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: