Smuggling as a Material Critique of Borders

Bibliographic Data

ID3948344
AuthorsMahmoud Keshavarz (0000-0001-8934-988X, Uppsala University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume29
Issue4
Pages1143-1165
Publication date2024-08-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2023.2268528
OpenAlexW4390540676
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited37

By drawing on ethnographic and historical accounts of migrant smuggling and forgery from the smugglers’ perspectives, this essay shifts the focus from a state-centric understanding of smuggling as a criminal activity conducted by ‘greedy’ individuals and ‘mafia rings’, to a specific form of practice that operates through a series of concrete material techniques. It argues that smuggling recognises and reworks the material and technological features of borders which are vulnerable to reappropriation. These vulnerabilities inherent to the materialisation of abstract notions such as borders are understood and discussed as ‘reproducibility’, ‘repetition’, and ‘imitation’. Smuggling not only reconfigures the apparatus of borders to provide support for those who are denied access to mobility, but also can teach us something about a specific mode of critique that I call a material mode of critique. The material mode of critiquing borders goes beyond a discursive mode which mostly locates politicians, academics, and activists as the critics of border politics. This mode can open up new possibilities of thinking about and against borders

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Imitation · Linguistics · Media studies · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Computer Science · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology

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