Border-crossers should be investigated not through the prism of power relations but through their capacity to dream another future.
Author
Raffaela Puggioni, Associate Professor, Jindal School of International Affairs, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
Summary
This article argues that ‘border-crossers’ — those still in the process of crossing borders — might not be governable. It suggests to move away from the Foucauldian perspective and investigate border-crossers not through the prism of power relations but through their capacity to dream another future. It argues that we should integrate “how questions” — “how to govern oneself, how to be governed, how to govern others” — with ‘who questions’ – that is ‘who is the subject to be governed?’
In other words, technologies of control should be discussed together with analyses that investigate the subjects upon whom those technologies operate. Which practices, power relations and institutional settings ‘make up’ border-crossers?
What if border-crossers are more than the result of power relations? What if what drives mobility is not power relations but by the dream of another future? What if border-crossers are not the liberal subjects of governmentality but the ‘dreaming subjects of mobility’?
Published in: Global Society
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