immigration detention. Drawing on Fraser’s distinction between affirmative and transformative remedies (Fraser, 2007), we see that even when institutional responses do occur, they often reabsorb resistance into bureaucratic logics without altering the conditions that produced the injustice. Migrant hunger strikes thus point to a transformative horizon in which political community no longer relies on the illegality or racialized hierarchies that underpin the punitive infrastructures of immigration control. In doing so, they disrupt conventional understandings of political participation and expose the limits of inclusion within liberal democratic frameworks that routinely exclude the most precarious from meaningful recognition. The present analysis has highlighted the complex role of hunger strikes as both a plea for recognition and a challenge to the exclusionary logics of the state under a border criminology perspective. Further research could build on these insights by examining the psychological toll of hunger strikes—not only as acts of resistance but also as experiences of prolonged suffering. Investigating how detainees navigate the mental and emotional strain of such protests could offer a deeper understanding of the intersections between resistance, trauma, and survival under conditions of extreme precarity. Moreover, comparative studies across different national and institutional contexts could illuminate how detention regimes shape, suppress, or inadvertently amplify acts of defiance, further exposing the contradictions within contemporary border and carceral policies. By insisting on entry into the polis as political subjects rather than objects (Fiske, 2016: 22), migrant hunger strikers momentarily destabilize the categories tied to their perceived ‘illegality’ and assert a legitimacy denied to them by the law. As disruptive acts emanating from the margins of the political, they “reject the powerless state of ‘detainee’” (Fiske, 2016: 22), putting forth a modality of political action that critiques modern immigration control and the creation of ‘illegalized’ peoples. These acts, emblematic of the border criminology framework proposed by Barker (2024), have the power to destabilize carceral logics and profoundly transform the categories of existence they are confined to, actively confronting the dynamics of power and the racialized state-building processes that entrap them. References Aas, K. F., & Gundhus, H. O. (2015). Policing humanitarian borderlands: Frontex, human rights and the precariousness of life. British Journal of Criminology, 55(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azu086. Aitchison, G., & Essex, R. (2024). Self-harm in immigration detention: Political, not (just) medical. Journal of Medical Ethics, 50(11), 786-793. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme-2022108366. Aitchison, G. (2021). Fragility as strength: The ethics and politics of hunger strikes. Journal of Political Philosophy, 30(4), 535-558. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12261. * Published as Kourakis, F. (2025). Migrant hunger strikes as radical recognition. Justice, Power and Resistance, 1-18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/26352338Y2025D000000053