De-humanization in practices of forcing the mobility of EU citizens

A constant element of the penal society is the public shaming manifested under the umbrella of spatial injustice: exclusion, marginalization, and segregation. Spatial injustice translates modes of spatial discrimination (e.g., segregation, gentrification), geographic confinement (detention), forced mobility (evictions, deportations), or spatial transgression (e.g., border crossing). Public shaming is considered rather an ancient method of punishment and is seldom visible in the continuous production of emic spaces (Bauman). However, the reconfiguration of ‘public spaces’ and their inherent exclusionary character urges our analysis of public shaming as contemporary practice of dehumanization. This paper aims to problematize the systemic nature of violence applied to Eastern European EU citizens who are racialized border-crossers. Not only are they submitted to forms of confinement and displacement, to bureaucratic non-recording and de-documentation, but consistently experience public shaming. Specifically, EU citizens whose mobility is controlled and forced across Europe are submitted to public shaming as consequence of state sanctioned practices. Discretionary practices of forced mobility—stop and search, evictions, street police raids, mobility denials, deportations—confirm the shaming mechanism developed, maintained and enacted within the nation-state logic. This paper problematizes public shaming as mechanism of dehumanization and develops new theoretical avenues to address spatial injustice and its harmful consequences. i.vrabiescu@vu.nl