GOVERNMENTALITY, BIOPOWER AND MIGRATIONS IN CHILE

CONTRIBUTIONS OF FOUCAULDIAN THOUGHT TO THE STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY MIGRATIONS

Abstract

This essay seeks to contribute, on the one hand, to the understanding and articulation of two important concepts in Foucauldian thought: governmentality and biopower and, on the other, to reflect on how these concepts and their approach contribute to social research, in particular to field of migration studies, based on a series of reflections regarding the Chilean case and how the State and its institutions, through their practices, have sought to produce a certain type of migration and migrant subject: labor migration, migrant worker, making invisible and leaving those migrants who migrate for humanitarian reasons and also those in an irregular situation to their fate. The analysis was carried out by taking three areas that allow observing how
governmentality practices and the production of imminent labor migration operate: the request for refuge, the management of irregularity and the obtaining of residence permits and insertion in the labor market.