Policing and vagrancy in international political theory

Abstract

Despite the ubiquity of police power in contemporary politics and its importance in the history of political order, international political thought has paid remarkably little attention to policing. Drawing on Continental political philosophy, Marxist political economy, and the Black Radical Tradition, this thesis constructs a critical international political theory of the dual concepts of police power and vagrancy. Tracing the origins of police power to primitive accumulation and colonial dispossession, this thesis conceptualises policing as a constituent element of modern international order and racial capitalism, arguing that the historical and contemporary function of policing is to suppress vagrant forms of life which sustain a relation to the world as commons, thereby threatening the racialised regime of private property. Following the Foucauldian mantra that ‘resistance comes first’, this thesis reasserts the primacy and vitality of vagrant modes of resistance to racial capitalism, challenging the concept’s side-lined status within critical political thought. In doing so, this thesis challenges the depoliticization and ‘de-internationalisation’ of police power and vagrancy. This thesis is structured in four chapters, each serving to examine the importance of its dual concepts within contemporary debates in international political theory. Chapter One constructs a genealogy of governmentality which identifies its co-emergence with racial capitalist dispossession and a police power intended to discipline the dispossessed, vagrant classes. Chapter Two examines historical and theoretical discourses of human rights, arguing that while predominant liberal perspectives on rights rely on and uphold police power, radical forms of rights discourse exist which sustain vagrant practices of resistance. Chapter Three applies the policing/vagrancy framework to migration politics, analysing border control as a manifestation of police power and international migration as a manifestation of vagrant counter-conduct. Finally, Chapter Four utilises this thesis’ core concepts to grapple with debates in contemporary political theory regarding constituent power and destituent potential.