'Homeland Sacer': A Nation to be Killed

Abstract

The article proposes a new concept -homeland sacer- as the context for understanding the situation of both Iraqi and Palestinian refugees. By using and extending Agamben's concept of homo sacer -those who may be killed with impunity- which has been increasingly deployed by scholars to understand the workings of sovereign power on stateless people, colonial subjects, refugees and all those who fall outside the boundaries of citizenship, the article explores how Iraq was turned into a homeland sacer - a nation where another sovereign power operates and destroys with impunity.