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The Design Politics of the Passport presents an innovative study of the passport and its associated social, political and material practices as a means of uncovering the workings of 'design politics'. It traces the histories, technologies, power relations and contestations around this small but powerful artefact to establish a framework for understanding how design is always enmeshed in the political, and how politics can be understood in terms of material objects. Combining design studies with critical border studies, alongside ethnographic work among undocumented migrants, border transgressors and passport forgers, this book shows how a world made and designed as open and hospitable to some is strictly enclosed, confined and demarcated for many others - and how those affected by such injustices dissent from the immobilities imposed on them through the same capacity of design and artifice

This thesis is an interrogation of the contemporary politics of movement and more specifically, migration politics from the perspective of the agency of design and designing. At the core of this thesis lies a series of arguments which invite design researchers and migration scholars to rethink the ways they work with their practices: that states, in order to make effective their abstract notions of borders, nations, citizenship, legal protection and rights are in dire need of what this thesis coins as material articulations. The way these notions are presented to us is seldom associated with artefacts and artefactual relations. It is of importance therefore, as this thesis argues, to speak of such material articulations as acts of designing. To examine the politics of movement and migration politics from such a perspective, this thesis focuses on practices that shape specific material articulations such as passports, camps and borders. At the same time, it discusses the practices that emerge from these articulations. By doing this, it follows the politics that shape these seemingly mundane artefacts and relations as well as the politics that emerge from them. Consequently, it argues that design and politics cannot be discussed and worked on as two separate fields of knowledge but rather as interconnected fields, as design-politics. This thesis unpacks this claim by focusing specifically on the lived experiences and struggles of asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants as well as rearticulating some of the artefacts and artefactual relations involved in the politics of movement and migration.

Readers of this volume should be prepared to confront sets of provocative argument, polemic and advocacy discussed extensively in the form of three separate yet interrelated essays by scholars of design philosophy, history and education: Clive Dilnot, Tony Fry and Susan Stewart. Published as the first book in Bloomsbury's series Design, Histories, Futures, the volume appears as a framework for the other titles to come. It is challenging and dense, but ultimately a forceful and inspiringly articulated set of essays arguing that design as a discipline, practice and discourse has neglected what history means in general and exploring how history is made and remade by design in particular. While differing in the politics of their entry into the discussion of history and design, all three authors share the same ontological ground: that design and designing are embedded in history, and direct possibilities of making history within the past, present and future.

This paper is a theoretical attempt to formulate an ontological understanding of design as a set of articulations and modes of acting that manipulate the materiality of the world in order to re-direct and re-orient the possible ways of inhabiting, accessing and shaping the world. Such an understanding puts forward a way of approaching the question of politics in, of and for design that design and politics should be understood as a twofold embedded in one environment. This then has consequences both for design and for politics. I argue that these consequences can be understood better through unfolding the political forms made possible by design as well as the material and designed forms that have become necessary given today's political situation. By drawing on a series of examples, I will argue how design is already a political form and how politics is a form of material articulation. Such an understanding then gives shape to the recognition of the activities and forces that already exist in the world and sketches out possibilities of acting upon that recognition.

This paper is a theoretical attempt to formulate an ontological understanding of design as a set of articulations and modes of acting that manipulate the materiality of the world in order to re-direct and re-orient the possible ways of inhabiting, accessing and shaping the world. Such an understanding puts forward a way of approaching the question of politics in, of and for design that design and politics should be understood as a twofold embedded in one environment. This then has consequences both for design and for politics. I argue that these consequences can be understood better through unfolding the political forms made possible by design as well as the material and designed forms that have become necessary given today's political situation. By drawing on a series of examples, I will argue how design is already a political form and how politics is a form of material articulation. Such an understanding then gives shape to the recognition of the activities and forces that already exist in the world and sketches out possibilities of acting upon that recognition.

I juli 2013, Malmö, tog en grupp asylsökande och papperslösa migranter initiativet till en vandring från Malmö till Stockholm – Asylstafetten. Vandrarna krävde att deras berättelser om migration, asyl och papperslöshet skulle höras och transformeras till handling. Ett flertal aktiviteter organiserades under den 34-dagars långa marschen, där hantverks-workshoppar ingick. Genom texter och konversationer med deltagare i vandringen, porträtterar den här publikationen flera skildringar av dessa workshoppar; platserna de intog, utövandet och idéerna de frambringade liksom dess kommande politiska potential. ; In July 2013, Malmö, Sweden, a group of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants initiated a march from Malmö to Stockholm called Asylstafetten. The marchers demanded that their stories of migration, asylum and undocumentedness be heard and transferred into action. Many activities were organised for the duration of the 34 day-long march including the crafting workshops. Through essays and conversations with participants of the march, this publication portrays multiple narratives about the workshops; the spaces they occupied, the practices and ideas they generated as well as their political potential to come.More Info: This text is part of a collaborative book project inspired by a series of crafting workshops held during Asylstafetten - a 34 day-long walking march from Malmö to Stockholm, Sweden during Summer 2013.

