Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Biometric rebordering revisited : beyond the control bias and policy gaps -- Autonomy of migration within biometric border regimes -- Rethinking the autonomy of migration : rethinking autonomy -- Deconstructing the trickster narrative : the visa regime as an unpredictable regime of institutionalised distrust -- At the consulate : appropriating mobility within and against biometric border regimes -- Encounters at the airport : embarrassing performances of sovereign power -- Rendering Europe a vast borderzone : on the irreducible ambivalence of migrants's practices of appropriation -- Conclusion : autonomy of migration reloaded

Examining how migrants appropriate mobility in the context of biometric border controls, this volume mobilises new analytics and empirics in the debates about the politics of migration and provides an analytically effective and politically significant tool for the study of contemporary migration. Drawing from the tension between the EU's attempt to achieve watertight border controls by means of biometric technologies, and migrants' persistence to move to and live in the EU, the volume pursues two interrelated objectives: first, it studies the encounters between migrants and the Visa Information System (VIS), one of the largest biometric databases in the world, from the perspective of mobility in order to investigate how migrants appropriate mobility via Schengen visa within and against this biometric border regime. Second, it addresses criticisms of autonomy of migration in order to develop it as a viable approach for border, migration and critical security studies. Hence, the book is driven by two interrelated research questions: what does the assertion of moments of autonomy of migration refer to in the context of border regimes that use biometrics to turn migrants' bodies into a means of mobility control? And how do migrants appropriate mobility via Schengen visa within and against biometric border regimes? This book will be of great interest to scholars in border, migration and critical security studies, as well as researchers engaged in citizenship studies, surveillance studies, political theory, critical IR theory and international political sociology.

In the past decade, constructivist understandings of migration have gained momentum in migration studies. Scholars have shown how (some) people are enacted as ›migrants‹ when human mobility clashes with nation‐states' claimed prerogative to control »the legitimate means of movement« (Torpey). Another body of scholarship has highlighted the crucial role played by knowledge practices in the enactment of migration as an intelligible object of government. However, these two lines of inquiry have largely been conducted independently of each other. To better account for how practices of border control affect the production of knowledge about migration and how the latter, in turn, informs practices and rationales of migration management, this article asks: How can we conceptualize and empirically investigate the relationship between enacting migration through knowledge practices and enacting migrants through practices of bordering? In response to this question, I propose a sociology of translation and treason in the tradition of the Actor‐Network Theory (ANT), which enables tracing how records produced in border encounters are translated into not only ›migration facts‹ but also various forms of nonknowledge. To demonstrate the analytical potential of this approach, I show how statistical knowledge about the ›deportation gap‹ – often invoked to justify ever‐more restrictive measures in the field of return policy – is, to a significant extent, a result of the mistranslation of returned migrants in administrative records used for migration statistics. Zur Politik des (Nicht‐)Wissens in der Herstellung/dem Rückgängigmachen von Migration In den letzten Jahren haben konstruktivistische Ansätze in der Migrationsforschung an Bedeutung gewonnen. Zahlreiche Forscher*innen haben gezeigt, wie einige Subjekte zu Migranten gemacht werden, wenn Mobilität mit dem von Nationalstaaten beanspruchten Recht kollidiert, »die legitimen Mittel der Bewegung« (Torpey) zu kontrollieren. Ein zweiter Forschungsbereich hat die Rolle von Wissenspraktiken bei der Konstitution von Migration als einem Objekt des Regierens aufgezeigt. Bislang wurden diese beiden Forschungsrichtungen zumeist unabhängig voneinander betrieben. Um besser zu verstehen, wie Praktiken der Grenzkontrolle die Produktion von Wissen über Migration beeinflussen, und wie Letztere Praktiken und Logiken des Grenz‐ und Migrationsmanagements prägt, fragt dieser Artikel: Wie lässt sich die Beziehung zwischen der Konstituierung von Migration als einem Objekt des Regierens durch Wissensproduktion und die Konstitution von Migrant*innen durch Praktiken der Grenzkontrolle theoretisch denken und empirisch erforschen? Hierfür wird eine Soziologie der Übersetzung und des Betrugs in Tradition der Akteur‐Netzwerk‐Theorie (ANT) vorgeschlagen. Dieser Ansatz erlaubt es zu untersuchen, wie administrative Daten, die Begegnungen zwischen mobilen Subjekten und Akteuren der Grenzkontrolle generiert werden, in Fakten bzw. in Nicht‐Wissen über Migration übersetzt werden. Um das analytische Potential dieses Ansatzes zu demonstrieren, zeige ich, wie statistisches Wissen über den ›deportation gap‹, der häufig bemüht wird, um restriktivere Maßnahmen im Bereich der Rückkehrpolitik zu legitimieren, zu einem signifikanten Teil auf der Nicht‐Übersetzung von remigierten Migrant*innen in administrative Daten beruht, die für die Produktion von Migrationsstatistiken genutzt werden.

Since Foucault introduced the notion of biopolitics, it has been fiercely debated—usually in highly generalized terms—how to interpret and use this concept. This article argues that these discussions need to be situated, as biopolitics have features that do not travel from one site to the next. This becomes apparent if we attend to an aspect of biopolitics that has only received scant attention so far: the knowledge practices required to constitute populations as intelligible objects of government. To illustrate this point, the article focuses on processes of biopolitical bordering: the delineation of the target population that is to be known via statistical practices. Drawing on the example of Estonia I show that methodological decisions involved in this work have important biopolitical implications as they affect the size and composition of the population, thus shaping the design of programmes of government aiming at its regulation.

This article reconsiders the concept of autonomy of migration in the context of technologically ever-more sophisticated border regimes by focusing on the case of biometric rebordering. As its name suggests, the concept of autonomy of migration's core thesis proposes that migratory movements yield moments of autonomy in regards to any attempt to control and regulate them. Yet, the concept of autonomy of migration has been repeatedly accused of being based on and contributing to a romanticisation of migration. After outlining two advantages the concept of autonomy of migration offers for the analysis of biometric border regimes, I demonstrate that processes of biometric rebordering increase the warranty of the two allegations, which feed this major critique. Drawing on examples relating to the Visa Information System, I show that processes of biometric rebordering alter the practical terms and material conditions for moments of autonomy of migration to such an extent that it becomes necessary to rethink not only some of the concept of autonomy of migration's central features, but the notion of autonomy itself. In the final section, I therefore point out some directions to develop the concept of autonomy of migration as an approach, which is better equipped to investigate today's struggles of migration without being prone to the critique of implicating a romanticisation of migration.

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 in-vestigate 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 the research on migration: first, the naturalization of the in-ternational 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 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 al-lows to turn the study of instances of migrantisation into an analytical lens for investigating transformations in contemporary border and citizenship regimes.