Biopolitical governmentality through humanitarian communication of the aesthetic
In the third video (Appendix A), a reporter posed the following question: “why just Ukraine, why not other countries” before concluding “some lives are more valuable than others”. The shortlisted 3 videos were critiquing Western duplicity in handling humanitarian crises based on identity rather than the human rights principles that liberal democracies espouse to hold; that these comments embody European racism against non-European populations. The examined discourses reveal how duplicity and hypocrisy – the capacity for compassion toward “familial” refugees and indifference toward “foreign” refugees – is not only possible but understandable when examined within biopolitical governmentality of (a) biosocial self-preservation “against those who pose a threat to the biological heritage” (Foucault, 2003) and (b) moral self-promotion in matters of humanitarian responses (c) facilitated by the humanitarian communication of the aesthetically and culturally familiar European refuge that relied on language and imagery to construct discourses of legitimate vulnerability for collective action.
Biosocial self-preservation
Discourses about fellow Christian and European citizenship as necessary elements of differential (and better) treatment cannot be understood within simplistic notions of irrational prejudice or racism alone. Rather than primarily “an irrational prejudice, a form of socio-political discrimination, or an ideological motive in a political doctrine” biopolitics (and its intersection with race and religion here) is a government technique of population management (Su Rasmussen, 2011). This is achieved by distinguishing – dominant discourses only playing a part – between familial and foreign depending on their biological contributions to the conditions of the host population; that is, based on possessing certain traits, “something that will make life in general healthier” (Foucault, 2003). What counts as contribution can however shift depending on current biopolitical circumstances if, for example, deemed enhancing to the material conditions of the host population, meaning that it is a biopolitics that may be influenced by traditional racism but it is able to move beyond it (Doti, 2011). That is, Syrians themselves were initially considered “good” and legitimate refugees, the “ideal refugees” worthy of fast-tracked processes compared to the “second-tier” Iraqis and Afghanis because their vulnerability was visible (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016) before now acquiring a new status of foreign and uncivilised compared to Ukrainians. But before these changes, non-Syrians used to perform a Syrian “persona” in the hope of expediting their protection because of the previous prioritization of Syrians by the international community (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016), revealing the malleable nature of biopolitics beyond a simplistic adherence to race and identity.
The examined discourses do reveal a unique element of this particular biopolitical governmentality: it is not solely based on economic and material contributions or the usual (and perhaps expected) aspects of nationality, ethnicity, colour, and religious traits of in-group identifications, but also on the aesthetic quality and value of the familial refugees. That Ukrainians were easier to accept because they were blonde, blue eyed, intelligent, well dressed, and civilised fellow Europeans reveals the literally biological and genetic “bio” in biopolitics. Taken in context and in light of the rising concerns about the “Islamisation” of Europe (Kauffman, 2017; Tibi, 2010; Sasnal and El Menouar, 2020), failures of multiculturalism (Lentin and Titley, 2012; Mikelatou and Arvanitis, 2019), and the more recent global conversations about the persistent racial tensions between Europeans and non-European Global South, aesthetic/biological and sociocultural/European self-preservation become essential aspects of population management beyond the mere life, longevity and general health aims of biopolitics. In addition to the emotional benefit to the host population, linguistic devices such as middle-class, educated, well-dressed, and civilised suggest that Ukrainians also bring material and cultural benefit. Indeed, biopower is an instrument of neoliberal capitalism that provides the controlled supply of bodies and population management (Foucault, 1978, p. 141) to enhance to productivity of the host population in material, cultural, and aesthetic/biological gains.
Moral self-promotion
The motivations behind the biopolitics of aesthetics and cultural European self-preservation then raise questions about a core aim of the Ukrainian humanitarian response. If humanitarian government or, according to Fassin (2007) intervention, is the politics of life that prioritizes which lives are legitimate or worthy of saving, then the main aim of humanitarian government is not the need of the refugees but the “care and well-being of host populations” especially when the malleability of biopolitical racism can shift if those previously deemed “inferior” or “unworthy” become instrumental in the material or emotional gains of the host population (Mavelli, 2017). Thus, Ukrainians, once the Eastern Europeans the West has long regarded as primitive and “Asiatic” Slavs who are “born slaves” and a “colonial people” with “instinctive hostility to civilisation” (Malik, 2022) are now fellow Europeans who deserve solidarity as part of a unitary Judeo-Christian European family. This is not necessarily and solely because of the “value” of Ukrainians in themselves but because humanitarian governmentality provides the host nations what Mavelli (2017) calls “a way of promoting a self-understanding” as moral and compassionate in order to biopolitically enhance the emotional life of the host population.
Biopolitical governmentality of Europeans through humanitarian governmentality of Ukrainians then becomes particularly necessary in light of persistent accusations of European racism toward Syrian and other non-European refugees, enabling Europeans to bypass the obstacles posed by humanitarian principles and providing moral exculpation; indeed, many of the reporters were making their case about why this refugee crisis is fundamentally different than the 2015 without much prompting. And what of any guilt that may counter the aims of enhancing the emotional life of the host population when the subjective experiences of Syrians is consequential, including deaths at sea? Mavelli (2017) suggests the creation of a “perpetrator” identity in the refugees themselves protects the aims of the emotional well-being that comes from assisting Ukrainians. That is, because Syrians are fleeing civil war, their identity and culpability can be framed as uncertain in a self-inflicted internal war without clear victims and villains. Finally, the geopolitical calculus of helping Ukrainians to prevent an eventual Russian move to the West or all out invasion also highlights the nature of biopolitical and humanitarian governmentality beyond traditional explanation of race to instead reflect material and moral strategizing. In essence, the biopolitical governmentality of Europeans through humanitarian governmentality of Ukrainians enhances both the material, emotional, and moral life of host populations.
Humanitarian communication
In line with Chouliaraki’s findings (2008), the examined data show the use of specific discursive devices to stage human suffering as either familiar and therefore personal to audiences or distant and impersonal to their emotional and moral responsibilities towards human affairs. One type of human suffering was staged as that of a people with a familiar and proximate history and culture able to enhance the material and moral life of the host population, while the suffering of another group was utilised, without prompting at times, to signal the net loss of a politics of ethics toward a culturally distant group that ought to legitimately remain in the moral periphery of audiences and decision makers. Discourse that centres the middle-class status of the refugees and their typically European features of ‘blonde’ and ‘blue eyes’ moves humanitarian aims from moral obligations solely on moral grounds to, what Nash calls, “narcissistic sentimentalism” (2008, p. 177) because humanitarian communication is ultimately about the humanitarian agents’ image of their virtue (Boltanski, 1999, p. 101–103). It also illustrates the paradoxical nature of this form of communication because it positions Ukrainians’ refugee crisis as “exceptions to some beneficent, peaceful existence” (Calhoun, 2008, p. 87) whilst normalising Syrians’ status as refugees from regions ‘typically’ in perpetual and therefore ‘understandable’ crisis without acknowledging the geopolitical and neoliberal reasons for some populations’ political conditions of crisis. Thus, the biopolitical governance of Europeans through humanitarian governance of and communication about Ukrainian refugees is about the political and aesthetical rather than the humanitarian and ethical.