Practice-based researchers in the design field usually adoptanthropological methods for 'observing' or 'studying' the field inorder to come up with some 'design solutions' for a provocativeco-designing of socio-political spaces. Usually such approachesmove in the direction of legitimization of the 'design knowledge'.What designers in socio-political action research do is an act oftranslation, which in various stages of the action gets different shapes(e.g. between their own knowledge and participants' knowledge).Translation always tries to fill the cracks between an unknownspace and a known one. Therefore translation becomes afunctional and hierarchical bridge for those who do not knowthe origin's language. But such a bridge has many cracks, whichin a 'good translation' are not visible to readers but only to thetranslator. Therefore the translator, by hiding these cracks,never allows readers to engage in the work. However thesecracks are fundamentally important for understanding thepositioning and self-reflexivity occurring during the research.This paper draws a retrospective reflection upon the process ofcollaboration with women rights activists in Iran and Sweden. Byadopting a new politics of translation called 'free translation' 5,I argue that action research in the design field needs such a resituationalmethod for formulating actions in other contexts, wherethe first language is not familiar with the second, third and so on.A free translation brings up questions of 'qualification', 'power'and 'legitimization' and opens a space for more engagement byintensifying the cracks in disciplines, knowledge and contexts.

This presentation is an explorative study on how materiality in design becomes the distinctive aspect of design practice compare to artistic practice in politically engaged creative actions. The presentation takes a short historical perspective on the notion of materiality in design, aiming to unfold how materiality itself can change the practice and definition of design. By looking to recent critical practices within design discourse, I examine the importance of materiality in critical practices in design as a distinction to critical artistic practices. To this end, the paper takes two examples of critical practice; one within design field and the other known as artistic work both performing on the subject of "undocumentedness."Therefore the paper tries to examine how much design is different from art in politically engaged works and particularly on works related to undocumented immigrants. Finally it argues that materiality of design generates new forms of action-interaction in coming communities.

In this paper, we argue that the legitimation of killing in war is not simply formed by adherence to certain legal requirements that exist apart from and prior to war; instead, we suggest, the law of armed conflict in itself cannot but operate through admitting certain materials onto the battlefield as distinctively legal materials. Using the theory of legal materiality, we show that the military uniform is a legal material that makes the legal matter of legitimate targeting intelligible to law. This process happens through the ways in which the uniform shapes the possibility of visual recognition and differentiation in order to make certain bodies targetable and others not targetable. We refer to this visual recognition and differentiation as a domain of persuasion. We show that the historical, functional and visual attributes of the uniform, as a design artefact, produce a convincing domain of distinction for the attacking agent. Finally, we turn to insurgency, arguing that the legal matter of targeting is shaped not only by the presence, use and manipulation of this legal material but also by the absence of it.

This paper is an investigation of how the specific design and materiality of the artefact of the boat, as well as the various material, visual, technical and geographical practices at work in the space of Mediterranean Sea, orientate a specific space and produce a selective politics of seeing, saving and framing of bodies on the move. It highlights how the very presence and movement of 'unseaworthy boats' in this actively orientated space of the sea brings to the fore the many strategies and techniques that have been employed to make it a space of European control. We argue that this is an active and deadly orientation carried out in an often dispersed number of practices and interventions within a seemingly flat space of water. The paper concludes that border transgressors' act of moving by boat, with all of the losses involved, both challenge and potentially reorientate European mobility regimes.

Addressing social issues and operating in the public realm, contemporary design engages with the problematics of relating to more diverse people, groups and 'others' than those traditionally served by design. Tracing some related concerns within the early Participatory Design movements, we query approaches based on 'consensus' and explore an alternative based on 'dissensus', as theorized within political philosophy. To discuss critical-political aspects of participation in design, dissensus is a lens applied retrospectively to reflect on an example of our own practice-based research. Carried out with groups of women activists in Iran and Sweden, 'Forms of Resistance' was a project in which a design researcher engaged a series of socio-material activities to recognize the experiences and subjectivities of those otherwise excluded from a prevailing political order. Alternative communication and aesthetic practices were developed in response to issues of equity, power and difference within and across research situations and sites, which are discussed in relation to concepts of 'indisciplinarity' and 'free translation'. This paper discusses alternative approaches to framing and staging participation in design, elucidating a series of terms and concepts relevant to social and critical practices of design and design research.

This text articulates doubt over design discourses and practices. This doubt comes from personal experiences of two former Master students in the 'Experience Design' program at Konstfack University College of Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. Both graduated in the spring of 2011 from the two-year program, one coming from a background of design and visual arts and the other from design research. They shared interest in thinking and doing design differently. Their doubt was based on a gradual understanding of how design education and its practice imposes and reproduces a homogeneous and dominant form of action, which they came to see as being complicit with the dominant form of politics in our societies: the 'politics of fear.'The paper argues how and why the politics of fear functions in design practice and education. It does this via an auto-ethnographical text and the particular case of designing a 'better death', a design course on the 'aesthetics of dying' focused on the last days in a palliative care center. The authors question why design education teaches designers to perpetuate their own habits, and develop an inability to accept what is foreign and why in seeking to solve problems it imposes itself on the other, instead of opening to alternative forms of action and life.