Borders re/make Bodies and Bodies are made to make Borders: Storying Migrant Trajectories

2020

2021

An auto-ethnographic piece such as the one that is written by Shahram Khosrav can help one to overcome their preconceived notions regarding border politics-and even more-to reevaluate the privilege they have, as that privilege is simply invisible to those who hold it. Through exclusively analysing the discourse being adopted in the article titled 'The 'Illegal' Traveller: an Auto-ethnography of Borders', I aim to reflect upon the current border politics and its impact on the identity formation of 'the others' by using a literary approach that underlines the significance of the multiple discourses. First and foremost, even the motivation of the author regarding attempting to write an auto-ethnographic essay that demonstrates the struggle, which 'the others' face while adopting a particular identity throughout and after the migration process. In this regard, Khosrav clearly demonstrates his aspiration to remain distant from the dominant discourse by centralising his first 1 hand experience of crossing the border between Iran and Afghanistan. To identify the challenges and build a common meaning for his individual experience, he benefits from the formulaic use of colors. Accordingly, he begins describing the feeling of crossing from one land to the other and the 2 obligation of dropping one of his multiple identities by coloring them 'dark', and then moves on by emphasizing the concept of X-ray and the way it simulates with the definition made by the majority regarding the existence of the others. In the same line, he classes the 'color bars' that exist among border politics to strenghten his argument. In the following sections, where he talks about the ongoing journey, the usage of colors turns out to be the symbol for the concepts of hope and revival. For instance, he outlines the paradox in between the cheap eating places on the pavements and Hotel Shalamar by picturing the hotel with rose and green colors that refers to these two particular concepts. By doing so, he indirectly points out the other side of the coin for the ones, who tend to deny the external realities from the isolated bubbles they reside in. In addition to the formulaic use of colors, he establishes an implied discourse to criticize the issue of visibility of 'the others' starting from the first section. Both in the first and the following chapters, he steadily draws attention to the misperception towards 'the illegal', plus, the cantradictory nature of the border policies and their illegal implementation by offering concrete experiences he had with a human smuggler. Khosrav suggests a compelling explanation for this mismatch by saying that an 'illegal' traveller is in a space of lawlessness, outside the protection of the law. It is not difficult to agree with him that this is the main aspect of contemporary border politics, considering the fact that a considerable number of migrants sees no point of asking for help from the UNHCR. As the discourse techniques above illustrates, the migrant narrative is selective and targeted, just as the border itself. The selected piece prooves that there is an urgent need for an alternative discourse that takes the migrants' perception into consideration and this will be possible only through questioning the way that the contemporary border politics' discourse is reproduced. "In auto-ethnographic text the distinction between ethnographer and Others is not clear. It challenges imposed 1 identities and boundaries. Auto-ethnography can be seen as alternative forms of meaning different from the dominant discourse.", Khosrav quotes (Pratt, 1992).

Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, 2021

Measuring Migration and Mobility: How? When? Why? 9-10 June 2022 | Nuffield College, University of Oxford & Online , 2022

Galhardi, Renato (2022). "De-migranticizing Migrancy: Approaching Migration and (In)mobility Analysis through Rhizomatic Thinking, Feminist Epistemes and the Embodied Experience of Migration", in Pao, C. & Zubok, M. (comp.). Measuring Migration Conference 2022 - Conference Proceedings. Transnational Press London. https://cutt.ly/O2YPbFJ International migration analysis frequently addresses mobility phenomena through state-centric macro-level descriptions. This "top down" approach is helpful in portraying general patterns and highlights structural issues that contribute to mobility, but often omits "the figure of the migrant". Feminist phenomenology demonstrates the importance of articulating "the body" as social constructions of expressions of biopolitical relations that structure ontological positioning in the world. Heeding to the plea to de-migranticize migration analysis, I argue that it is imperative to redress international migration analysis "through the body" by reframing migrancy through feminist phenomenology and reflexivity. Through rhizomatic thinking, illustrated with narratives on the Mexico-United States borderlands, I propose a re-conceptualization of migrancy that embodies positionality argued through feminist narratives as imperative to the centre of migration and (in)mobility research.

NEXUS, 2024

ÍNDICE BOOK REVIEWS Jesús Isaías Gómez López (ed. y trad.

Tragic stories of border crossings are often central to accounts of migration, and as ethnographers we are privy to stories of clandestine crossings, painful separations, and unspeakable loss. In the process of writing, ethnographers make these stories central to their own arguments and in so doing, those crossings, separations, and losses become knowable, imaginable, and part of a larger story of global interconnectedness and inequality. Ethnographers of migration write about those who cross borders, who become stuck within borders, or who are forcibly moved across borders because of deportation. Ethnographers thus position themselves at the crossroads of being activists, storytellers, and academics, even as they also locate their informants' narratives along trajectories of tragedy and possibility.

2020

This chapter examines some of the key issues related to the textualization of undocumented migrant journeys. Key amongst these is the constantly evolving generic contract underpinning narratives of travel assumed to be truthful and accurate. Given the widely acknowledged need for the critical study of travel to open its enquiries to a wider range of voices, territories and languages, the chapter explores what it might mean to ‘fabricate’ an account of migrant travel, as Omar Ba is said to have done in his 2008 narrative Soif d’Europe. Ba’s so-called ‘posturing’ becomes a focal point for unpacking understandings of undocumented migrant travel and the literary contexts, aesthetic qualities and ideological undercurrents of related narratives. Given that the ‘artifice’ of the text was said to have discredited the cause of undocumented immigrants, the chapter also considers what alternative models might restore 'credibility' to this form and what criteria are insisted upon (and w...

Narratives of Forced Mobility and Displacement in Contemporary Literature and Culture, 2021

A brief discussion of the limitations of the 1951 Refugee Convention definition of those eligible for asylum precedes the analysis of different texts in this chapter which look at varying ‘categories’ of those who have migrated. Up to this point, the book has, with one exception, concentrated upon the representation of refugee/migrants in film. This chapter addresses different aspects of the migrant experience through the medium of three graphic narratives and an experimental film. The aspects considered are the journey (Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, 2006), the asylum application process (Mana Neyestani’s Petit Manuel, 2015), and the misery and squalor—though also the migrant activism—evident in makeshift refugee camps (Kate Evans’s Threads from the Refugee Crisis (2017) and Sylvain George’s May they Rest in Revolt (2010).