Troubling Mobilities: Foucault and the Hold over ‘Unruly’ Movements and Life-Time

Abstract

Migration has today become a self-evident buzzword embedded with multifarious social and political issues which together form a sort of ‘dodgy continuum’, connecting terrorism, insecurity, poverty, trafficking and a humanitarian-securitarian bond that works also as a border. The main political and epistemic lynchpin that sustains the translation of various practices of mobility into migration is the paradigm of government. Moreover, migration as a social issue is coupled from its very outset with a governmental rationale: migration is a phenomenon to manage. For these reasons, as indeed many scholars have argued, there would not be migration without borders, only mobility. And, given the regulative function of borders, it follows that there would not be migration outside of a governmental perspective. ‘Government’ stands also for the epistemic blueprint that shapes our way of thinking and speaking of people’s movements. Most critical analyses on migration governmentality assume this of coupling migra- tion-government as an unquestionable bond, addressing criticisms towards inhumane treatments against migrants or towards the deprivation of migrants’ political and civil rights, insisting on the necessity of granting access to services and protection.

I want to thank Nicholas De Genova, Sandro Mezzadra and William Walters for their comments on this chapter and for our fruitful discussions on these themes.