In this context, Oliveri argues that through resistance, migrant hunger strikers ‘open the boundaries of neoliberal citizenship’ and ‘construct themselves as activist citizens’ (2012: 793). These actions ‘do not need to be founded in law or enacted in the name of the law’ (Isin, 2008: 39), for they are inherently acts of disruption ‘against the exclusionary technologies of citizenship’ (Tyler and Marciniak, 2013: 146). The de-essentialization and denaturalization of fixed categories, such as that of the ‘illegal immigrant,’ become possible through strikers’ civic engagement in collective struggle. This struggle marks the ‘moment when the naturalness of the dominant virtues is called into question and their arbitrariness revealed’ (Isin, 2002: 275– 276). By defying state-imposed rightlessness and acting as if endowed with rights, migrants’ protests assert their radical recognition as human beings, emerging from the shadows of illegality, invisibility, and the violence of immigration detention Immigration detention represents one of the last remaining façades of sovereignty amid the political, social, and economic turbulence of the European legal and political order, functioning as an assertion of “absolute ‘sovereign prerogative,’ such as the state's (alleged) right to exclude foreigners” (Spena, 2016: 203). Crucially, the power of the hunger strike lies not (only) in instrumental gains like asylum, but in exposing the moral violence of border regimes. It allows detainees to assert their humanity and challenge the failures of human rights protections. Even without legal concessions, the act forces a reckoning with systemic inhumanity. It is a refusal to be erased—a reclamation of personhood beyond law. Migrant hunger strikes constitute a rupture in the structures of citizenship and sovereignty (Montagne, 2017: 510), disrupting the very order of the nation-state. At their core, these acts of resistance challenge an outdated conception of state sovereignty (Spena, 2016: 203). This challenge becomes even more striking when one considers that it is undertaken by individuals whom the state actively seeks to exclude ‘not only from their territories but also from any form of civic and political participation in their societies’ (ibid). Contrary to mainstream media and political portrayals of migrant hunger strikes as 'blackmail,' a border criminology perspective reveals how, through resistance, detainees not only reclaim self-respect and reaffirm their dignity but also attempt to forge a civic relationship—albeit a confrontational one—with the (non-)receiving state (ibid). This form of civic resistance, manifesting as self-directed violence, compels a radical recognition of migrant strikers’ humanity from the state, transcending the structures of political exclusion that states impose on irregular migrants and embodying the foundational tenets of border criminology. Essentially, migrant hunger strikes embody a dual dynamic of radical recognition: they are both a demand directed at state institutions and public audiences, and an enacted assertion of humanity. On the one hand, they function as an appeal—explicit or implicit—for acknowledgment by the very structures that deny them political and legal standing. On the other hand, they constitute a performative act through which migrants reclaim dignity and agency in conditions designed to strip them of both. This duality is not contradictory; rather, it reveals the complex function of radical recognition, which involves both self-affirmation and political demand. Discussion and conclusion * Published as Kourakis, F. (2025). Migrant hunger strikes as radical recognition. Justice, Power and Resistance, 1-18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/26352338Y2025D000000053