Title: Making live and letting die: Nepali migrant workers returning from India encounter the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Authors: Karun K. Karki; Hari KC; Sulaimon Giwa; Delores V. Mullings; Chloe D. Raible

Addresses: School of Social Work and Human Services, University of the Fraser Valley, BC, Canada ' The Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, ON, Canada ' School of Social Work, Memorial University of Newfoundland, NL, Canada ' School of Social Work, Memorial University of Newfoundland, NL, Canada ' University of the Fraser Valley, BC, Canada

Abstract: The paper analyses how the Nepali state imposed its sovereign power on the Nepali returning migrant workers from India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the deployment of border security forces, the state resorted to arbitrary detentions of these workers, leaving them stranded at Nepal-India borders. They were no longer wanted in India while being rejected and excluded by the state. To demonstrate the state's exclusionary bordering practices, we used the concepts of 'biopolitics' (Foucault, 1997), 'necropolitics' (Mbembe, 2019) and 'bare life' (Agamben, 1998). We employed visual methodology and the content analysis of the publicly available media reports and photographs pertaining to the interceptions of the migrant workers stranded at the Nepal-India borders when trying to enter the country. We contend that the attempts of some returning migrant workers to swim across the Mahakali River to enter Nepal were acts of agency and resistance in the face of the state's brutalities.

Keywords: biopower; COVID-19 pandemic; migrant workers; necropower; sovereign power.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.130762

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2023 Vol.7 No.3, pp.272 - 295

Received: 30 Jan 2022
Accepted: 11 Oct 2022
Published online: 04 May 2023 *

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