term that was previously oppressive and technical subsequently gained a political connotation. Victims of the erasure began to use the term in their own manner, consciously and proudly, to refer to the oppression that they suffered when their rights were denied, when the doors of public institutions were closed to them, when they were considered a matter for the police and when the harsh exploitation of their labour was a normal occurrence. Individual suffering was lessened only when the oppression deserved a name. This happened through collective story sharing, mutual support and public action (Lipovec Čebron 2008, Zdravković 2010, Zorn 2011). Acting upon the injustice and standing up to the stereotypes of the majority, as Todorović stated, was not self-evident, given the harsh anti-immigrant atmosphere of that time and especially given the isolation of the victims of the erasure: each erased person initially believed that she or he was the only person who had suffered such exclusion and initially interpreted the problem as an administrative mistake (Dedić et al. 2003). Considering Rancière’s (1999) theory on the political subject, it can be claimed that the suffering of injustice is a prerequisite for the constitution of a political subject. However, although a political subject constitutes itself as the subject of injustice, it does not retain the position of victim. A political subject ceases to be a victim precisely at the moment that it recognises itself as a victim, when it recognises that it has suffered injustice and becomes determined to act upon this injustice (Rancière 1999). In this sense, the movement of the erased can be compared to other resistance movements of people without legal status in the country of their work and residence such as Sans-Papiers (France), No One is Illegal, anti-deportation campaigns and No Border networks throughout the Western world (McNevin 2006, Nyers 2003). These movements challenge the idea of the state monopoly over the right to belong and value the agency of the excluded. An analogy can be drawn between Sans-Papiers and the erased on the basis of the movements’ expressive and provocative names indicating both a lack of formal membership and a face and voice for those banished from the society. An appeal to become political: the identity of resistance Identifying oneself as an erased person became a political act that represented not only the courage and willingness to fight but also a universal appeal to become political. ‘We sort of told everyone that they themselves could become active and assertive. If they’re not in Parliament, they have to express themselves differently, in their own way’, explained 810 J. Zorn activist and erased person Aleksandar Todorović in his interview (Beznec 2008, p. 27). One woman explained as follows: Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 There are many problems in our country. One cannot remain passive. From nothing comes nothing. So it happens that now, when I’m older, I take to the streets [attend protests]. It might sound strange or even ridiculous that now, as seniors, we attend street protests and rallies, but I feel it makes me stronger and gives us new heart. It’s a small contribution that I have to offer—my participation; but I hope this has at least a small effect in changing things for the better. (Vera in Zorn 2011, p. 78) The insight that one cannot remain passive and that one’s own participation in the struggle is important in changing things for the better, as expressed by Vera, has been an important universalist message of the movement of the erased. This message has been built into the collective identity of the erased as an identity of resistance. Their struggle for citizenship as a legal status rapidly became a citizenship practice, which Étienne Balibar called droit de cité (the right to citizenship rights). Through the struggle for Slovene citizenship, the erased began to question the borders of citizenship in general, both in the formal sense (as criteria for inclusion and exclusion) and in terms of content (citizenship as practice, as a collective struggle for fundamental rights) (Kurnik 2008). As observed by one supporter of the movement, Kurnik (2008), the activism of the erased has challenged the relationship between civil society and the state that emerged as a result of a conflict of alternatives in the 1980s, when Slovenia was still a part of Yugoslavia. During the period of secession from Yugoslavia, national homogenisation prevailed, and the struggle for power occurred within a new framework, with the consequence that all of civil society was absorbed into the state. This absorption resulted in the disappearance of autonomous political initiatives. Non-governmental organisations emerged but only as a poor substitute for civil society (Kurnik 2008, p. 137). Nongovernmental organisations tended to function primarily as a substitute for governmental social and other services and thus could not challenge the borders of citizenship. Because their autonomy from the state was primarily only superficial, these organisations could not define new rights; they could only implement rights that were granted by the state (Kurnik 2008). Kurnik even suggests that these organisations ultimately served to block the political activism of certain dedicated groups, to foster paternalism and to reproduce the relationship of domination. In contrast, the Association of the Erased Residents appealed to autonomy and self-determination. The Association never received funds from the state; on the contrary, it was often perceived as the adversary of both the nation and the state. The Association