ID | 132340 |
Title Proper | Beyond territoriality |
Other Title Information | rethinking human mobility, border security and geopolitical space from the Indonesian island of Bintan |
Language | ENG |
Author | McNevin, Anne |
Publication | 2014. |
Summary / Abstract (Note) | The key contention of this article is that contemporary practices of border security threaten to outrun the explanatory capacity of the spatial (territorial) and subject (citizen/migrant) registers habitually employed to think through human mobility. This represents a political problem as much as an empirical one. First, it implies that migration scholarship deploying categories of analysis informed by prevailing registers offers a limited perspective on contemporary techniques of migration governance; second, it suggests that such scholarship obscures the operation of power that works to enforce profoundly unequal hierarchies of mobility and represent them as politically neutral. In this article, I propose that resisting reversion to problematic categories of analysis offers the potential to think of human mobility without the state and territory as its foremost container concepts. I contend that such an approach - 'beyond territoriality' - is a crucial step on the way to negotiating the normative dimensions of border politics. The case is developed empirically via a grounded investigation of the mundane yet symptomatic practices of border security on the Indonesian island of Bintan. |
`In' analytical Note | Security Dialogue Vol.45, No.3; June 2014: p.295-310 |
Journal Source | Security Dialogue Vol.45, No.3; June 2014: p.295-310 |
Key Words | Migration ; Political Migration ; Human Mobility ; Border Security ; Geopolitical Space ; Geopolitics ; Indonesia ; Bintan Island ; Border Politics ; Territorial Conflicts ; Symptomatic Practices ; Contemporary Techniques ; Migration Governance ; Political Context |