Viapolitics: Borders, Migration, and the Power of Locomotion. Durham: Duke University Press.
Underpinning the practices of remote border control lay specific spatial logics. What we call “routes thinking” refers to an emergent episteme of externalized border management among policy makers, border agents, and international organizations. Within this framework, bordering practices and border-like spaces are reproduced along hypothetical migrants’ trajectories. Based on fieldwork examining the Spanish government’s attempts to manage emigration from Western Africa, we argue that a viapolitical infrastructure of illegalization is being constructed along points of mobility of populations designated as suspicious. The establishment of “routes” constitute a way to read migrant trajectories and make them targetable and governable. The implementation of this approach creates a unique geography of governance, one that attempts to reflect the space-times of migrant travels. For this reason a regime of the route cannot be contained within the limits of nation-states or regional bodies but requires creative legal, political and financial arrangements. This problematic logic entails that human mobility can be intercepted, populations classified and illegality presumed before any border has been crossed.
Underpinning the practices of remote border control lay specific spatial logics. What we call “routes thinking” refers to an emergent episteme of externalized border management among policy makers, border agents, and international organizations. Within this framework, bordering practices and border-like spaces are reproduced along hypothetical migrants’ trajectories. Based on fieldwork examining the Spanish government’s attempts to manage emigration from Western Africa, we argue that a viapolitical infrastructure of illegalization is being constructed along points of mobility of populations designated as suspicious. The establishment of “routes” constitute a way to read migrant trajectories and make them targetable and governable. The implementation of this approach creates a unique geography of governance, one that attempts to reflect the space-times of migrant travels. For this reason a regime of the route cannot be contained within the limits of nation-states or regional bodies but requires creative legal, political and financial arrangements. This problematic logic entails that human mobility can be intercepted, populations classified and illegality presumed before any border has been crossed.