functioned as a grass-roots organisation with several dedicated members and a number of moral supporters. However, constant external and internal conflicts resulted in the formation of another organisation of erased residents in 2006. Both organisations functioned without the internal division of roles between professionals and service users that typically exists within many non-governmental organisations. Rather, social or legal services were the outcome of collective action; when people acted together, they also shared legal information and psychological support. Their actions were sometimes quite militant and, in the case of hunger strikes, even self-destructive. Hunger strikes: when only physical body remains People can starve themselves regardless of their legal status. The idea behind hunger strikes is that the threat of a dead body will concern state authorities because their legitimacy to rule depends on their willingness and ability to protect life and to ensure a good life for its citizens. That which has been stated with regard to the metamorphosis of Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 Citizenship Studies 811 the term ‘erased’ can also be applied to hunger strikes. Before the movement caused the issue of the erasure to become public, the erased were starving individually, in isolation and not of their own will. Their starvation was a consequence of being deprived of labour and other social rights. However, why would someone who already suffered all types of deprivations want to starve themselves deliberately? I argue that such bodily experience can be qualified as a citizenship practice. As already mentioned, the preservation of life and the improvement of living conditions and health are taken for granted as a source of the state’s legitimacy: they are aimed at the population as a whole and concern common life processes, such as birth, death, reproduction, aging and disease (Foucault 2004). However, it is important to realise that the inclusion of natural life in the state’s calculation – or ‘biopower’, according to Foucault, or bare life, according to Agamben – produces a double bind: while modern states are able to provide care for and control over the population and foster democracy, they are also able to authorise experiments of total domination, holocaust or ethnic cleansing. How is it possible for the state to introduce such destructive acts if its aim is the protection and welfare of the population? Foucault (2004) claims that ever since the state began to function in line with biopower, the killing function of the state could be performed only through racism (‘killing’ here means leaving someone to cope with unbearable circumstances, legal or political death, expulsion, and other conditions and does not necessarily refer to directly murdering a person). When being destructive, the state acts precisely on those mechanisms that appear to enable survival, in accordance with the principle that another’s death strengthens oneself, insofar as we belong to a specific ‘race’, ethnic group or population (Foucault 2004, p. 254). A hunger strike as a collective political action can be interpreted as a method of exposing the paradox of the biopolitical function of the state and the hidden matrix of homo sacer. Deprived of their legal status, personal documents and thus identity, the erased had only their physical bodies remaining. By undertaking the protest, these individuals challenged institutional racism so dramatically that the state could not simply reassert its racist function and ignore the group of people who were exposing their bodies to death. The result was the popularisation of the movement and the emergence of a feeling that the state would need to take their demands seriously. Being completely dehumanised, the erased could emancipate themselves only through collective action: through hunger strikes, these individuals exposed their physical bodies as political beings (Zdravković 2010). One of the hunger strikes, for example, was organised in support of Ali Berisha, a Roma person who was erased and deported to Albania in 1993. Albania immediately returned him to Slovenia because he had no connections with this state. He was detained to be deported again but managed to flee to Germany, where he reported himself as a refugee from Kosovo (which was his birthplace). During his residence in Germany, he started a family. In 2005, he and his family were ordered to leave Germany because Kosovo was considered a safe country. Rather than being sent to Kosovo, the family decided to flee to Slovenia, as this country was Berisha’s last residence place before he moved to Germany. However, the family was unable to enter Slovenia legally. Therefore, the hunger strike was organised to demand that Berisha and his family be given the right to enter and remain in Slovenia. In sum, the Berisha family remained in Slovenia for two years. Berisha campaigned and struggled as an erased person, but the entire family was eventually deported back to Germany with the intent that they would be further deported to Kosovo. The result of the hunger strike and campaign that were organised to support this family 812 J. Zorn was primarily symbolic: while they were denied the right to remain in Slovenia, the general public became more aware of the far-reaching consequences of the erasure. Berisha’s first deportation to Albania in 1993 had no connections with the media and public awareness, whereas his second deportation to Germany in 2008 occurred before the public eye and was even internationalised (Amnesty International 2007). Therefore, the history of his personal legal situation could not be overlooked by the German authorities, and the family could not be sent to Kosovo. The last unofficial news was that the family’s legal status was still undetermined in 2010 and that they were leading an unhappy life in limbo. Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 The legal fight A different period had begun because most things had begun to be performed behind a table, not on the streets. Countless people took part, activists, and they accumulated documents, did interviews, and translated the files. It was an exceptionally long and exhausting process; it took all year before the lawsuit was filed with the court in Strasbourg. The first lawsuit now encompasses eleven urgent cases of the erased,2 where the persons in question are still without documents. (Aleksandar Todorović in Beznec 2008, p. 29) In July 2006, the erased and their supporters filed a lawsuit against Slovenia with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Some components of the lawsuit were dismissed for various reasons. For example, the Court dismissed the part of the lawsuit that claimed that the right to free movement to leave and to return to the country was violated due to the erasure. The Convention protects this right, but only for legal residents. However, the erasure had robbed its victims of this status. Here, we are confronted with the problem of the vanity of the human rights concept that was mentioned earlier, which supersedes the Slovene case of deprivation of legal status. Being ‘only’ a human being is not sufficient to obtain protection or the freedom to exercise a particular right. Already before the final verdict was reached on 26 June 2012 in favour of the erased against the Republic of Slovenia, filing the lawsuit with the ECHR had many positive effects. Researcher and advocacy lawyer Neža Kogovšek (2008) emphasised that the lawsuit attracted strong interest from the international professional audience. Before the lawsuit was filed, it was rather difficult to explain the erasure with all of its peculiarities to the international audience and even more difficult to raise money for research purposes. Filing the lawsuit prompted research, international interest, funding, awareness raising, international campaigning and other activities (Kogovšek 2008). Afterwards, studies were published and funded and thus rendered the argument of the movement stronger and more accessible. After the filing of the lawsuit, several erased persons suddenly received positive solutions to their applications for temporary or permanent permits to remain in Slovenia. Previously, they would wait for a reply from the Ministry of the Interior for years and were frequently rejected for non-compliance with the criteria. After the lawsuit was filed with ECHR, positive decisions were issued, even in situations in which the criteria remained unfulfilled. The employees of the Ministry also contacted persons who were involved as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Slovenia and offered them permits for permanent residency or Slovene citizenship. They made these offers despite the fact that these persons had legal representatives and that the procedure before the Court had not yet been concluded. These offers can be viewed as a hindrance to the effective exercise of the right to individual application (Article 34 of the Convention), as these proposals were offered outside of the ECHR procedure (Kogovšek 2008, p. 48). Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 Citizenship Studies 813 This sudden change in attitude towards granting personal legal statuses by the Ministry likely arose from both the fear of being fined by the ECHR and the fear of Slovenia’s negative image in European institutions. Slovenia’s ruling elite has been proud that the state formally belongs to Europe: in 1993, Slovenia became a member of the Council of Europe and it became an EU member state in 2004; in 2007, it was included in the Schengen area and changed from using local currency to the Euro (Government Communication Office 2011). As mentioned previously, for Slovenia’s ruling elite, symbolically belonging to Europe also played a role. Accordingly, the erased have managed to generate a significant amount of attention from the media and the government any time that their actions have involved institutions of the Council of Europe, the EU or distinguished human rights monitors. Having won two decisions at the national Constitutional Court and the lawsuit against the Republic of Slovenia at the ECHR, the erased can no longer be viewed in the highly pejorative light in which the media had initially cast them. In terms of ethno-nationalism, the media initially portrayed the erased as disloyal individuals who had participated in the military action against Slovenia and now had the gall to demand compensation. However, from a humanitarian perspective, these people were portrayed as constrained by their lack of legal knowledge and as poor, passive individuals (Vezovnik 2010). Both of these portrayals greatly stigmatised the erased as a movement and as individuals, and a decade of complete silence and ignorance regarding the problem of the erasure led to dramatic stigmatisation. However, as presented above, the credibility of the movement of the erased has improved, and their argument against the state’s ethno-national definitions appears to be gaining traction. Conclusion In this article, the analytical categories of homo sacer and the camp have been used to present the case of exclusion from citizenship and legal alien status in Slovenia. These categories have been applied not to conceal the agency of the