From the State to Others and from Others to the State? Interview with Jeanne Bouyat, Amandine Le Bellec, & Lucas Puygrenier

Jeanne Bouyat, Amandine Le Bellec, and Lucas Puygrenier recently edited a book published by Palgrave Macmillan in the Sciences Po series in International Relations and Political Economy. Entitled States and the Making of Others, the collective work uses a series of original case studies, rarely studied together, to examine the way in which states make Others and, ultimately, how these Others make them in return. How does this occur, and what does the concept of othering entail? The book’s three editors answer our questions in this interview.

You have recently co-edited a book that explores the role of states in the fabrication of Others and analyses how othering informs state formation and policy-making, through what you call the “state-Others nexus”. How would you define the state-Others nexus, and who are the “Others” that you focus on in your book?

Lucas Puygrenier: Arguably, the social sciences have long been concerned with the dynamics of othering in political societies, particularly in relation to issues of racism, migration, poverty, gender, and sexual identities. Our book is an attempt to bridge this diverse scholarship by bringing to the fore the role of the state. Adapting Charles Tilly’s famous phrase “wars make states and states make war”, our main contention is that states make Others as Others make states: state actors and policies produce and reproduce Others through labelling them as such, while processes of othering contribute to the formation of the state and the expansion of its activities. This “state-Others nexus”, as we conceptualise it, can be considered from three different perspectives, all present in the book. The first consists in investigating the practices and rationales underpinning the manufacturing or reproduction of Others by state actors and institutions. The second perspective is about reversing the terms of the equation and exploring, in turn, how the making of Others participates in state formation and policy-making. The third approach examines how processes of othering feed into the politicisation of public action, fostering conflicts and polarisation around the alleged Others.

Jeanne Bouyat: From this standpoint, there are no Others that would exist per se, prior to their encounter with the political processes we investigate. Indeed, the term “Others” refers to any group subjected to political processes of othering in a given socio-political context. Such processes assign individuals to particular, essentialised, collective groups, serving to reproduce power relationships where Others occupy subordinate positions. In the book, we use “Others” as an umbrella concept that enables us to analyse similarities and specificities across a variety of processes of othering which may stem, among other things, from the divides between “majority” and “minority” groups, “insiders” and “outsiders”, “normal” and “deviant” people, from colonial categorisations, or from the boundaries between and within citizenships. Hence, the concept allows us to foster dialogue between various academic fields that have tended to look at “their Others” in a compartmentalised fashion—in particular those focused on racism, xenophobia, homo-transphobia, and nationalism. Some of the book’s chapters look at more “expected” figures of Others such as international migrant populations and racialised and sexual minorities, but often through a focus on lesser examined subgroups, sometimes through using the lenses of “intersectionality”, such as LGBTQI+ international immigrants in the European Union, or French Black women migrants from the overseas territories in Paris. Other chapters of the book centre on figures of Others who have received less scholarly attention, such as surrogate mothers, vagabonds, or language translators employed in the context of asylum claims.

Can you elaborate on what the notion of othering provides theoretically and methodologically?

Amandine Le Bellec: As Lucas mentioned, there is a vast body of literature that has focused on the dynamics we study! We found othering to be a more suitable concept than, alternatively, discrimination or stigmatisation could be. Discrimination is a notion rooted in legal studies, that may suggest violation to a norm of equity and fairness. This seemed inconsistent with our emphasis on the systematic, “normal”, and expected nature of othering in political societies. Stigmatisation, on the other hand, is a concept more closely related to our theoretical framework, but it is narrower since it exclusively focuses on processes of vilification, relegation, and exclusion. It does not encompass the more subtle, complex processes of the production of Others through gatekeeping, silencing, or paradoxical state practices “disabling recognition”. Several chapters of our book do study social groups that could be described as stigmatised, such as surrogate mothers (Perrine Chabanel), French Caribbean women in Parisian hospitals (Marine Haddad), or Ndebele-speaking minorities in Zimbabwe (Lena Reim). However, the book also pays attention to more ambivalent effects that emerge, for example, from the transformations of asylum policies in favour of specific subgroups described as “more vulnerable”, which I discuss in my own chapter. Othering is thus also a key aspect of the politics of recognition that shift the boundaries between those who are considered as part of the community, those who are tolerated, and those who are rejected. In our views, we are better equipped with the notion of othering to grasp these complexitie

So how do Others concretely contribute to the making of the state?

Lucas Puygrenier: One of our main ambitions was to illuminate the constitutive function of othering for state institutions. Two main dimensions can be cited.
First, labelling social groups as Others legitimises the expansion of bureaucratic bodies and state actors, by calling for new forms of technique and expertise. This is evident with respect to the depiction of some populations as threats to society and public order, as in the case of irregular migration or counter-terrorism strategies. It also applies when the need to understand these Others, for instance during the hearings of asylum applicants studied by Maxime Maréchal, requires the enlargement of the state apparatus by relying on auxiliaries and intermediaries, such as language translators, who are often also suspected of disloyalty.
The second role othering plays in the making of the state has to do with how state actors embrace their role and envision their mission, with the very art of governing. For instance, when Maltese authorities resort to old anti-vagrancy provisions to prosecute poor migrant men reaching Europe, as I reveal in my chapter, they also promote a certain idea of work and of how one should live their life. Similarly, Jeanne Bouyat’s chapter on institutional xenophobia in South African schools shows that the implementation of a policy of “national preference” when it comes to accessing public education and teaching jobs, relies on the interiorisation of this norm by educational officials, in collusion with the Department of Home Affairs. Othering is in short linked to a situated vision of order. It erects state institutions as both promoters and protectors of a political community that is meant to be, to an extent, to their image.

