Waiting to move on: migration, borderwork and mobility economies in Libya

Journal article

Abstract:: Migrants’ mobilities in the fragmented state context of Libya are shaped by different dynamics of waiting. These dynamics emerge through intersections between transnational and local bordering practices. Examining the temporal effects of borderwork ethnographically by focusing on the lives of migrants who attempt to move on by boat to Europe, this article goes beyond depictions of waiting as an empty lived experience of time, to locate it within wider migration and mobility economies in borderlands. Migrants’ time is reproduced through intimate practices of care and labour and the ways in which they intermesh with a clandestine and often predatory economy where state and criminal actors profit from mobile lives. Focusing on migrants’ lived experiences of waiting to move on in contexts of fragmented state authority like Libya allows us to challenge fixed understandings of temporality as well as state-linked borderwork and its effects in Europe’s wider borderlands.

Files:: Achtnich_2021_Waiting_to_move.pdf

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Copyright holder:: Marthe Achtnich
Rights statement:: © 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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