Suchergebnisse

A partir del descontento con los estudios fronterizos por su incapacidad de definir las frontera neerlandesa/alemana y las fronteras EEUU/México más allá de la separación ontológica entre las llamadas fronteras "espectaculares" /violentas (usualmente la frontera México/EEUU o las fronteras exteriores de la UE) y las fronteras "aburridas" (a menudo las fronteras internas de la UE, como la neerlandesa/ alemana), nosotros nos preguntamos: ¿Qué conecta las fronteras entre México/EEUU (Tijuana/San Diego) y las holandesas/alemanas (Nijmegen/Kranenburg/Kleve)? Nos basamos en la noción de Bustamante sobre la cotidianidad y la Otredad en las zonas fronterizas para cartografiar tres dimensiones de las asimetrías de poder que producen estas zonas fronterizas relacionalmente. Se trata de las asimetrías de las inmovilidades, las in/visibilizaciones de la infraestructura fronteriza en la vida cotidiana, y del uso de la proximidad de la frontera para mejorar la vida. Basándonos en esto, sostenemos que la sintonía con las formas en que las asimetrías de poder de la frontera juegan de manera diferencial en la producción de un sentido relacional del lugar de las tierras fronterizas, abre un camino para traer espacios fronterizos aparentemente dispares en las relaciones de convertirse en Otro.

Emerging from a discomfort in border studies that is unable to relate the Dutch/German borderlands and US/Mexico borderlands beyond the ontological separation between so-called "spectacular"/violent (often Mexico/U.S. or the external EU borders) and "boring" borders (often internal EU borders such as the Dutch/German borderlands), we instead ask what connects the Mexico/U.S. (Tijuana/SanDiego) and Dutch/German (Nijmegen/Kranenburg/Kleve) borderlands? We build on Bustamante's notion of everydayness and Otherness in borderlands to map three dimensions of the power asymmetries producing these borderlands relationally. These are asymmetries of cross border immobilities, in/visibilisations of border infrastructure in everyday life, and using border proximity for life improvement. Based on this we argue that attuning to the ways in which border power asymmetries play out differentially in producing a relational sense of place of borderlands, opens a path for bringing seemingly disparate borderland spaces in relations of becoming Other. ; Peer reviewed

This thematic issue is a collection of articles reflecting on methods as border devices of hierarchical inclusion spanning migration, mobility and border studies. It maps some key concerns and responses emerging from what we call academic backstages of migration, mobility and border research by younger academics. These concerns are around (dis)entangling positions beyond Us/Them (i.e. researcher/researched), delinking from the spectacle of migration and deviating from the categories of migration apparatuses. While these concerns are not new in themselves the articles however situate these broader concerns shaping migration, mobility and border studies within specific contexts, dilemmas, choices, doubts, tactics and unresolved paradoxes of doing fieldwork. The aim of this thematic issue is not to prescribe "best methods" but in fact to make space for un-masking practices of methods as unfinished processes that are politically and ethically charged, while nevertheless shedding light in (re)new(ed) directions urgent for migration, mobility and border studies. Such an ambition is inevitably partial and situated, rather than comprehensive and all-encompassing. The majority of the contributions then enact and suggest different modes of reflexivity, ranging from reflexive inversion, critical complicity, collective self-inquiry, and reflexive ethnography of emotions, while other contributions elaborate shifts in research questions and processes based on failures, and doubts emerging during fieldwork. We invite the readers to then read the contributions against one another as a practice of attuning to what we call a 'cacophony of academic backstages,' or in other words, to the ways in which methods are never settled while calling attention to the politics of knowledge production unfolding in everyday fieldwork practices.

This thematic issue is a collection of articles reflecting on methods as border devices of hierarchical inclusion spanning migration, mobility and border studies. It maps some key concerns and responses emerging from what we call academic backstages of migration, mobility and border research by younger academics. These concerns are around (dis)entangling positions beyond Us/Them (i.e. researcher/researched), delinking from the spectacle of migration and deviating from the categories of migration apparatuses. While these concerns are not new in themselves the articles however situate these broader concerns shaping migration, mobility and border studies within specific contexts, dilemmas, choices, doubts, tactics and unresolved paradoxes of doing fieldwork. The aim of this thematic issue is not to prescribe "best methods" but in fact to make space for un-masking practices of methods as unfinished processes that are politically and ethically charged, while nevertheless shedding light in (re)new(ed) directions urgent for migration, mobility and border studies. Such an ambition is inevitably partial and situated, rather than comprehensive and all-encompassing. The majority of the contributions then enact and suggest different modes of reflexivity, ranging from reflexive inversion, critical complicity, collective self-inquiry, and reflexive ethnography of emotions, while other contributions elaborate shifts in research questions and processes based on failures, and doubts emerging during fieldwork. We invite the readers to then read the contributions against one another as a practice of attuning to what we call a 'cacophony of academic backstages,' or in other words, to the ways in which methods are never settled while calling attention to the politics of knowledge production unfolding in everyday fieldwork practices.

In this paper, we position the societal expectation of the 'grateful refugee' in the larger European script of placing migrant help and integration. We ask how might we re-imagine geographies of migrant 'help' so as to break with the dominant ontologies of places as sites embedded within the nation-state and the accompanying relations of power which displace the migrant in a perpetual penumbra of gratefulness? By montaging a series of contrapuntal vignettes of borderlands producing Europe, we examine the moral geographies of help and debt and how geographical imaginations of place and place-identities of practices of refugee-help today are entangled with mid-20th century wartime aid. Drawing inspiration from the negritude movement, we argue that such 'untimely articulations' produce 'sites of décalage' where Europe (as manifesting in such entangled moral geo-histories of help) is no longer Europe, suggesting an initial vocabulary for a radical politics of place.