Between Discipline and Biopolitics: The Role of IOM and UNHCR in the Return of Crisis-Affected Populations

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) return crisis-affected populations as part of their humanitarian interventions under the assumption that return represents a solution to the initial displacement. This assumption raises the question of how IOM and UNHCR problematize crisis-affected populations, that is, conceptualize them as a policy problem through policy documents reflecting implicit rationalities of government. Based on Foucault’s concepts of discipline and biopolitics and Bacchi’s approach to critical discourse analysis, this working paper examines the disciplinary and biopolitical rationalities of two policy documents. First, the IOM Migration Crisis Operational Framework (MCOF) draws on disciplinary rationality to outline a process of successive immobilization and mobilization of crisis-affected populations during which IOM monitors, cares for, transports, and immobilizes individuals in their countries of origin. Second, the UNHCR Policy Framework builds on a biopolitical rationality to elicit spontaneous returns of populations by reshaping the milieu of return through constructing infrastructure and restoring social services. However, each policy document combines both disciplinary and biopolitical rationalities. The MCOF strives to durably immobilize returnees by reshaping their milieu through infrastructure construction and resolution of land and property issues. The Policy Framework seeks to achieve durable returns by securing the milieu of return by restoring the nation-state’s disciplinary institutions. This complementarity between disciplinary and biopolitical rationalities indicates that IOM and UNHCR expanded their role in return governance to shape the economic, social, security and, ultimately, political conditions in the countries of return.