66 Race & Class 56(4) ‘which prompts us to view society as an object of administration, as a collection of so many “problems” to be solved, as “nature” to be “controlled”, “mastered” and “improved” or “remade”, as a legitimate target for “social engineering”, and in general a garden to be designed and kept in the planned shape by force’.21 While the state has set the framework within which society is to be ‘managed’, its wider success depends on the incorporation and diffusion of such a mindset into the wider civil society. Given that ‘humanitarianism has many faces’, as Costas Douzinas argues,22 the bureaucratic, rational techniques of power exercised by the state do not necessarily lack moral legitimacy – but the state’s ability ‘to coordinate the action of a great number of individuals’ may also serve ‘the pursuit of any, also immoral ends’.23 The range of moral stances of those involved in the solidarity movement for immigrants and refugees may fall quite outside this framework – for example, that section of the anti-deportation and anti-detention movement whose philosophy is encapsulated in the demand to abolish immigration detention in general and to stop deportations.24 But, a philanthropic morality might also motivate civil agents to provide vulnerable refugees and immigrants with ad hoc aid. So, those professionally involved as activists may well still suggest that even a repressive institution, such as a screening centre, can form an institutional framework within which the rights of immigrants and refugees are asserted and protected. However, the decisive point is that humanitarian morals are dependent on bureaucratic rationalities, thus creating an alignment between the technologies of power and the methods of civil engagement. The professional dependence of non-state agents on power centres makes professional activism operate according to the rules of what has been termed ‘post-bureaucracy’.25 This is described by Hensby et al. as ‘initiating a decentring of power structures through a commitment to networked relationships and consensus dialogue’, which, in Sewell’s words, ‘obviates the need for the principles of hierarchy and explicitly rule-governed behaviour’.26 This kind of humanitarian commitment by professional activists could be termed post-bureaucratic humanitarianism, which, on the one hand, draws moral legitimacy from the genuine profile of NGOs as advocates for the weak and vulnerable. On the other hand, however, it challenges neither the cause of the vulnerability, nor the strategies of power whose implementation perpetuates and intensifies this very vulnerability. The morality of post-bureaucratic humanitarianism is challenged though when surveillance technologies are confronted with human dignity. For, as Daniela DeBono argues, ‘it is the concept of human dignity that gives a moral bearing to the human rights movement’.27 So, when activists and NGOs provide assistance to state authorities conducting the compulsory health registration of border crossers, deeming it merely a formal procedure, necessary if such migrants are to attain the status of administrative detention, they disregard the racist discourse behind the measure and the violation of human dignity. Moreover, the experience of Downloaded from rac.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on June 3, 2016