Mobility and its discontents: Seeing beyond international space and progressive time

Abstract

Why do international space and progressive time continue to be taken as the given foundations for the conditions under which mobility can be governed? Despite a long-standing critique of prevailing geopolitical and chronopolitical assumptions, these space–time parameters exhibit extraordinary tenacity. This article grapples with the reasons why. It also asks what it would it take to imagine a future in which questions about human mobility did not begin with the assumptions of international space and progressive time, or by extension, with premises associated with borders, citizens and migrants. Engaging with scholarship that attempts to provide conceptual, analytical and methodological resources to begin to imagine differently, the paper raises some cautions about the ubiquity of mobility as a framework through which to initiate such a project. It looks to a variety of historical and contemporary social movements – including but not only those associated with migrants – as a basis for inquiry into new horizons of the possible.

Towards a genealogy of migrant struggles and rescue. The memory of solidarity at the Alpine border

“…In fact, first, the history of sanctuary and abolitionism is not retraced by these authors for commemorating or keeping memory but, rather, to highlight the reverberations of those political experiences in our present. Second, such a genealogy enables situating migrant struggles in Europe within a broader internationalist perspective (Mezzadra 2020;McNevin 2019). Irrespective of their intentions, experiments of migrant solidarity, spatial occupations driven by claims for freedom of movement and collective mobilisations in support of migrants might be seen as practices that open up and link to transversal alliances that unsettle binary oppositions between 'migrants' and 'citizens'.…”

La “política de la hostilidad” en Argentina: detención, expulsión y rechazo en frontera

“…Además, para avanzar en la comprensión del ejercicio del control migratorio y fronterizo, presto atención al modo en que los actores usan estratégicamente el espacio y el tiempo a la vez que producen determinadas espacialidades y temporalidades a partir de sus intervenciones. Autores/as de los estudios críticos de la migración y las fronteras con diversas procedencias disciplinares han llamado la atención acerca de la relevancia de la interrelación espacio/tiempo, así como de las categorías de espacialidad y temporalidad, para comprender el funcionamiento de los regímenes fronterizos y el papel crucial que cumplen las fronteras en el control del movimiento (Bigo, 2010;Conlon et al, 2017;Griffiths et al, 2013;Khosravi, 2014;McNevin, 2019;Mezzadra & Neilson, 2017;Tazzioli, 2018).…”

Westphalian sovereignty as a zombie category in Australia

“…However, the ability of Westphalian sovereignty to explain contemporary political relations has increasingly been subject to criticism (Agnew 2018;Earnest 2019;Levy & Sznaider 2006;McNevin 2019). John Agnew (2018) for instance queries the territorial assumptions of Westphalian sovereignty, arguing that power has never been territorially confined in a Westphalian form.…”

“…states are becoming less able to control the global flows that cross their borders. As a form of mobility not explicitly driven by global markets, asylum seekers and refugees are increasingly seen as one type of movement that is excludable, and therefore are commonly targeted by governments in order to enact their base sovereign powers (Hollifield 2004;McNevin 2013).…”