The Liminality of Cosmopolitanism from the Global South – Transnational Activists in Costa Rica between Colonial Legacies and Decolonial Attitudes

The Master’s thesis examines whether and how decolonial cosmopolitanism is empirically traceable in the attitudes and practices of Costa Rican activists working in transnational advocacy organizations. Decolonial cosmopolitanism is defined as a form of cosmopolitanism from below that aims to propose ways of imagining – and putting into practice – a truly globe-encompassing civic community not based on relations of domination but on horizontal dialogue. This concept has been developed by and shares its basic presumptions with the theory on coloniality that the modernity/coloniality/decoloniality research group is putting forward. It is analyzed whether and how the workings of coloniality as underlying ontological assumption of decolonial cosmopolitanism and broadly subsumable under the three logics of race, capitalism, and knowledge, are traceable in intermediate postcolonial transnational advocacy in Costa Rica. The method of analysis chosen to approach these questions is content analysis, which is used for the analysis of qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews with Costa Rican activists working in advocacy organizations with transnational ties. Costa Rica was chosen as it – while unquestionably a Latin American postcolonial country and thus within the geo-political context in which the concept was developed – introduces a complex setting of socio-cultural and political factors that put the explanatory potential of the concept to the test. The research group applies the term ‘coloniality’ to describe how the social, political, economic, and epistemic relations developed during the colonization of the Americas order global relations and sustain Western domination still today through what is called the logic of coloniality. It also takes these processes as point of departure for imagining how counter-hegemonic contestations can be achieved through the linking of local struggles to a global community that is based on pluriversality. The issues that have been chosen as most relevant expressions of the logic of coloniality in the context of Costa Rican transnational advocacy and that are thus empirically scrutinized are national identity as ‘white’ exceptional nation with gender equality (racism), the neoliberalization of advocacy in the Global South (capitalism), and finally Eurocentrism, but also transnational civil society networks as first step in decolonizing civic activism (epistemic domination). The findings of this thesis show that the various ways in which activists adopt practices and outlooks stemming from the center in order to empower themselves and their constituencies, but also how their particular geo-political position affects their work, cannot be reduced to one single logic of coloniality. Nonetheless, the aspects of race, gender, capitalism and epistemic hegemony do undeniably affect activist cosmopolitan attitudes and transnational practices. While the premisses on which the concept of decolonial cosmopolitanism is based suffer from some analytical drawbacks, its importance is seen in its ability to take as point of departure the concrete spaces in which situated social relations develop. It thus allows for perceiving the increasing interconnectedness between different levels of social and political organizing as contributing to cosmopolitan visions combining local situatedness with global community as normative horizon that have not only influenced academic debate, but also political projects.

From ‘Afflicted’ to Activists: Structural Violence and Climate Change Discourse in the States of Pernambuco and Paraíba in Northeast Brazil

This study approaches the problem of poverty in the hinterlands of Northeast Brazil through the concept of structural violence, linking the environmental threats posed by climate change, especially those related to droughts, to the broader social struggles in the region. When discussions about potentials and rights are incorporated into the problematic of poverty, a deeper insight is obtained regarding the various factors behind the phenomenon. It is generally believed that climate change is affecting the already marginalized and poor more than those of higher social standing, and will increasingly do so in the future. The data for this study was collected during a three month field work in the states of Pernambuco and Paraíba in Northeast Brazil. The main methods used were semi-structured interviews and participant observation, including attending seminars concerning climate change on the field. The focus of the work is to compare both layman and expert perceptions on what climate change is about, and question the assumptions about its effects in the future, mainly that of increased numbers of ‘climate refugees’ or people forced to migrate due to changes in climate. The focus on droughts, as opposed to other manifestations of climate change, arises from the fact that droughts are not only phenomena that develop over a longer time span than floods or hurricanes, but is also due to the historical persistence of droughts in the region, and both the institutional and cultural linkages that have evolved around it. The instances of structural violence that are highlighted in this study; the drought industry, land use, and the social and power relations present in the region, including those between the civil society, the state and the private agribusiness sector, all work against a backdrop of symbolic and moral realms of value production, where relations between the different actors are being negotiated anew with the rise of the climate change discourse. The main theoretical framework of the study consists of Johan Galtung’s and Paul Farmer’s theory of structural violence, Ulrich Beck’s theory of the risk society, and James Scott’s theory of everyday peasant resistance.

