ABSTRACT
In the field of critical migration scholarship, Agamben’s conceptualisation of bare life has largely been used to describe the state of exception in which refugees live, excluded from the privileges of citizenship. This conceptual lens has been applied to refugees’ experiences of legal/social liminality associated with life at the margins, or in spaces where the juridical-legal order is suspended, such as camps and detention centres. However, the concept of bare life has not yet been fully incorporated into the literature on refugee masculinities in Europe. The aim of this chapter is to fill this gap by exploring the embodiment of bare life among black refugees and asylum-seeking men in Sicily. With men constituting most of the asylum-seeking population arriving via Libya, the chapter reads the social construction of bare life within all-male refugee spaces as a technique of migration governmentality enacted by Europe’s postcolonial engagement with black masculinities. Focusing on the personal narratives of Sub-Saharan African international protection holders/seekers, it argues that heteronormative constructions of competent manhood and responsible fatherhood emerge as narrative sites in which participants recover a contested space for political agency, breaking the state of exception configured by postcolonial asylum practices and institutions.
