By drawing on ethnographic and historical accounts of migrant smuggling and forgery from the smugglers’ perspectives, this talk shifts the focus from the hegemonic understanding of smuggling as a criminal activity conducted by ‘greedy’ individuals and ‘mafia rings,’ to a specific form of practice that operates through a series of concrete material techniques. Mahmoud Kershavarz argues that smuggling recognizes the material and technological features of borders which provide a condition vulnerable to reappropriation. Smuggling by reworking these features not only reconfigure the apparatus of borders to provide supports for those who are denied access to mobility, but also can teach us something about a specific mode of critique that I call a material mode of critique. The material mode of critiquing borders goes beyond a discursive mode which mostly locates politicians, academics, and activists as the critics of border politics. This mode can potentially open up new possibilities on how we can think about and against borders.
This talk expands on ideas he developed in his book The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent (2019, Bloomsbury).
Join Mahmoud Keshavarz and the Multiple Mobilities research cluster for an in-person conversation in Wolff Conference Room (6 East 16th Street, Room 1103) on Monday, March 27 at 4:00pm.
Presented by the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility and the Politics Department at The New School for Social Research.
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Mahmoud Keshavarz's research widely focuses on the politics of design and the design of politics. He is interested in how different material practices shape our perception and possibilities of (un)doing politics, and in the questions around materialities and design features of im/mobility and borders.
In his current research, at the Engaging Vulnerability program, he looks at the practices of forgery and migrant smuggling as particular modes of technical critique of borders. He draws on ethnographic as well as design methods to discuss different technical and bodily vulnerabilities appropriated for and exposed by practices of smuggling. He examines what a technical mode of critique entails as it is informed by smugglers and smuggling technical and tacit knowledge, how it is practiced and how it is different from other modes of critiquing borders. He frames these practices in relation to “the colonial matrix of power” which has given shape to an asymmetrical access to the contemporary mobility regime.
In 2019, he published the book The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent (Bloomsbury) that addresses some of these concerns. He is currently working on two pieces that expand the book project: an article tentatively titled Smuggling as a Technical Critique of Borders and a book chapter entitled Vulnerable Critical Makings: Migrant Smuggling by Boats and Border Transgression.
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