Andegraund : Istorija i mify leningradskoj neoficial'noj literatury

The history of the Leningrad underground is one of the key themes of late socialism. Samizdat, "black humour", religious syncretism, dissidence, apolitical bohemianism, the pathos of freedom of individuality and the mechanics of literature are closely interlinked with the cultural mythology of this passed epoch. Describing conceptions that, when taken together, form the contemporary understanding of unofficial culture, the author creates a historical portrait of this environment. Amongst the central figures here, there are well-known writers (Bitov, Brodsky, Dovlatov, Khvostenko, Krivulin) and literary activists who still await recognition. The analysis of works, many of which were only distributed in typewritten publications in the 1960s-1980s, gives a preliminary definition of the key factors that united the authors of the unofficial community. The book begins with a critique of the identification of the Soviet underground with political dissidence or with a society living in autonomous independence with regard to the state. Describing the historical development of the various names for this environment (the underground, samizdat, unofficial culture, podpolie and others), the author follows the genesis of the community from its appearance, in the years of "the Thaw", through to perestroika, when it dissolved. Taking the history of the publication of Bitov's "The Pushkin House" as an example, the concept of the unofficial is interpreted as a risky interaction with the authorities. Unofficial culture is then viewed as a late Soviet reflection of the Western underground in the 1950s-1960s. Unlike the radical-utopian-anarchistic source, it proclaimed a liberalist and democratic ideology in the context of the destruction of the socialist utopia. The historical portrait of the community is built up from the perceptions of its members regarding literature practice and rhetorical approaches, with the aid of which these perceptions are expressed. Taking typewritten publications as source material, four main representations are given: privacy, deviancy, criticism and irrationality. An understanding of literature as a private affair, neo-avant-garde deviancy in social and literary behaviour and the pathos of the critical relationship with officialdom and irrational message of literary work, comprise the basis for the worldview of unofficial authors, as well as the poetic system, genre preferences and dictums. An analysis of irrationality, based on the texts of Khvostenko and Bogdanov, leads to a review of the cultural mythologies that were crucial to the unofficial conception of the absurd. Absurd is an homonym. It contains ideas that are important for the worldview of unofficial authors and the poetics of their works. The irrationality of the Soviet order is reflected in the documentary nature of the satirical prose of Dovlatov. The existential absurd of Camus is perceived here as the pointlessness of social realities and the ontological alienation of man, while existentialist practices for consciousness in the "atmosphere of absurd" remain bracketed off. The third homonym of absurd - the conception of reality as an illusion - is a clear demonstration of religious syncretism, where neo-Christian ideas are interweaved with a modernized version of Hinduism, as taken from Rolland s books on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The unofficial community was influenced by the ideology of westernization. Even "the East" arrived here via French retellings and accounts. As a whole, unofficial Leningrad culture can be understood as a neo-modernist phenomenon which, unlike the western neo-modernism of the 1940s and 1950s, arose in the years of the Thaw and ended its existence in the mid-1980s.

