Irregular migrants, neoliberal geographies and spatial frontiers of ‘the political’

Abstract

In this article I argue that the demands of irregular migrants to belong to political communities constitute key contemporary sites of ‘the political’. I also argue that geographies associated with neoliberal globalisation (transnational production circuits, special economic zones and global cities) are implicated in irregular migration flows and in new conceptions of political belonging. In relation to these claims, I reflect upon recent mobilisations in the US context, in which hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants and their supporters asserted the right to belong. I suggest that similar claims to belong are likely to proliferate and that neoliberal geographies may provide some clues as to where and how these contemporary frontiers of the political might proceed. I conclude by suggesting that a multidimensional approach to political belonging provides a sound conceptual starting point for the analytical and normative challenges raised by both the claims of non-status migrants and the sovereign practices of contemporary states.

(En)gendering the political: Citizenship from marginal spaces

“…In relating the political to a radical questioning of belonging (McNevin 2007), this also means exploring how acts, events and struggles work to rupture, break and reveal the contingencies of what Isin refers to as the 'habitus, practice, conduct, discipline and routine' (Isin 2009, 379) of ordering social life. In doing so, this destabilises the commonsensical mapping of 'belonging' .…”

Rethinking Migration in the Context of Precarity: The Case of Turkey

“…This pertains to a substantial and growing body of research that focuses on movements of contestation among particular irregular migrants, which has implications in terms of a changing political systems in general (for some examples see Chimienti, 2011;Isin, 2009;Laubenthal, 2007;McNevin, 2007;Varsanyi, 2006). A further implication is a sense of victimized agency on the part of migrants without obvious opportunities for bringing about a change in their precarious status and livelihoods.…”

The Impact of the Apartheid Separation Wall on Resiedancy Rights of Palestinian women: A Case Study on Jerusalemite Married Women and their Spouses Holding a Different Identity Card”

“…Furthermore, the notion of statelessness as McNevin emphasizes," is testimony to the centrality of the state in defining the boundaries of political community", McNevin, explaines, "the concept itself reinforces a territorial account of political belonging that place the citizens as the normal subject of the 'political' (McNevin, 2007).…”