Who is a Migrant? Abandoning the Nation-state Point of View in the Study of Migration

Abstract

This article develops an alternative definition of a migrant that embraces the perspective of mobility. Starting from the observation that the term ‘migrant’ has become a stigmatizing label that problematizes the mobility or the residency of people designated as such, we investigate the implications of nation-state centered conceptions of migration which define migration as movement from nation-state A to nation-state B. By asking ‘Who is a migrant in Europe today?’ we show that nation-state centered understandings of migration rest on a deeply entrenched methodological nationalism and implicate three epistemological traps that continue to shape much of research on migration: first, the naturalization of the international nation-state order that results, secondly, in the ontologisation of ‘migrants’ as ready-available objects of research, while facilitating, thirdly, the framing of migration as a problem of government. To overcome these epistemological traps, we develop an alternative conception of migration that, inspired by the autonomy of migration approach, adopts the perspective of mobility while highlighting the constitutive role that nation-states’ bordering practices play in the enactment of some people as migrants. Importantly, this definition allows to turn the study of instances of migrantisation into an analytical lens for investigating transformations in border and citizenship regimes.

Living digitally like a migrant: Everyday smartphone practices and the (Re)mediation of hostile state-affects

“…However, we must also remain open (conceptually, theoretically and methodologically) to the possibilities that everyday smartphone practices enable outside a direct relationship to the state. If we are to genuinely aim to expand current understanding of the everyday lived realities of irregular mobility regimes and commit to undoing forms of methodological nationalism that continue to be insidiously embedded within forms of geographic knowledge production (Cresswell, 2010; Huysmans and Pontes-Nogueira, 2016; Scheel and Tazzioli, 2021), I suggest we must turn our focus to the everyday (digital) lived realities of subjects themselves.…”

“…Mobilising Mckittrick’s (2011) work on the formation and development of Othered subjectivities, I suggest we must look beyond the limits of state-produced categorisations of irregular migrants (Scheel and Tazzioli, 2021), towards a broader sense of the affective, imaginative and material realities that are productive of everyday (digital) lives. This is not to romanticise the experience of irregular mobility.…”

“…Beyond characterising irregular migrants through a state-centric lens – which may get (re)produced if we only ever focus on the role of smartphones in direct relation to foms of mobility themselves – we must instead consider genuinely everyday digital use: from the specific to, often, the highly mundane or familiar. Without consideration of both uses, our understanding of the entanglements between the digital and lives lived off screens will only ever be partial: framed through the nationalistic binaries that continue to characterise mobility research within geography (Scheel and Tazzioli, 2021).…”

Contesting border artificial intelligence: Applying the guidance-ethics approach as a responsible design lens

“…Yet leaving it at the level of identifying governments, technology development firms and migrants as stakeholders would not do justice to the diversity of different groupings and interests. Specifically, regarding the category of the migrant, it is a matter of fact that who is considered to be what kind of migrant is deeply enmeshed in histories of migration control and global inequalities (Scheel and Tazzioli, 2022). Debates surrounding superdiversity have highlighted that experiences and patterns of migration vary significantly over time in terms of compositions, regulations, and categorizations (Meissner and Vertovec, 2015).…”

“…While it is easy to portray “the migrant” as a monolithic category, we recognize that the simple question “Who is a migrant?” links to “many political and scholarly debates around migration, racism and citizenship” (Scheel and Tazzioli, 2022). Ideas about migration are often motivated from a statist view of migration rather than one that recognizes the enactment of individuals as migrants through bordering practices that include the use of Border AI.…”