Tracing imprints of the border in the territorial, justice and welfare domains : a multi-site ethnography

Abstract

Starting from the border as an ‘epistemic viewpoint’ (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013), we seek to achieve conceptual depth about the nature of contemporary bordering practices by combining and re‐evaluating empirical data collected within different bordering domains. We build on Mezzadra and Neilson's concept of the ‘proliferation of borders’ by extending our focus to the impact of borders on individuals, arguing that border crossers experience an ‘accumulation of borders’ as borders are ‘imprinted’ on their bodies through multiple and diverse encounters with various state agencies. By tracing the imprint of the border and its impact on the lives of border crossers in a range of contexts (the territorial, justice, and welfare domain), we bring to light continuities in the governance of global mobility and the cumulative effects of borders that could not be captured by researching isolated, local sites within the nation‐state