Vulnerability governance as differential inclusion: the struggles of asylum seekers in Marseille

Abstract

Concerns with ‘vulnerability’ increasingly proliferate in global and regional pacts, international and domestic legislations, and policy discourses and practices regarding migration and international protection. Also in France, vulnerability governance has made its inroads, and policy documents hail vulnerability considerations as a strengthening of the politics of reception and integration of asylum seekers and a means to improve accommodation and care. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Marseille, I argue that vulnerability governance, situated within the context of securitization of migration and budget constraints in the reception system, leads to a ‘differential inclusion’, which is partial, conditional and precarious. By examining the understanding and operationalization of vulnerability within French migration legislation, policies, and governance practices, the study exposes how normative constructs of gender and sexuality inform the identification and hierarchization of vulnerable persons. Ethnographic evidence illustrates how these norms are perpetuated by governance actors, including civil society, and sometimes strategically mobilized or internalized by asylum seekers in their quest for recognition and assistance. In conclusion, the article highlights how protection-seeking migrants also contest the authorities’ understanding and operationalization of vulnerability. Through protests and legal actions, they expose the state’s role in producing and differentially distributing vulnerability through abandonment and destitution.