L’autonomia delle migrazioni

The autonomy of migration - This paper develops an autonomy of migration approach to contemporary transnational mobility. In particular, Deleuze e Guattari’s political ontology and the concept of becoming are used to articulate a political practice in which mobile social actors escape their normalized representations and reconstitute themselves in the course of changing the conditions of their social and material existence. Drawing upon militant research on contemporary migration in Southern Europe, on several case studies of clandestine mobility and on existing research in the field of sociology of migration we discuss how the different types of autonomous migratory movements challenge the present-day conditions of European sovereignty. For example we discuss how local communities and micro-economies emerge as a result of border crossing, how different state authorities adjust their surveillance and detention practices according to migrational flows, finally how migrants transform themselves and change constantly their practices and alliances in order to sustain their subjective paths of mobility. The endless moving packs of undocumented mobile workers constitute a political force which is anonymous and unidentified, whose arrival in a certain society is never known and yet it is powerful enough to challenge the balance of contemporary governance.

Keywords: Autonomy of migration; transnational mobility; sovereignty; governance; disidentification.

Dimitris Papadopoulus, Vassillis Tsianos, L’autonomia delle migrazioni in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 2/2009, pp 83-96, DOI: 10.3280/MM2009-002006