State thinking and geopolitical cultures

Sayad’s argument about the centrality of immigration in understanding the State revolves around Bourdieu’s distinction between penser l’Etat and pensée d’Etat (Bourdieu 1994, 101) that translates into English only with some difficulty. Bourdieu argues that it is impossible to think about the State (penser l’Etat) without employing the State’s perspective (pensée d’Etat). This is because thinking about the State involves ‘applying categories of thought to the State which are produced and guaranteed by the State, hence [it is] to misrecognise its most profound truth’ (Bourdieu 1994, 101).