"New Keywords: Migration and Borders" is a collaborative writing project aimed at developing a nexus of terms and concepts that fill-out the contemporary problematic of migration. It moves beyond traditional and critical migration studies by building on cultural studies and post-colonial analyses, and by drawing on a diverse set of longstanding author engagements with migrant movements. The paper is organized in four parts (i)

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This article reconsiders the concept of autonomy of migration (CAM) in the context of technologically ever more sophisticated border regimes by focusing on the case of biometric rebordering. As its name suggests, the CAM's core thesis proposes that migratory movements yield moments of autonomy in regards to any attempt to control and regulate them. Yet, the CAM has been repeatedly accused of being based on and contributing to a romanticisation of migration. After outlining two advantages the CAM offers for the analysis of biometric border regimes, I demonstrate that processes of biometric rebordering increase the warranty of the two allegations, which feed this major critique. Drawing on examples relating to the Visa Information System (VIS), I show, moreover, that processes of biometric rebordering alter the practical terms and material conditions for moments of autonomy of migration to such an extent that it becomes necessary to rethink not only some of the CAM's central features, but the notion of autonomy itself. In the final section I therefore point out some directions to develop the CAM as an approach, which is better equipped to investigate today's struggles of migration without being prone to the critique of implicating a romanticisation of migration. KeywordsAutonomy of migration, biometric rebordering, securitisation, dispositif, situated knowledge […] there is an autonomy of emigration adverse to the politics of states and this accounts for emigration as well as immigration. This is a pre-edited version of an article which appeared in Millennium -Journal of International Studies. You will find the final version of the article here: http://mil.sagepub.com/content/41/3/575 2 understands itself as a contribution to this ongoing undertaking. It argues that the material terms and practical conditions for the emergence of possible moments of autonomy of migration have changed significantly due to the increased technologisation of border regimes.Yet, the existing literature on the concept of autonomy of migration (CAM) has so far not sufficiently acknowledged the impact of the technologisation of border controls on the possibilities of migrants to appropriate what contemporary border and migration regimes seek to deny them, namely: mobility and rights. What has hindered the advocates of the CAM so far to take the technologisation of border controls and its effects on migrants' room for manoeuvre seriously is the misreading of the interrelated securitisation of migration as a mere means for the economic exploitation of migrant labour. 4 This is why the CAM's core hypothesis has been largely articulated as an unqualified generalisation to date: moments of autonomy seem to emerge and operate within any border and migration regime irrespective of its legal, practical and technological composition.In this article I therefore reconsider the CAM in face of the ongoing technologisation of border controls by focusing on the challenges posed by biometric rebordering. My analysis is driven by the following q...

Abstract:This article forms part of the attempt to develop the concept of autonomy of migration as an approach that is no longer prone to critique of implicating a romanticisation of migration. Drawing on the example of biometric rebordering, it shows in the first part, that it becomes pertinent to address the two allegations that drive this major critique, as their warranty increases due to the technologisation of border controls. It then introduces a reading of autonomy, which emphasises that moments of uncontrollability and excess of migratory practices cannot be thought in isolation of the conditions, in which they emerge. The second part introduces the notion of the embodied encounter as a transmission channel that mediates between the investigation of the situated practices of individual migrants and the assertion of an abstract autonomy of migration, thereby efficiently dissolving the two criticisms that have been raised against the concept of autonomy of migration. What the adoption of this analytical focus affords to acknowledge is, however, that neither migration, nor borders exist as such, but are brought into being in the innumerable encounters between people on the move and the actors, means and methods of mobility control. Keywords Autonomy of migration, borders, militant research, situated knowledge, performativityThis article forms part of the attempt to develop the concept of autonomy of migration (CAM) as an approach, which is no longer prone to the critique of implicating a romanticisation of migration. As its name suggests, the CAM asserts moments of autonomy of migratory practices in regards to any attempt to control or regulate them.1 This claim has stirred ongoing debates within the antiracist movement. On the one hand, the CAM has been promoted as a valuable alternative to the misleading image of the fortress that has dominated antiracist campaigns since the 1990s. Instead of representing borders as impenetrable walls, the CAM emphasises migrants' capacity to render borders porous as well as the related productivity of border controls that are not geared towards the exclusion, but the differential inclusion of migrants. 2 On the other hand, critics accuse the CAM, first, of not sufficiently considering the varying conditions, under which migration occurs, and second, of downplaying the repressive This is a pre-edited version of an article which appeared in Postcolonial Studies. You will find the final of the article here:

This article is concerned with the digitisation of border security and migration management. Illustrated through an encounter between a migrant and the Visa Information System (VIS)-one of the largest migration-related biometric databases worldwide-the article's first part outlines three implications of digitisation. We argue that the VIS assembles a set of previously unconnected state authorities into a group of end users who enact border security and migration management through the gathering, processing and sharing of data; facilitates the practice of traceability, understood as a rationality of mobility control; and has restrictive effects on migrants' capacity to manoeuvre and resist control. Given these implications, the article's second part introduces three analytical sensitivities that help to avoid some analytical traps when studying digitisation processes. These sensitivities take their cue from insights and concepts in science and technology studies (STS), specifically material semiotics/Actor Network Theory (ANT) approaches. They concern, firstly, the ways that data-based security practices perform the identities of the individuals that they target; secondly, the need to consider possible practices of subversion by migrants to avoid control-biased analyses; and finally, the challenge to study the design and development of border security technologies without falling into either technological or socio-political determinism.