Nation, ‘migration’ and critical practice

Abstract

Scholarship on human mobility typically references ‘migration’ uncritically in the concept of the territorial nation-state. This scholarly practice is problematic because it understates human mobility and ‘migrant’ identities at non-national scales, reproduces the nation-state as an ontological category vis-a-vis human mobility, and stifles the imagination of mobility in ways that are de-linked from the territorial nation-state. In this article, I build on the existing literature in geography and other disciplines to first elaborate on the link between ‘migration’ and the nation-state in research on human mobility. Then, I destabilise this link by exploring the contradictions of the role of ‘migration’ in contemporary settler societies and ethnic nations, and by discussing the examples of No Border politics and recent feminist writing on the global intimate. Finally, I illustrate how critical practice can engage in the formation of new subject identities and facilitate transformative action.