Social reproduction against administrative bordering: Struggles to reproduce legal legibility among temporary student-migrants in Finland

Abstract

Migrants in a temporary legal status are subject to heterogeneous techniques of bordering accompanied by assumptions of migratory intention and behaviour. This article analyses migrants’ struggles around administrative bordering among non-EU/EEA migrants who hold one-year student residence permits in Finland. I focus on the ongoing labour of reproducing a ‘legally legible self’ as a perspective for approaching the subjective encounters with the border regime. Rather than merely analysing the impacts of the residence permit on social life, the article centres on the efforts of student permit holders to maintain the right to a continued legally regularized stay in Finland, addressed through a social reproduction lens. The argument is that viewing migrants’ efforts of reproducing a legally legible self through the perspective of social reproduction, and thus analysing the labour of attention and care that goes into reproducing one’s legal status, we can acquire a more nuanced understanding of the everyday struggles around administrative bordering. The article contributes first to the theorization of social reproduction beyond the walls of the home, by demonstrating how bordering processes intimately shape migrants’ opportunities for reproducing their lives, and secondly, by emphasizing life-making as a battlefield, the article adds to the research on administrative border struggles.