Itsenäisen Suomen puolesta : Sotilaskomitea 1915-1918

For Independent Finland. The Military Committee 1915–1918 In the course of the First World War, several organizations were founded with the purpose of making Finland independent or, at least, restoring her autonomous status. The Military Committee was the most significant active independence organization in Finland in the First World War, in addition to the activist student movement, i.e., the Jaeger Movement. The Military Committee was an organization founded in 1915 by officers who had attended the Hamina Cadet School, with the goal of creating a national army for a liberation war against the Russian troops. It was believed that the liberation war should succeed only with the help of the German Army. With the situation in society continually tensing up in the autumn 1917, the Military Committee also had to figure on the possibility of a Civil War. The activities of the Military Committee started in the early part of 1915 when they were still small-scale, but they gained significant momentum after the Russian Revolution in March 1917. In January 1918, the Military Committee formed the general staff for the White Army, the Senate’s troops. The independence-related activities of the Hamina cadets in the years of the First World War were more extensive and multifaceted than has been believed heretofore. The work of the Military Committee was divided into preparations for a liberation war in Finland, on one hand, and in Stockholm and Berlin, on the other hand. In Finland, the Military Committee took part in intelligence gathering for Germany and in supporting the recruiting Jaegers, and later in founding the civil guard organization, in solving the law and order authorities issue, and finally in selecting the Commander-in-Chief for the Senate’s troops. The member of the Military Committee, especially Captain Hannes Ignatius of the Cavalry contributed greatly to the drafting of the independence activists’ national action plan in Stockholm in May 1917. This plan preceded the formation of the civil guard organization. The Military Committee’s role in founding the civil guards was initially minor, but in the fall of 1917, the Military Committee started to finance the activities of the civil guards, named several former officers as commanders of the civil guards and finally overtook the entire civil guard movement. In Stockholm and Berlin, the representatives of the Military Committee were in active contact with both the high command of the German Army and with the representatives of the Swedish Army. Colonel Nikolai Mexmontan, who was a representative of the Military Committee, collaborated with Swedish officers and Jaeger officers in Stockholm in coming up with comprehensive and detailed plans for starting the Liberation War. Under Mexmontan’s leadership, there were serious negotiations to enter into a confederation with Germany. Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Thesleff, on the other hand, became the commander of the Jaeger Battalion 27. The influence and importance of the Military Committee came to the forefront in independent and conflict-torn Finland. The Military Committee became a Senate committee on the 7th of January 1918, with its chairman, for all practical purposes, as the Commander-in-Chief in an eventual war. Lieutenant General Claes Charpentier was the chairman of the Military Committee from mid-December 1917 onwards, but on the 15th of January 1918 he had to resign in favour of Lieutenant General Gustaf Mannerheim. Soon after that, Mannerheim got an order from the chairman of the Senate P. E. Svinhufvud to organize and assume the leadership of the law and order authorities. The chairman of the Military Committee became the Commander-in-Chief of the Senate troops in January 1918, and the Military Committee became the Commander-in-Chief’s general staff. The Military Committee had turned from a clandestine organization into the first general staff of the independent Finnish Army.

Human Rights in Action

In the post-World War II era human rights have emerged as an enormous global phenomenon. In Finland human rights have particularly in the 1990s moved from the periphery to the center of public policy making and political rhetoric. Human rights education is commonly viewed as the decisive vehicle for emancipating individuals of oppressive societal structures and rendering them conscious of the equal value of others; both core ideals of the abstract discourse. Yet little empirical research has been conducted on how these goals are realized in practice. These factors provide the background for the present study which, by combining anthropological insights with critical legal theory, has analyzed the educational activities of a Scandinavian and Nordic network of human rights experts and PhD students in 2002-2005. This material has been complemented by data from the proceedings of UN human rights treaty bodies, hearings organized by the Finnish Foreign Ministry, the analysis of different human rights documents as well as the manner human rights are talked of in the Finnish media. As the human rights phenomenon has expanded, human rights experts have acquired widespread societal influence. The content of human rights remains, nevertheless, ambiguous: on the one hand they are law, on the other, part of a moral discourse. By educating laymen on what human rights are, experts act both as intermediaries and activists who expand the scope of rights and simultaneously exert increasing political influence. In the educational activities of the analyzed network these roles were visible in the rhetorics of legality and legitimacy . Among experts both of these rhetorics are subject to ongoing professional controversy, yet in the network they are presented as undisputable facts. This contributes to the impression that human rights knowledge is uncontested. This study demonstrates how the network s activities embody and strengthen a conception of expertise as located in specific, structurally determined individuals. Simultaneously its conception of learning emphasizes the adoption of knowledge by students, emphasizing the power of experts over them. The majority of the network s experts are Nordic males, whereas its students are predominantly Nordic females and males from East-European and developing countries. Contrary to the ideals of the discourse the network s activities do not create dialogue, but instead repeat power structures which are themselves problematic.

