Autonomy of Migration Despite Its Securitisation? Facing the Terms and Conditions of Biometric Rebordering
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829813484186 |
| Author | Stephan Scheel |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Conference Articles |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
41(3) 575 –600
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829813484186
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MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies
Autonomy of Migration Despite
Its Securitisation? Facing the
Terms and Conditions of
Biometric Rebordering
Stephan Scheel
The Open University, UK
Abstract
This article reconsiders the concept of autonomy of migration in the context of technologically
ever-more sophisticated border regimes by focusing on the case of biometric rebordering. As
its name suggests, the concept of autonomy of migration’s core thesis proposes that migratory
movements yield moments of autonomy in regards to any attempt to control and regulate them.
Yet, the concept of autonomy of migration has been repeatedly accused of being based on and
contributing to a romanticisation of migration. After outlining two advantages the concept of
autonomy of migration offers for the analysis of biometric border regimes, I demonstrate that
processes of biometric rebordering increase the warranty of the two allegations, which feed
this major critique. Drawing on examples relating to the Visa Information System, I show that
processes of biometric rebordering alter the practical terms and material conditions for moments
of autonomy of migration to such an extent that it becomes necessary to rethink not only some
of the concept of autonomy of migration’s central features, but the notion of autonomy itself. In
the final section, I therefore point out some directions to develop the concept of autonomy of
migration as an approach, which is better equipped to investigate today’s struggles of migration
without being prone to the critique of implicating a romanticisation of migration.
Keywords
Autonomy of migration, biometric rebordering, securitisation, security dispositif, situated knowled ge
… there is an autonomy of emigration adverse to the politics of states and this accounts
for emigration as well as immigration. … Though myriads of experts and officials in the
administrative bodies of state institutions and international organisations are preoccupied
with emigration, they have no clue about this independence or autonomy of migration
flows. … One can counteract emigration with repressive means, ‘advance’ the return of
Corresponding author:
Stephan Scheel, Department of Political and International Studies (POLIS), Faculty of Social Sciences, The
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK.
Email: stephan.scheel@open.ac.uk
484186MIL41310.1177/0305829813484186Millennium: Journal of International StudiesScheel
2013
Article
576 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41(3)
immigrants, but one can not open or block the flows from one’s point of view and
programming.1
Since Yann Moulier Boutang postulated the hypothesis of an autonomy of migration,
scholars from around the world have tried – often independently from one another – to
develop it into a ‘heuristic model’2 to investigate and intervene in the struggles of migra-
tion.3 This article understands itself as a contribution to this ongoing undertaking. It
argues that the material terms and practical conditions for the emergence of possible
moments of autonomy of migration have changed significantly due to the increased tech-
nologisation of border regimes. Yet, the existing literature on the concept of autonomy of
migration (CAM) has so far not sufficiently acknowledged the impact of the technologi-
sation of border controls on the possibilities of migrants to appropriate what contempo-
rary border and migration regimes seek to deny them, namely: mobility and rights. What
has hindered the advocates of the CAM so far to take the technologisation of border
controls and its effects on migrants’ room for manoeuvre seriously is the misreading of
the interrelated securitisation of migration as a mere means for the economic exploitation
of migrant labour.4 This is why the CAM’s core hypothesis has been largely articulated
as an unqualified generalisation to date: moments of autonomy seem to emerge and oper-
ate within any border and migration regime irrespective of its legal, practical and tech-
nological composition.
1. Yann Moulier Boutang, ‘Interview’, in Materialien für einen neuen Antiimperialismus Nr. 5
(Berlin, Göttingen: Schwarze Risse/Rote Straße, 1993), 38. Emphasis in original.
2. Yann Moulier Boutang, ‘Europa, Autonomie der Migration, Biopolitik’, in Empire und die
biopolitische Wende: Die Internationale Diskussion im Anschluss an Negri und Hardt, eds.
Marianne Pieper et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007), 167.
3. Important contributions to this debate include: Yann Moulier Boutang, De l’esclavage au sala-
riat: économie historique du salariat bridé (Paris: Presse Universitaires de France, 1998); Sandro
Mezzadra, Derecho de fuga: Migraciones, ciudadanía y globalización (Madrid: Traficantes de
Suenos, 2005); Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method, Or, the Multiplication of
Labor (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Dimitris Papadopoulos, Niamh Stephenson
and Vassilis Tsianos, Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the Twenty-first Century
(London: Pluto Press, 2008); Transit Migration Forschungsgruppe, Turbulente Ränder: Neue
Perspektiven auf Migration an den Grenzen Europas (Bielefeld: transcript, 2007). Finally, it is
worth mentioning that the concept of autonomy of migration (CAM) has been popularised by
Negri and Hardt, albeit not in an unproblematic way: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
(Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 212–14.
4. While it is hardly disputed that migration has been securitised in the course of the
Europeanisation of migration policy, it is still contested how securitisation should be concep-
tualised. Benjamin Muller, ‘Risking It All at the Biometric Border: Mobility, Limits, and the
Persistence of Securitisation’, Geopolitics 16, no. 1 (2011). Thierry Balzacq has introduced
a useful distinction between ‘philosophical’ and ‘sociological’ approaches. The philosophi-
cal variant refers to the definition of securitisation as a performative speech act by political
elites, as put forward in the pioneering work of the Copenhagen School. Thierry Balzacq,
Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (London: Routlege,
2010). Following the sociological reading, this article understands securitisation as a
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