Modern world subalterns: Migrants in the European Union

Due to the effects of modernity and international migration the homogeneity of the nation as one of the essential concepts of the nation-state, is deteriorating. Nation states interpret increasing migration flows as a crisis of sovereignty and the reluctance towards the migration and existence of immigrants triggers the nationalist extremism and marginalizing discourses. The sovereignty crisis of the nation-state and the othering attitude towards immigrants are reproduced as a good-bad dualism that feeds each other. Within the scope of this dissertation, the origin of the marginalizing attitude towards immigrants is sought to determine through the bottom-up, critical, and postcolonial perspective of the Subalternistic Approach which is originally a theory of Historiography and is asserted that this approach could contribute to the literature of IR discipline as a hermeneutic paradigm. In order to do this, the European Union was chosen as an analysis unit because of some of its members' colonial past and being a targeted geography of international migration today. The first chapter of the study reflects an overview of the notion of subaltern and the Subalternistic Approach. In the second chapter, the essential concepts of the IR discipline are criticized in a postcolonial way and the commonly used definitions of these concepts are deconstructed in a Derridean way to emphasize their subordinating character and the need to be decolonized. In the third chapter, the theories of migration were introduced, it was tried to reveal how little they emphasize on the social dimensions of migration due to colonial blindness, which they mostly present a top-down analysis, and reflections towards the necessity of reconsidering the Subalternistic Approach in migration studies in the discipline of IR from a bottom-up perspective is provided. In the fourth chapter, a subaltern critique of social integration policies, biopolitical practices and the idea of Europe has been made by stating that migration has an important place in the European Union and the development of the union as a unit of analysis. In the discussion and conclusion part, discussions, determinations and suggestions about the concepts and practices that cause subalternity are provided.