Local Politicizations : A Comparison of Finns and French Practicing Democracy

This study examines how do the processes of politicization differ in the Finnish and the French local contexts, and what kinds of consequences do these processes have on the local civic practices, the definitions and redefinitions of democracy and citizenship, the dynamics of power and resistance, and the ways of solving controversies in the public sphere. By means of comparative anthropology of the state , focusing on how democracy actually is practiced in different contexts, politicizations the processes of opening political arenas and recognizing controversy are analyzed. The focus of the study is on local activists engaged in different struggles on various levels of the local public spheres, and local politicians and civil servants participating in these struggles from their respective positions, in two middle-size European cities, Helsinki and Lyon. The empirical analyses of the book compare different political actors and levels of practicing democracy simultaneously. The study is empirically based on four different bodies of material: Ethnographic notes taken during a fieldwork among the activities of several local activist groups; 47 interviews of local activists and politicians; images representing different levels of public portrayals from activist websites (Helsinki N=274, Lyon N=232) and from city information magazines (Helsinki-info N=208, Lyon Citoyen N= 357); and finally, newspaper articles concerning local conflict issues, and reporting on the encounters between local citizens and representatives of the cities (January-June in 2005; Helsingin Sanomat N=96 and Le Progrès N= 102). The study makes three distinctive contributions to the study of current democratic societies: (1) a conceptual one by bringing politicization at the center of a comparison of political cultures, and by considering in parallel the ethnographic group styles theory by Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, the theory on counter-democracy by Pierre Rosanvallon and the pragmatist justification theory by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot; (2) an empirical one through the triangulation of ethnographic, thematic interview, visual, and newspaper data through which the different aspects of democratic practices are examined; and (3) a methodological one by developing new ways of analyzing comparative cases an application of Frame Analysis to visual material and the creation of Public Justification Analysis for analyzing morally loaded claims in newspaper reports thus building bridges between cultural, political, and pragmatic sociology. The results of the study indicate that the cultural tools the Finnish civic actors had at their disposal were prone to hinder more than support politicization, whereas the tools the French actors mainly relied on were frequently apt for making politicization possible. This crystallization is defined and detailed in many ways in the analyses of the book. Its consequences to the understanding and future research on the current developments of democracy are multiple, as politicization, while not assuring good results as such, is central to a functioning and vibrant democracy in which injustices can be fixed and new directions and solutions sought collectively.

Growing Flowers in the Frost: Civic Activity, Citizenship and Gender in Russia

This study analyzes civic activity, citizenship and their gendered manifestations in contemporary Russia. It is based on a case study conducted in the city of Tver , located in the vicinity of Moscow, during 2001-2005. The data consists of interviews with civic activists and municipal and regional authorities; observations of civic organizations; and a quantitative survey conducted among local civic groups. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study draws upon a micro perspective on organization, discourse analysis, gender and citizenship theories and Pierre Bourdieu s theory of fields and capital. This study develops theoretical understanding of the characteristics and logic of civic organization in Russia. It shows that social class centrally structures the field of civic activity. Organizations can be seen as a vehicle of the educated class to advocate their interests, help themselves and seek both social and individual-level change. The study also argues that civic organizations founded during the post-Soviet era are often an institutionalized form of informal social networks. Networks, which were a central element of everyday interaction in Soviet society, are a resource and often the only resource available that can be made use of in contemporary organizational activities. The study argues that gender operates as a key structuring principle in the Russian socio-political community. Civic activity is often discursively associated with femininity and institutional politics with masculinity. Women tend to participate more than men in civic organizations, while men dominate the formal political domain. The study shows that civic organizations are important loci of communality. This communality, however, differs from the communality envisioned in the communitarian and social capital debates in the West. It is selective communality , as it is restricted to the members of the organizations and does not create generalized reciprocity and trust. Civic organizations tend to build upon and reproduce the traditional Russian organizational form of circles , kruzhki. Along with the analysis of civic activities, the study also examines the redefinition of the role and functions of the state. The authorities interviewed in this study understand civic organizations as serving those goals and interests determined by the authorities, instead of viewing them as sites of citizens self-organization around interests and problems citizens themselves deem important, or as a counterforce to the state. By contrast, civic activists understand the core of organizational activity to be advocacy of their interests and rights, tackling social problems, the pursuit of wider social change and self-help. Co-operation between authorities and organizations tends to be personified and based upon unequal, hierarchical patron-client arrangements, which inhibits the development of democratic governance. The study will be published in Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series later this year.

Becoming to Know: Essays on Extended Epistemology of Knowledge Creation

This qualitative, explorative study, which comprises four essays, focuses on knowledge management (KM). It seeks to answer the question: How can the knowledge creation theory of KM benefit from social learning theories? While studying the five development phases of knowledge creation theory of KM through 1995-2008 and applying some social learning theories in essays, the concepts of knowing, learning and becoming have emerged. Drawing on these three concepts and on becoming ontology and extended epistemology as research philosophies the study suggests the ‘becoming epistemology’ concept and develops the ‘becoming to know’ framework. The framework proposes becoming as phronesis of dialectic interactions between learning and knowing. It shows how becoming to know evolves as an interplay between concrete experience and logical thinking in the present and in a living context. The proposed framework could be considered a contribution to the current development phase of the knowledge creation theory of KM because it illustrates how ontological and epistemological knowledge spirals come together, which is the essence of the knowledge creation theory of KM.