What makes your approach to the study of the state-Others nexus original?

Amandine Le Bellec: As Jeanne and Lucas both mentioned, our book makes an innovative contribution to academia by fostering a comparative and interdisciplinary dialogue between a variety of specialised fields. Moreover, the originality of its overall approach relies on combining three aspects.
First, we focus on how banal, everyday, or ordinary aspects of policy-making and state formation contribute to the manufacturing and reproduction of Others, as opposed to looking at episodes of extreme violence or crisis situations in isolation. This enables us to approach state othering processes that are widespread and yet often unnoticed.
Second, the chapters explore othering in various state institutions, straddling the divide between the “regalian” or “policing” functions of the state—most centrally incarnated in the police services, immigration and border control administrations, prisons, and courts, as well as tax services—and the “social” and “protective” functions of the state—which are often attributed to the “welfare state” institutions in charge of education, healthcare, social assistance, and housing. They reveal how both state functions produce forms of othering, which may be performed collaboratively by various state institutions.
Lastly, the book brings together empirical cases focused on European and on southern African contexts, which are seldomly considered together given the contrasted socio-political and institutional histories that characterise them. However, the book reveals how, despite the specificities of each regional, national, or local empirical case, one may observe generic state practices of producing Others and of politicisation of othering.

Can you tell us more about the empirical chapters and how they illustrate your key contributions to academia?

Jeanne Bouyat: The eight empirical chapters explore four main themes, which form the sections of our book.
The first two chapters explore how the contested process of telling and teaching about national histories following protracted conflicts—in post-apartheid and postcolonial South Africa and Zimbabwe—contribute to the othering of ethnic or racial minority groups who are marginalised in the “liberated” political configurations. The chapters both show that such processes may not only take the form of mere “vilification” or “exclusion” of such groups from the “national narrative”, but also consist in “silencing” episodes of political violence to which these groups were subjugated and in invisibilising the contributions they made to the liberation struggle through “subsuming” them into broader categories to the benefit of the majority group.
The second section analyses how moral considerations about citizenship, work, and family play a prominent role in producing Others through focusing on the regulation of migrant work in Malta and on reproductive rights in France. They both reveal how a variety of state institutions (courts, parliaments, ethical commissions, etc.) produce particular notions of the “good” and the “bad” worker, citizen, or mother, which serve to restrict access to social rights (to reside, to work, to have children) to populations which are deemed more “deserving” by ruling authorities.
The next two chapters look at processes of exclusion, gatekeeping, or subordination targeted at Others that occur through the delivery of welfare services. They focus on French Caribbean women working in public hospitals in Paris, and on migrant learners and teachers from neighbouring African countries in public schools in Johannesburg. They both reveal how Others are also produced by the more “caring” sections of the state, sometimes in collaboration with the police and immigration services.
Lastly, the fourth section examines how paradoxical processes of neoliberal selective “recognition” of rights in the provision of asylum may reinforce the othering of “undesirable” international migrants in Europe, and in France in particular, who do not fit the right criteria of “vulnerability”.

Lastly, what social and political significance does your book carry? Why does it matter beyond its academic contribution?

Lucas Puygrenier: Our book demonstrates that Others, in their diversity, are a recurrent if not continuous presence in our social environment: there is no such thing as an “Other-free” society. This is of key importance to counter the reactionary ideologies that flourish around the world, and whose core narrative can be described as follows: society used to evolve without Others, whoever they may be, and the latter could very well be expunged from the social body. We must acknowledge that Others are, in fact, a “homemade” product. They do not come from a distance, but from the very core of political systems that tag them as such. Enhancing our analytical tools to uncover these dynamics, and fostering dialogue between a diversity of approaches and case studies, are therefore crucial. Following the way paved by previous sociological works aiming in that direction, we humbly hope that States and the Making of Others will contribute to do so.

Jeanne Bouyat: I concur with Lucas. By considering various othering processes together and centring the analysis on the state and policies, we do not only aim to foster a dialogue between compartmentalised academic fields. Understanding what racism, sexism, homo-transphobia, or xenophobia have in common and how state institutions and actors contribute to their reproduction should also help to bring about more targeted and effective social and political change to dismantle these various othering practices. In other words, we hope with this book to participate in the emancipatory politicisation of othering that we study.

I would also like to add that the ways in which we carry out and disseminate research also matters when we adopt such transformative goals. Working collaboratively, from a variety of disciplinary and empirical standpoints, and incrementally gaining analytical and theoretical depth through our discussions over the years as we did for this book has unfortunately become a rather rare and precious experience of companionship for scholars—and especially for young scholars— in the highly competitive field of academia.

Interview by Miriam Périer, CERI.

Illustration:
Image 1: illustration by Login, for Shutterstock
Image 2: illustration by Andrey Prokopenko for Shutterstock