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The Figure of the Migrant
This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes―from global tourism to undocumented labor―have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.
308 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 2015
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March 3, 2025tfm 🤙🏻
September 1, 2016
"The first problem is that the migrant has been predominantly understood from the perspective of statis and perceived as a secondary or derivative figure with respect to place-bound social membership. Place-bound membership in a society is assumed as primary; secondary is the movement back and forth between social points. The 'emigrant' is the name given to the migrant as the former member or citizen, and the 'immigrant' as the would-be member or citizen. In both cases, a static place and membership are theorized first, and the migrant is the one who lacks both."
(p. 3)
"Within the dominant regime of economic kinopower, the figure of the proletariat is defined by the primacy of its 'free' mobility. The task of directing social motion under this regime of motion is not simply to redistribute migrant workers like passive objects (as they were under ancient or feudal power) but to influence their 'voluntary' submission to the kinetic imperatives of redirected expansion and contraction: elasticity. (...)
It is according to this 'silent kinetic compulsion' to mobility that migration scholars often unreflectively consider this time period to be the 'age of free migration.' The causes of migration are frequently studied according to the purely psychological and economic motivations of the migrants themselves as rational actors -Homo economicus. They migrate because of 'opportunities' (pull factors) and 'hardships' (push factors).
The danger in analyzing emigration as either 'free' or 'unfree' according to these psychologistic parameters is that it disguises the larger kinopolitical forms of expansion by expulsion required by social motion. It reduces the phenomena of migration to 'voluntarism' and obscures the real material and historical forms of human expulsion: such as the enclosures, capitalism, workhouses, and penal transportation."
(p. 105)
"Far from an identical 'orbit,' the nomads strive for a dynamic transformation of themselves according to the relative pressures of the environment. Without the possibility of sedentarism or the surplus of stored food, the nomads must continually launch and relaunch themselves back into movement. There is no stable ground to rely on, so the nomad must become its own ground in a continual oscillation of rigorous self-transformation and self-cultivation of pressure and counter-pressure."
(p. 134)
"... the form of power proper to the proletariat is resistance. Kinetically, to resist is to stand one's ground, stay back, or stop (sistere). Elastic social force compels the proletarian migrant to continually move according to the contractions and expansions of society. Thus, the proletariat's counterpower to this motion is to stop moving, to stay where it is.
Resistance is a form of social pressure, a ratio of continuous oscillation against a surface or barrier. Just as the English word 'strike' has two meanings ('to move against or hit' and 'to refuse to move'), so proletarian resistance similarly creates an artificial barrier or blockage in social motion and, in doing so, moves against the dominant form of social motion (territorial, political, juridical, or economic). Unlike centripetal, centrifugal, and tensional force, elastic force does not act directly on social subjects as passive objects or ind them to one or many centers of power. Rather, it simply drives and redistributes their 'free' motions. Thus, proletarian resistance takes a different form from previous migratory forms of counterpower. Against the economic silent compulsion to move, the proletariat refuses to move."
(p. 171)
"Vagabond or vagrant laws are juridically unique. While most crimes are defined by actions, vagrancy laws are defined by states of being. This language is already at work in fifteenth-century English legal documents directly naming criminal types of persons, such as 'vagabonds,' 'beggars,' 'homeless,' 'jugglers,' and 'minstrels.' Similarly, in France, vagabonds were named by the law but made by the action of the arrest, not by the action of the 'criminal.' As Tim Cresswell writes on the figure of the tramp, '[T]he threat of the vagabond and the tramp is a virtual threat, for they have not committed any crime above and beyond that which makes them a vagabond or a tramp.' The criminalization of vagabonds is thus anticipatory. 'The 'crime' of vagrancy,' as Cresswell continues, 'is importantly not a quality of an act a vagrant commits but a consequence of the application of rules and sanctions to an offender. Law and legal definitions created the legal type vagrant.' Vagrant laws are based on personal condition, states of being, and social and economic status. The criminal vagrant is the one who 'looks like' he or she may commit a crime. Thus, anti-vagabond laws are some of the most flexible tools for criminalizing all types of socially undesirable migrants."
(p. 207)
"Today, the nomad's form of kinetic counterpower is still the raid. Mexican migrants cross the border to gather resources and hopefully return home. If violence or conflict occurs along the way, it is not the primary aim of the raid: violence is only a secondary consequence of the raid. Today, as historically, the raid appears as theft only from the perspective of the true thieves: those who have centripetally accumulated, fenced the earth into territories, and excluded others."
