Beyond transformation and regulation: Productive tensions and the analytics of inclusion

Abstract

The inclusion of marginal groups is increasingly becoming part of contemporary governance. Critical appraisals categorize inclusionary mechanisms either as politically transformative or as regulative and part of the state's broader agenda of social control. In this article, we argue against both these positions and propose instead that inclusion is simultaneously regulative and transformative, that is, it is practiced in a state of—what Chantal Mouffe calls—“productive tension.” The article is divided into two parts: the first critically examines the theoretical literature on the tensions written into inclusive practices. The second part illustrates productive tensions in the case of inclusive strategies between ethnic/migrant groups and the government in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The article urges the reconceptualization of tensions and contradictions as part of the broader contours of contemporary radical democracy wherein erasures, assimilations, resistance, and transformations exist simultaneously.