Vulnerability and asylum. Taxonomies, restrictions, and enlargements

This article explores the concept of vulnerability in the political asylum in the light of its potentialities and the deep ambiguities encompassing this concept in the humanitarian grammar and the policies of protection. Theoretical fields such as feminist political philosophy and social anthropology have advanced precious analysis on vulnerability taking it as a constitutive element of the human condition, yet unevenly distributed condition and always politically structured. Nevertheless, when the vulnerability has been coded by humanitarian and political govern on refugees, its de-historicising and disempowering force, together with paternalistic responses that it traditionally evokes, have found new strength. Thus, in front of black, impoverished, suffering subjects (especially women and children) in need to be saved and protected, the vulnerability turns back to be an ascribed feature, a hypostatised and de-politicised identity characterising specific individuals or groups. In the light of these theoretical perspectives, this paper dialogues with literature and research have already developed a critical gaze on the ways in which vulnerability has become a moral criterion through which receiving contexts establish taxonomies between worthy refugees and migrants not deserved protection.