“No One is Illegal” As a Reverse Discourse Against Deportability

After 2015, state authorities in many European countries actively stigmatised asylum-seekers and paperless, framing them as “illegal”. In Finland, this illegality discourse was countered by resistant non-citizen citizen subjects at multiple levels. This article examines the ways which arguments presented “No one is illegal” campaign can be considered to constitute a reverse Foucauldian sense, how it operates context of deportability maintains structural inequality racialised hierarchies based on logic political exclusion/inclusion embedded state-centric sovereignty. It demonstrates state's contributed strong advance social controls but enabled formation that helped promote non-citizens' legal demands. While operating within legal–illegal binary under non-citizens were “disqualified” state, simultaneously, strategically challenged utilising shared humanity common category.