To make live and to make die: Antimuslim and other racisms in the regulation of «drug-addicts” without German citizenship

Abstract

This contribution is centered on the special danger of dying or being deported, which characterizes the situation of «drug-addicts” without German citizenship. This danger is produced by the intersection of social-, immigrant-, citizenship- and narcotic drug laws. This «danger” is analyzed in terms of Michel Foucault’s analysis of bio-power as the power «to make live and to make die”. The article sketches the intersections of diverse strands of racisms in the logic and genealogy of regulating «drug-addicted non-citizens”, including culturalizing, orientalizing und biologizing racisms, to which current anti-muslim racisms connect. Specifically, these racisms include the construction of «non-european foreigners” as particularly «dangerous” for the «Volksgesundheit” or the health of the population, which reproduces the widespread racist image of «foreigners” as «drug dealers”. The regulation of drug-addicted non-citizens differentiates between those, who are to live and those, who can be symbolically und physically let to die, which for Foucault characterizes racism. As the article highlights, this racism is not produced by the suspension of law, but by means of law, within the framework of the constitutional state.