Addressing this injustice requires dismantling structures of subordination and affirming those excluded as full members of society. While this framework is relatively new and thus not universally embraced across the field, this approach offers a valuable lens for understanding forms of migrant resistance that are often dismissed as illegitimate or manipulative. Although not explicitly abolitionist, Barker’s framework fundamentally challenges the violence and domination that underpin contemporary border regimes. It does not reject border control outright, but it unsettles the assumption that borders can be governed justly under current conditions. This raises an open normative question: can borders be disentangled from practices of exclusion and racialized control, or are such harms intrinsic to their function? Although Barker’s framework does not resolve this tension, it reorients critique toward the lived experiences of migrants, grounding it in the logic of human dignity and mutual recognition—the fundamental social need to perceive and be perceived as worthy of respect (Honneth, 2004). Radical recognition subverts institutionalized patterns of exclusion. To redress misrecognition, entrenched value systems that hinder parity of participation must be replaced with those that promote it. Border criminology highlights how citizenship is not merely a legal status but is defined in contrast to the non-citizen (Stumpf, 2006). Identified as a source of risk in contemporary discourse, the non-citizen’s movements become objects of policing, and their bodies, legitimate objects of confinement (Bosworth and Guild, 2008: 711). As a result, punitive and exclusionary policies systematically deny non-citizens full participation in social and political life. This exclusionary logic contradicts the principles of border criminology justice—respect, nonviolence, and civic engagement—illustrating how non-citizens are persistently misrecognized and subordinated. Hunger strikes, as a form of civic engagement, expose these injustices and create pathways for resistance by demanding recognition and structural change. Barker’s framework, emphasizing radical recognition, offers a crucial corrective to legal and political frameworks that persistently misrecognize non-citizens. There are ongoing debates within the field of border criminology regarding the aims of critique—for instance, whether border control can be reformed to align with democratic values (Mitsilegas, 2015), or whether it is inherently tied to violence, exclusion, and racialized domination (De Genova, 2015: 1181–1182). There are also tensions between empirical (Fili, 2023) and normative (Bosworth, 2019) approaches, as well as differing views on the potential for ethical border governance (Aas & Gundhus, 2015). This article aligns with those strands that foreground structural critique and normative transformation, using recognition not simply as a descriptive tool but as a political demand. In this sense, border criminology becomes not just a critique of border practices, but a call to imagine a different kind of political community—one that affirms the equal worth of all who are subject to its power. Immigrant hunger strikes as political resistance * Published as Kourakis, F. (2025). Migrant hunger strikes as radical recognition. Justice, Power and Resistance, 1-18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/26352338Y2025D000000053