TY - JOUR

T1 - Regimes of Proof

T2 - On Contested Identities in Border and Migration Control

AU - Bescherer, Kelly

AU - Scheel, Stephan

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). International Migration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Organization for Migration.

PY - 2025/10/11

Y1 - 2025/10/11

N2 - The capacity to establish migrants' legal identities is key to states' attempts to control access to their territories. This paper introduces the concept of regimes of proof to shed light on this often-neglected aspect of border and migration control and related migrant struggles. Negotiations around legal identities play a central role in deportation, but also in migrants' access to rights and government services. At the current conjuncture, this tension has become particularly relevant: new digital means of identification such as biometric residency cards or the analysis of mobile phone data are rapidly being introduced across the globe to establish and fix migrants' identities and to determine their country of origin. Drawing on ethnographic research in West Africa and Germany, we consider the implications of shifting regimes of proof in the context of asylum, deportation and regularisation procedures to highlight the centrality of identification to all aspects of migration management.

AB - The capacity to establish migrants' legal identities is key to states' attempts to control access to their territories. This paper introduces the concept of regimes of proof to shed light on this often-neglected aspect of border and migration control and related migrant struggles. Negotiations around legal identities play a central role in deportation, but also in migrants' access to rights and government services. At the current conjuncture, this tension has become particularly relevant: new digital means of identification such as biometric residency cards or the analysis of mobile phone data are rapidly being introduced across the globe to establish and fix migrants' identities and to determine their country of origin. Drawing on ethnographic research in West Africa and Germany, we consider the implications of shifting regimes of proof in the context of asylum, deportation and regularisation procedures to highlight the centrality of identification to all aspects of migration management.

KW - border regime

KW - deportation

KW - digitisation

KW - identification

KW - migrant struggles

KW - regularisation

KW - Sociology

KW - Politics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105018707632&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111%2Fimig.70099

DO - 10.1111%2Fimig.70099

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 63

JO - International Migration

JF - International Migration

SN - 0020-7985

IS - 6

M1 - e70099

ER -