TY - JOUR

T1 - Migrant struggles and moral economies of subversion

T2 - mimicry and opacity

AU - Scheel, Stephan

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2025/5

Y1 - 2025/5

N2 - Border regimes are pervaded by moral economies that justify practices of regulation and control. This article attends to the moral economies that animate migrants’ struggles and related practices of subversion. Based on a reading of moral economies close to E.P Thompson’s original formulation of the concept, it investigates the norms and beliefs that are carried by migrants’ practices of appropriation. By showing that these practices are, from migrants’ viewpoint, just and legitimate insofar as they defend or restore traditional rights, customs and entitlements, the analysis destabilizes dominant framings of migrants as cunning tricksters. Moreover, the analysis of the moral economies of migrants’ border struggles allows to distinguish between two different logics of appropriation. To this end, I mobilize two figures of thought from postcolonial theory. First, Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry captures the logic of practices that repurpose mechanisms of control in ways that allow migrants to obtain a visa, asylum, or a residency title (subversion through documentation). Second, Eduard Glissant’s work on opacity enables us in turn to theorize practices of appropriation that rely on the creation of ambiguity and multiplicity to counteract authorities’ attempts to assign migrants a unique stable identity by means of biometrics (subversion of documentation).

AB - Border regimes are pervaded by moral economies that justify practices of regulation and control. This article attends to the moral economies that animate migrants’ struggles and related practices of subversion. Based on a reading of moral economies close to E.P Thompson’s original formulation of the concept, it investigates the norms and beliefs that are carried by migrants’ practices of appropriation. By showing that these practices are, from migrants’ viewpoint, just and legitimate insofar as they defend or restore traditional rights, customs and entitlements, the analysis destabilizes dominant framings of migrants as cunning tricksters. Moreover, the analysis of the moral economies of migrants’ border struggles allows to distinguish between two different logics of appropriation. To this end, I mobilize two figures of thought from postcolonial theory. First, Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry captures the logic of practices that repurpose mechanisms of control in ways that allow migrants to obtain a visa, asylum, or a residency title (subversion through documentation). Second, Eduard Glissant’s work on opacity enables us in turn to theorize practices of appropriation that rely on the creation of ambiguity and multiplicity to counteract authorities’ attempts to assign migrants a unique stable identity by means of biometrics (subversion of documentation).

KW - Autonomy of migration

KW - biometrics

KW - colonialism

KW - identification

KW - resistance

KW - Sociology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=86000448093&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/1369183X.2025.2461355

DO - 10.1080/1369183X.2025.2461355

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:86000448093

VL - 51

SP - 2648

EP - 2667

JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

SN - 1369-183X

IS - 10

ER -