excluded but to show that the erasure was not a singular accident of the post-independence process. On the contrary, these categories imply a sense of a permanent structure. I do not wish to state that the existence of the latent structure of homo sacer and the camp presented an unavoidable destiny in the case of Slovenia: the reordering of the political and social composition of a particular state or region does not necessarily produce situations of illegality and the complete absence of rights (see, for example, the case of Estonia in the work of Sawyer and Blitz 2011). Secession from Yugoslavia was nearly simultaneous with joining the EU. However, the EU, with its image of a socially advanced region, could not avoid the backlash from the dramatic production of homo sacer and the camp; this lack of avoidance is cause for concern. These developments lead to the conclusion that denying the right to belong is deeply linked with historical and structural causes and that despite advances in the application of human rights, political homelessness does not appear to be vanishing. The erasure indicates the problematic nature of human rights: being ‘only’ a human being is not sufficient to obtain protection or the freedom to exercise a particular right. Processes of political and social reordering are not one-dimensional. Throughout the course of history, anti-systemic movements have played a crucial role in reshaping societies; some recent examples include Communism as well as the anti-war, feminist and black movements of the late 1960s (Arrighi et al. 1989, Centrih 2011). Therefore, when presenting the case of the erasure, I felt it necessary to use two perspectives to describe the Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 814 J. Zorn oppression and the ongoing struggle for liberation. Because they lacked citizenship status, people engaged in citizenship practice. In this way, they became citizens by virtue of their practice. The erased as a movement have progressed significantly in a relatively short time. They made evident that the collective resistance pays off: from being oppressed and isolated, deported and harassed by the police, and banished from the law and society, they have become visible and even omnipresent in the public space, and they constantly demand rights and draw attention to themselves (Zdravković 2010). These individuals protested in the streets, prompted public discourse, twice won at the Constitutional Court (with the result that legislation in their favour had to be adopted) and won at the European Court for Human Rights with the result that the Republic of Slovenia is obliged to pay compensations. This group even earned the respect and recognition of the police, as this example illustrates: one of the erased persons identifies himself as a member of the Association of the Erased Residents before the police: This membership card is the only document I possess, but it makes a difference. Now if I’m stopped by the police, I tell them I’m an erased, I show this card, and they let me go. Thanks to this membership card, I don’t pay fines [for being erased] anymore. (Cesar and Adi 2011, p. 247) As this man’s example shows, one of the outcomes of the political struggle was that the voice of the erased prevailed over the executive power’s definition of the erasure and mainstream ignorance. It might seem paradoxical that people have ultimately fought to be recognised as ‘the erased’. However, by choosing this path of self-determination, these individuals actually drew attention to injustices, rethought their position in society and demonstrated the power of collective action. Fostering their identity as an identity of resistance, the erased can be viewed as a paradigm of new political subjectivity, and their struggle to achieve reparations for injustices can be viewed as an emancipatory battle (Zdravković 2010, p. 259). They did not fall into the trap of ethnic identification even though ethnicity was one of the categories on which their exclusion had been built. To summarise, having created an activist community, politicised bare life and the right to stay, and won both the struggle over the meaning of the erasure and the legal battles, it can be claimed that the erased entered processes of ‘citizenship decomposition’ (Mezzadra 2004) which permit an alternative vision of what citizenship entails. Notes 1. 2. This quotation is from Irfan Beširović, an activist and erased person. His interview on the experiences of the erasure and his active role in the movement of the erased is published in Kogovšek et al. (2010). In the above-mentioned quotation, Ali Berisha is one of the plaintiffs with the ECHR. The first plaintiff, Milan Makuc, passed away in 2008; thus, the original title of the case Milan Makuc and others vs. Slovenia was renamed to Mustafa Kurić and others vs. Slovenia (Government of the Republic of Slovenia 2011). References Agamben, G., 1998. Homo sacer. Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Amnesty International, 2007. AIS obžaluje prisilno vrnitev izbrisanega v Nemčijo [online], Available from: http://trgovina.amnesty.si/clanek.php?id=631&l=akcije [Accessed 29 Aug 2013]. Arendt, H., [1948] 2004. The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books. Arrighi, G., Hopkins, T. and Wallerstein, I., 1989. Antisystemic movements. London: Verso. Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 Citizenship Studies 815 Balibar, É., 2004. We, the people of Europe? Reflections on transnational citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Beznec, B., 2008. The impossible is possible: an interview with Aleksandar Todorović. In: J. Zorn and U. Lipovec Čebron, eds. Once upon the erasure: from citizens to illegal residents in the Republic of Slovenia. (Journal for the critique of science, imagination, and new anthropology) Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 19 – 31. Centrih, L., 2011. Marksistična formacija. Zgodovina ideoloških aparatov komunističnega gibanja 20. stoletja. Ljubljana: Založba cf*. Cesar, T. and Adi, A.A., 2011. In prihodnost? In: U. Lipovec Čebron and J. Zorn, eds. Zgodbe izbrisanih prebivalcev Slovenije. Ljubljana: Založba Sanje, 242– 248. Dedić, J., Jalušič, V. and Zorn, J., 2003. The erased: organized innocence and the politics of exclusion. Ljubljana: Peace Institute. Isin, E.F., 2009. Citizenship in flux: the figure of the activist citizen. Subjectivity, 29, 267– 388. Foucault, M., 2004. ‘Society must be defended’, lectures at the Collège de France 1975– 76. London, UK: Penguin Books. Government Communication Office, 2011. Government portal ‘life in the EU’ [online]. Available from http://www.evropa.gov.si/en/entry-to-the-schengen/ [Accesses 16 Jan 2012]. Government of the Republic of Slovenia, 2011. Evidenca zadev [online]. Available from: http:// www2.gov.si/dp-rs/escp.nsf/0ffe1f8c2a758302c1256bdd00496042/7a2047c22d1691ddc 125778a0026e8e2?OpenDocument [Accessed 12 Jan 2012]. Kogovšek, N., 2008. Izbrisani 2007: tožba pred evropskim sodiščem, odločba ustavnega sodišča in predlog ustavnega zakona. In: S. Autor and R. Kuhar, eds. Poročilo Skupine za spremljanje nestrpnosti. No 6. Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 38 – 53. Kogovšek, N., Zorn, J., Pistotnik, S., Lipovec Čebron, U., Bajt, V., Petković, B. and Zdravković, L., 2010. The scares of the erasure: a contribution to the critical understanding of the erasure of people from the register of permanent residents of the Republic of Slovenia. Ljubljana: Peace Institute. Kurnik, A., 2008. The erased go to heaven. In: J. Zorn and U. Lipovec Čebron, eds. Once upon the erasure: from citizens to illegal residents in the Republic of Slovenia. (Journal for the critique of science, imagination, and new anthropology) Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 133– 144. Lipovec Čebron, U., 2008. The metastasis of the erasure. In: J. Zorn and U. Lipovec Čebron, eds. Once upon the erasure: from citizens to illegal residents in the Republic of Slovenia. (Journal for the critique of science, imagination, and new anthropology) Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 71 – 88. Lipovec Čebron, U. and Zorn, J., 2011. Zgodbe izbrisanih prebivalcev Slovenije. Ljubljana: Založba Sanje. McNevin, A., 2006. Political belonging in a neoliberal era: the struggle of the Sans-Papiers. Citizenship studies, 10 (2), 135–151. Mezzadra, S., 2004. The right to escape. Ephemera – theory of the multitude, 4 (3), 267– 275. Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia, 1992a. The open question of executing the Aliens Act. In: J. Zorn and U. Lipovec Čebron, eds. Once opon the erasure: from citizens to illegal residents in the Republic of Slovenia. (Journal for the critique of science, imagination, and new anthropology) Ljubljana: Študentska založba, back cover page. Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia, 1992b. Executing the Aliens Act – the instructions (Decree No 0016/4-14968). In: J. Zorn and U. Lipovec Čebron, eds. Once upon the erasure: from citizens to illegal residents in the Republic of Slovenia. (Journal for the critique of science, imagination, and new anthropology) Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 268. Močnik, R., 1999. 3 teorije. Ideologija, nacija, institucija. Ljubljana: Založba *cf. Nyers, P., 2003. Abject cosmopolitanism: the politics of protection in the anti-deportation movement. Third world quarterly, 24 (6), 1069– 1093. Pistotnik, S., 2010. The erasure as a testing ground for European migration policies, or ‘pardon me, but your regulations have erased my status’. In: N. Kogovšek and B. Petković, eds. The scares of the erasure: a contribution to the critical understanding of the erasure of people from the register of permanent residents of the Republic of Slovenia. Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 53 – 78. Rancière, J., 1999. Disagreement: politics and philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rygiel, K., 2010. Globalizing citizenship. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. 816 J. Zorn Downloaded by [University of Ljubljana] at 06:36 27 November 2013 Sawyer, C. and Blitz, B.K., eds, 2011. Statelessness in the European Union: displaced, undocumented, unwanted. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Vezovnik, A., 2010. Kritična analiza političnih diskurzov o izbrisanih v žanrih mnenjske zvrsti. Družboslovne razprave, 26 (64), 45 – 62. Wilsher, D., 2012. Immigration detention: law, history, politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Zdravković, L., 2010. The struggle against the denial of citizenship as a paradigm of emancipatory politics. In: N. Kogovšek and B. Petković, eds. The scares of the erasure: a contribution to the critical understanding of the erasure of people from the register of permanent residents of the Republic of Slovenia. Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 257– 277. Zorn, J., 2009. A case for Slovene nationalism: initial citizenship rules and the erasure. Nations and nationalism, 15 (2), 280– 298. Zorn, J., 2011. From erased and excluded to active participants in Slovenia. In: B.K. Blitz and M. Lynch, eds. Statelessness and citizenship: a comparative study on the benefits of nationality. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 66 – 83.