DISENFRANCHISING citizens is a mode of control by which the state categorises and hierarchises individuals in the scale of distribution of rights and justice. It has two specific dimensions; one is control by the economy of security and fear and the other is not only excluding the surplus from the realm of production but also invisiblising them from the sphere of entitlements and rights. Defining and redefining citizens is one of the instruments of power by which the economy of security operates. The sense of security has had multiple dimensions and meanings in different phases of human society. In the neoliberal phase, with the state displacing itself from the anchoring role of the economy, insecurity does not emerge only from external enemies. Instead, the individual faces different types of security deficit in terms of access to food, energy, nutrition, privacy, information and so on. Responsibilities are increasingly shifted to individuals, and the enemies seem to exist within the economy competing for access to such resources. Individualisation of human existence and the erosion of national barriers with increased flow of goods, services, human beings across borders and within national territories have enabled neoliberal states to exercise control over these flows. Disenfranchising citizens is not mere denial of voting rights but reclassifying citizens on the newly stated norms. It may not conform with some universal law or notion of freedom but distributes juridical subjects within the territory of nations by a restated norm. It creates layers of citizens: those having all rights, those eligible for partial rights and some with no rights.

Right wing governments are often keen to redefine norms of citizenship because that allows them to deploy the effectiveness of the economy of security and fear. One is then pushed to a state where s/he would not have the space of advancing toward attaining new rights but instead would be pushed to a state of utter insecurity since the current existence as citizen of a country stands unsettled. It is also an effective tool in generating fear about not only external enemies, but disenfranchised citizens suddenly become suspects and hence subjects of fear. Also, the control is not limited to the excluded alone. It is a mode of control that such classification entails as the individual currently included feels additionally empowered with the citizenship solidly reaffirmed. A new division is created along with a lot of others already existing. By linking the new exclusion with caste, religion or race that classify human beings based on colour, purity or faith, newly created divisions are reinforced. But these divisions are not just legal classifications but enables the state to articulate the political economy of capital accumulation and control.

RESOURCES AND PEOPLE

In recent times, fabricated perceptions about an astonishing rise in illegal immigrants or rise of numbers of people within a particular religious community has been peddled by formal and informal media channels. What such a narrative invokes is the mounting concern of a rising number of people with resources defined by natural limits. This resonates with the Neo-Malthusian perspective that underlines rising pressure of people on resources and ecology. Anti-immigration laws, deporting illegal immigrants and perceived insecurity of communities based on their relative birth rates creates an ecosystem of fear and anxiety. This implicitly creates passive support for disenfranchising fellow citizens. As crisis precipitates, the number of claimants matters! Rising food prices, a smaller number of job opportunities, increasing uncertainty and declining well-being of the majority creates a rationale for exclusion as a mode of securing protection. It also favours politics of social Darwinism where competition between races and communities finally decides the survival of the fittest. Such an environment not only permeates hate against rival races or communities but essentially creates a mass psychology against the poor who do not earn enough to feed their children or educate them. In this competition, strengthening surveillance at the territorial borders and also on internally created suspects becomes central to political mobilisation. People who are disenfranchised or suddenly turned ‘illegal’ lose voice as they are pushed out beyond the boundaries of legal existence that legitimises their right to vote or speak. This state of limbo opens a new space for politics at the margin but also consolidates support within the mainstream. The notion of surplus population appears as a problem of immigration, employability and lack of education as if these are natural lack of a community or race and hence deserve exclusion from the feast of neoliberal prosperity. Marx was categorical in this regard and vehemently refuted the Malthusian argument of disequilibrium arising from population growing at a geometrical pace while food and natural resources grow at arithmetic progression. According to Marx, the relative overpopulation is not defined by any transcendental natural laws but by the social mode of production and distribution. The process of accumulation in capitalism increasingly adopts labour displacing technologies to increase productivity. It is a means for an individual capitalist to outcompete others. As this continues spontaneously, meaning through an uncoordinated manner, growth of productivity tends to outpace the growth of the available labour force and hence creates a relative surplus population.

EXCLUSION TO INVISIBILISATION

Capitalist accumulation involves a process of managing population. By rendering a section of the active labour force as surplus, it controls the employed labour. Unemployment and the reserve army of labour become a disciplining device to establish control over the employed workers and help contain wages. The surplus labour however has various layers: some might be at the immediate vicinity of industrial activity who were earlier employed but lost jobs during the downturn of the business cycle, but at the same time there could be layers of potential workers who could join the available pool of labour force if needed. The various layers are not only differentiated by their potential capabilities, skills and spatial location vis-à-vis industrial activities but can also have large overlaps by non-economic segmentations articulated through caste and gender. As the capacity to absorb different layers of labour declines in capitalism due to labour displacing technology and asymmetric distribution of productivity gains, growth in the economy is not accompanied by a proportionate rise in employment. As a result, the larger part of the reserve army of labour is not actually in reserve but not needed at all to conduct productive activities.

After years of searching for jobs, a portion of the labour force gradually withdraws from the active labour force -- often termed as ‘discouraged workers’. However, with an increasing number of unemployed people including those newly added in the working age population and available in the labour market and those accumulated from the past together with the number of discouraged workers—all these pose a serious challenge to the political stability of capitalism. In the 18^th century, capitalism could displace this crisis of employment caused by the substitution of labour by machines through mass transfer of population to temperate zones creating settler colonies in different parts of the world. But such options do not exist anymore. Hence capitalism addresses the issue by marginally supporting this huge and solidified surplus labour and parts of people out of the active labour force through transferring a part of the surplus accumulated in the economy to these ‘surplus’ populations. It might be some loans, subsidies or cash transfer that partially supports their consumption. However as new technology further creates threats of unemployment, exclusion has taken a radical turn and that is delegitimising a part of the citizens who would not only lose their voice but also claims of such transfers as citizens. This is one of the attempts capital seems to have undertaken to displace its terminal crisis. In other words, capitalism not only excludes a vast section of the population from productive activity but turns inhuman by denying their existence as well.