“Empire is a state of mind” – Imagining Eurasia in Russia –

Työssäni tarkastelen venäläistä neo-euraasianistista liikettä ja tapoja joilla liikkeen aktivistit rakentavat Euraasiasta yhtenäistä kokonaisuutta ja imperiumia. Keskeisiä tutkimuskysymyksiäni ovat: Mikä imperiumi on ja mitkä ovat sen keskeisiä motivaatioita ja teemoja? Kuinka imperiumin idea rakentuu tai käsitetään ja tämän voi tulkita? Minkälaisia seurauksia voi tulkita heidän tavallaan Euraasia nähdä olevan? Materiaalina käytän haastatteluja, jotka on kerätty Moskovassa keväällä 2008, ja liikkeen kirjallisia tuotoksia (lehdet ja Internet -sivut). Neo-euraasianistisella liikkeellä tarkoitan tässä työssä Kansainvälistä Euraasianistista liikettä (Meždunarodnoe Evrazijskoe Dviženie) ja sen alahaaraa Euraasianistista Nuorisoliittoa (Evrazijskij Sojuz Molodëži). Liike perustettiin virallisesti 2003, mutta rakentaa vahvasti historiallista yhteyttä 1930 -luvun klassiseen eurasianismiin. Tämän lisäksi sen diskurssissa on paljon neuvostoliittolaisia, fasistisia, uuskonservatiivisia ja nationalistisia piirteitä. Liikkeen johtohahmo on filosofi-geopoliitikko Alexandr Dugin. Työn tausta-ajatuksena minua kiinnostaa etenkin nk. älymystön tai intelligenttien vaikutus nationalismiin tai sosiaalisia ryhmiä määrittelevien diskurssien kehitykseen ja muutokseen.Tarkastelen materiaalia diskurssianalyyttisesta näkökulmasta. Näen diskurssianalyysin sen tutkimisena, miten sosiaalista todellisuutta tuotetaan erilaisissa sosiaalisissa käytännöissä. Samalla näiden diskurssien tutkiminen, foucautlaisen perinteen myötä, tarkastelee kriittisesti niiden tuottamia (aktualisoituneita sekä potentiaalisia) valtasuhteita. Käytän työssäni myös Benedict Andersonin kuvitellun yhteisön (imagined communities) käsitettä, joka auttaa hahmottamaan tapaa, jolla tutkimuskohteeni rakentavat imperiumia yhteisönä. Aktivistien puheessa imperiumi (imperiâ) tulee esiin pääasiallisesti positiivisesti ja ”heidän omanaan,” kun taas termi imperialismi (imperializm) pääosin negatiivisena, liittyen etenkin keskeisenä vihollisena pidettyihin Yhdysvaltoihin. Esiin nousee monta toisiinsa liittyvää teemaa, jotka jaottelen viideksi pääteemaksi. Näistä tarkastelen lähemmin imperiumia ”kaikkien kansojen hyväntekijänä (poliittinen puoli)”, ulkoisen voiman lähteenä (historiallis-geopoliittinen puoli) sekä kollektiivisen subjektin luojana (imperialistis-nationalistinen puoli). Pyrin kontekstualisoimaan diskurssin ja tarkastelemaan tapoja, joilla se ammentaa motiiveja myös historiallis-kulttuurisista tavoista hahmottaa aluetta ja sen asukkaita. Käsittelen myös kansan, kansakunnan, etnoksen ja nationalismin käsitteitä ja sitä, miten ne nousevat neo-eurasianistisessa diskursissa esiin. Imperiaalisen nationalismin (imperskij nacionalizm) käsite auttaa ymmärtämään niitä tapoja, jolla liike tekee sekä pesäeroa nationalismiin että samalla hyödyntää monia nationalistisen diskurssin perusteemoja. Eräs liikkeen diskurssin keskeisistä eroista niin sanottuun nationalismin valtavirtaan on ”kansakunnan (naciâ)” käsitteen vahva negatiivinen konnotaatio. Sen vastakohtana esiin nostetaan vahvasti kansan (narod) käsite. Samalla kuitenkin etnisen venäläisen (russkij) käsitettä käytetään tavallista laajemmin ja kattavammin kuin tavallisesti, ja ennen kaikkea Venäjä nousee imperiumin keskeisimmäksi tekijäksi. Euraasialaiseen imperiumiin liitetyistä positiivistista mielikuvista käsittelen tarkemmin monikansallisuuden ja kansojen kodin ideaa, joka nousee mielestäni huomattavaksi retoriseksi taustaksi kaikessa materiaalissa. Tähän liittyy vahvasti myös saman teeman sivujuonne, eli imperiumin ”vapauttava” rooli. Tulkitsen, että liikkeen imperiumi -diskurssilla on instrumentaalinen luonne: se legitimoi aktivistien vaatimuksia varsinkin entisen Neuvostoliiton alueen suhteen. ”Euraasialaisen kansan” ajatus toimii mahdollisena Euraasiaa yhteisenä tekijänä ”Neuvostokansan” tilalla. Sen taustalla materiaalistani päätellen siintävät kuitenkin enemmänkin Venäjä ja venäläis -spesifit vaateet kuin koko Euraasia. Pohdin myös kansakunnan (nation) hyljeksimisen syitä ja käsitteen sopivuutta Venäjälle, kuten myös venäläisyyden käsitteiden kerrostuneisuutta. Kokonaisuudessaan imperiumi tuli esiin abstraktina, utopistisena ja ”totaalisena” kokonaisuutena.

