Bordering practices: migrants, mobility, and affect in Libya

Journal article

Abstract:: In Libya's context of fragmented state authority, what does it mean for sub-Saharan migrants to be legible to state and criminal actors through their bodies rather than through the law? How do they experience and navigate precarity? Examining informal bordering practices in Libya reveals a mode of migration governance that is based less on legally restricting mobility and more on allowing uncertainty to proliferate and on exploiting migrants’ lives. In this system, certain bodies become targets for policing according to their skin color, documents, and blood tests, which can lead migrants to be extorted for money and detained. Migrants cope with such informal borderwork through affective labor. This plays a vital role in shaping their mobility decisions. By linking informal bordering practices with affect and mobilities, we can recast formal, state-centered ideas about migration governance.

Files:: Achtnich_2021_Bordering_practices_migrants.pdf

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Copyright holder:: Marthe Achtnich
Rights statement:: © 2021 The Authors. American Ethnologist published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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