(p. 225)
"[T]he figure of the migrant is not a 'type of person' or fixed identity but a mobile social position or spectrum that people move into and out of under certain social conditions of mobility. The figure of the migrant is a political concept that defines the conditions and agencies by which various figures are socially expelled as a result of, or as the cause of, their mobility."
(p. 235)
(p. 3)
"Within the dominant regime of economic kinopower, the figure of the proletariat is defined by the primacy of its 'free' mobility. The task of directing social motion under this regime of motion is not simply to redistribute migrant workers like passive objects (as they were under ancient or feudal power) but to influence their 'voluntary' submission to the kinetic imperatives of redirected expansion and contraction: elasticity. (...)
It is according to this 'silent kinetic compulsion' to mobility that migration scholars often unreflectively consider this time period to be the 'age of free migration.' The causes of migration are frequently studied according to the purely psychological and economic motivations of the migrants themselves as rational actors -Homo economicus. They migrate because of 'opportunities' (pull factors) and 'hardships' (push factors).
The danger in analyzing emigration as either 'free' or 'unfree' according to these psychologistic parameters is that it disguises the larger kinopolitical forms of expansion by expulsion required by social motion. It reduces the phenomena of migration to 'voluntarism' and obscures the real material and historical forms of human expulsion: such as the enclosures, capitalism, workhouses, and penal transportation."
(p. 105)
"Far from an identical 'orbit,' the nomads strive for a dynamic transformation of themselves according to the relative pressures of the environment. Without the possibility of sedentarism or the surplus of stored food, the nomads must continually launch and relaunch themselves back into movement. There is no stable ground to rely on, so the nomad must become its own ground in a continual oscillation of rigorous self-transformation and self-cultivation of pressure and counter-pressure."
(p. 134)
"... the form of power proper to the proletariat is resistance. Kinetically, to resist is to stand one's ground, stay back, or stop (sistere). Elastic social force compels the proletarian migrant to continually move according to the contractions and expansions of society. Thus, the proletariat's counterpower to this motion is to stop moving, to stay where it is.
Resistance is a form of social pressure, a ratio of continuous oscillation against a surface or barrier. Just as the English word 'strike' has two meanings ('to move against or hit' and 'to refuse to move'), so proletarian resistance similarly creates an artificial barrier or blockage in social motion and, in doing so, moves against the dominant form of social motion (territorial, political, juridical, or economic). Unlike centripetal, centrifugal, and tensional force, elastic force does not act directly on social subjects as passive objects or ind them to one or many centers of power. Rather, it simply drives and redistributes their 'free' motions. Thus, proletarian resistance takes a different form from previous migratory forms of counterpower. Against the economic silent compulsion to move, the proletariat refuses to move."
(p. 171)
"Vagabond or vagrant laws are juridically unique. While most crimes are defined by actions, vagrancy laws are defined by states of being. This language is already at work in fifteenth-century English legal documents directly naming criminal types of persons, such as 'vagabonds,' 'beggars,' 'homeless,' 'jugglers,' and 'minstrels.' Similarly, in France, vagabonds were named by the law but made by the action of the arrest, not by the action of the 'criminal.' As Tim Cresswell writes on the figure of the tramp, '[T]he threat of the vagabond and the tramp is a virtual threat, for they have not committed any crime above and beyond that which makes them a vagabond or a tramp.' The criminalization of vagabonds is thus anticipatory. 'The 'crime' of vagrancy,' as Cresswell continues, 'is importantly not a quality of an act a vagrant commits but a consequence of the application of rules and sanctions to an offender. Law and legal definitions created the legal type vagrant.' Vagrant laws are based on personal condition, states of being, and social and economic status. The criminal vagrant is the one who 'looks like' he or she may commit a crime. Thus, anti-vagabond laws are some of the most flexible tools for criminalizing all types of socially undesirable migrants."
(p. 207)
"Today, the nomad's form of kinetic counterpower is still the raid. Mexican migrants cross the border to gather resources and hopefully return home. If violence or conflict occurs along the way, it is not the primary aim of the raid: violence is only a secondary consequence of the raid. Today, as historically, the raid appears as theft only from the perspective of the true thieves: those who have centripetally accumulated, fenced the earth into territories, and excluded others."
(p. 225)
"[T]he figure of the migrant is not a 'type of person' or fixed identity but a mobile social position or spectrum that people move into and out of under certain social conditions of mobility. The figure of the migrant is a political concept that defines the conditions and agencies by which various figures are socially expelled as a result of, or as the cause of, their mobility."
(p. 235)
January 2, 2017
Kinopolotics- politics of motion. Brings together foucault, deleuze, harvey, and others to think territory, geography, and politics in motion
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews