Who is the State in Migration Research? Notes Towards Actually Existing Migrant-State Relations in Peripheries of the Global South.

Keywords: Migration, Urban, Informality, State, Citizenship, Politics, Infrastructure
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Across ordinary spaces, episodes of negotiation over the conditions of urban life are taking place between migrant populations and diverse agents that embody the state in urban territories. These are characterized by heated discussions, which can turn violent. Yet, they also entail face-to-face interactions while sharing a snack on the street. We see the exchange of contact information to continue discussions on WhatsApp group chats, and direct phone calls between those who are supposed to be invisible to the state and those who are the actual manifestation and embodiment of the state apparatus in the ordinary spaces of urban life. Such episodes bring into sharp relief different types of migrant-state relationships mediated through the contested materiality of the city. These experiences rarely make it into the canon of migration studies, often concerned with politics of mobility, borders, and migrant activism from a global North perspective.

In this presentation I reflect on these episodes to questions who actually is the state? I complicate prevalent debates in migration literatures which simplify migrant politics to broad categories of either contention or avoidance. Migration Studies tends to rely on an abstraction of the state as a monolithic and antagonistic entity, principally representing border and citizenship regimes. Beyond frameworks of borders and citizenship, fragments of the everyday state engage in ongoing relationships with migrant populations on the streets providing opportunities for participation and recognition. I use struggles over urban infrastructure to reflect on the multiple manifestations of the state in the lives of migrants.