Trafficking in human beings and Foucauldian biopower : A case study in the expansion of the human rights phenomenon

Trafficking in human beings has become one of the most talked about criminal concerns of the 21st century. But this is not all that it has become. Trafficking has also been declared as one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time. In this sense, it has become a part of the expansion of the human rights phenomenon. Although it is easy to see that the crime of trafficking violates several of the human rights of its victims, it is still, in its essence, a fairly conventional although particularly heinous and often transnational crime, consisting of acts between private actors, and lacking, therefore, the vertical effect associated traditionally with human rights violations. This thesis asks, then, why, and how, has the anti-trafficking campaign been translated in human rights language. And even more fundamentally: in light of the critical, theoretical studies surrounding the expansion of the human rights phenomenon, especially that of Costas Douzinas, who has declared that we have come to the end of human rights as a consequence of the expansion and bureaucratization of the phenomenon, can human rights actually bring salvation to the victims of trafficking? The thesis demonstrates that the translation process of the anti-trafficking campaign into human rights language has been a complicated process involving various actors, including scholars, feminist NGOs, local activists and global human rights NGOs. It has also been driven by a complicated web of interests, the most prevalent one the sincere will to help the victims having become entangled with other aims, such as political, economical, and structural goals. As a consequence of its fragmented background, the human rights approach to trafficking seeks still its final form, consisting of several different claims. After an assessment of these claims from a legal perspective, this thesis concludes that the approach is most relevant regarding the mistreatment of victims of trafficking in the hands of state authorities. It seems to be quite common that authorities have trouble identifying the victims of trafficking, which means that the rights granted to themin international and national documents are not realized in practice, but victims of trafficking are systematically deported as illegal immigrants. It is argued that in order to understand the measures of the authorities, and to assess the usefulness of human rights, it is necessary to adopt a Foucauldian perspective and to observe the measures as biopolitical defence mechanisms. From a biopolitical perspective, the victims of trafficking can be seen as a threat to the population a threat that must be eliminated either by assimilating them to the main population with the help of disciplinary techniques, or by excluding them completely from the society. This biopolitical aim is accomplished through an impenetrable net of seemingly insignificant practices and discourses that not even the participants are aware of. As a result of these practices and discourses, trafficking victims only very few of fit the myth of the perfect victim, produced by biopolitical discourses become invisible and therefore subject to deportation as (risky) illegal immigrants, turning them into bare life in the Agambenian sense, represented by the homo sacer, who cannot be sacrificed, yet does not enjoy the protection of the society and its laws. It is argued, following Jacques Rancière and Slavoj i ek, that human rights can, through their universality and formal equality, provide bare life the tools to formulate political claims and therefore utilize their politicization through their exclusion to return to the sphere of power and politics. Even though human rights have inevitably become entangled with biopolitical practices, they are still perhaps the most efficient way to challenge biopower. Human rights have not, therefore, become useless for the victims of trafficking, but they must be conceived as a universal tool to formulate political claims and challenge power .In the case of trafficking this means that human rights must be utilized to constantly renegotiate the borders of the problematic concept of victim of trafficking created by international instruments, policies and discourses, including those that are sincerely aimed to provide help for the victims.