The subject and the dislocation of state attribution in human rights discourse: the case of Mexican asylum claims in Canada

Mexico is arguably immersed in an unprecedented wave of violence in which drug cartels and law enforcement officials at times work together in cases of forced disappearance, kidnapping, execution, torture, persecution and other atrocities considered violations of the most basic human rights, including the right to life and to physical integrity. However, these atrocities are only classified as human rights violations if they can be unequivocally attributed to the state; this is not always possible. Using Foucault’s idea of governmentality and Valencia’s concept of the Endriago as a subjectivity emerging from the specific governmentalisation of the Mexican state, this article examines how hybrid agents in Mexico – law enforcement officials working for criminal gangs or criminals working for the state – serve to subvert common understandings of attribution and responsibility in the state-centric discourse of human rights in general, and of the right of asylum in the specific case of Canada, a country to which thousands of Mexicans have fled.