Abstract
Border as Method responds to recent economic, geopolitical, technological and demographic changes commonly summarized under headings such as ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman), ‘neo-liberal globalization’ or ‘information society’ (Castells). The authors provide a finely-textured conceptualization of the increasingly varied contexts and dynamics through which migration and struggles around migrant experiences render borders ever more central places for understanding 21st-century life. They accordingly take the border as a central place in the global political economy. Social and cultural dynamics pertaining to historically shaped mobilities, transnational relations and the idiosyncratic forms of agency that emerge in their midst receive careful attention. The book situates itself within this increasingly diversified field of studies by seeking to sharpen the focus on migrant agency in contemporary social struggles, and by refracting this focus through the post-operaist debate around shifting relations of labour and capitalist accumulation.
At the beginning of the book the authors give a definition of what ‘border’ means to them and how they want to approach the topic. This also includes the introduction of the concept ‘border as method’. This phrase is conceived of as a research object and ‘site of struggle’ (p. 18) as well as an epistemological viewpoint. Under the label of fabrica mundi, Mezzadra and Neilson analyse how the world has been made by borders, which is hardly a new thought to geographers. The later chapters of the book introduce more innovative features as the authors first discuss and then challenge and broaden the Marxian idea of the international division of labour. To do so, they introduce their own concept of the ‘multiplication of labour’. In this way they depict how the frontiers of capital, (living) labour and borders are deeply intertwined. Further on, discussions of temporal borders, governmentality and sovereignty are covered. In the concluding chapters Mezzadra and Neilson bring their diverse analyses together by applying the viewpoint of ‘border as method’ and the concept of ‘multiplication of labour’ on subjectivity and translation. The last chapter focuses on translation in order to elaborate new concepts of the common, again with an emphasis on subjectivity. This is only fitting, as subjects in motion and border struggles are the common thread throughout the book.
The authors make considerable analytic and conceptual efforts to account for the multifarious ways in which borders and bordering practices have come to structure social life – far beyond classical demarcations of territorial boundaries – and in which, simultaneously, the ongoing subsumption of life by capital has produced increasingly heterogeneous forms of labour. In fact, the figure of ‘multiplication’, ‘proliferation’, ‘heterogenization’, ‘diversification’ of border regimes, labour as well as temporality runs through the book as another red – yet often dizzying – thread. This helps explain not only why the argument is complex in its reference but also why complexity and differentiation are themselves treated as inherently positive features of critical analysis. To this extent, Mezzadra and Neilson are far from alone. Where this book can claim some distinctiveness is, first, in the thoroughness with which the authors weave links to Marxist and Marx-inspired analyses of the constitution and re-constitution of labour power into their cultural riffs as well as into existing accounts of globalized processes of bordering; and second, in the sheer range of thinkers and approaches from every imaginable discursive and cultural background that are enlisted into the flow of argument. While the range of themes and issues the authors are at pains to articulate with each other over the course of the book is impressive, the narrative is also highly demanding to the reader, and – one feels inclined to say – to the authors. Postcolonial formations of geopolitics, transforming regimes of accumulation and class composition, racialized, gendered and classed power relations, complexified conditions of political mobilizing – these are just some of the key issues the authors set out to re-approach through their double focus on borders and labour.
They draw on diverse lines of research, from political philosophy, geography and anthropology, to postcolonial theory, feminism and Marxism, and use several topical examples and case studies from various social and geographical contexts to illustrate their arguments, continuously balancing between theoretical totality and ethnographic/empirical depth. The image of jugglers pushed to the limits of their skills comes to mind, keeping a dozen unevenly shaped objects in the air while floating on the sea. The dangers of this juggling act can be glimpsed in Chapter 6, where the complexities of exteriorization of refugee and migrant processing become an occasion to engage with notions of sovereignty and governmentality. The authors’ claim that sovereignty must be thought of as a ‘necessary supplement’ to governmentality in the context of border regimes, rather than as a form of power fundamentally at odds with governmentality, is not particularly original. At a more basic level, the argument is presented in such a kaleidoscopic flood of cross-references to other discourses that the authors only get around to offering definitions of governmentality and sovereignty near the end of the chapter despite relying on a basic understanding of them from the beginning.
We (the authors of this review who hail from various disciplinary, theoretical and thematic backgrounds) read Border as Method as an interdisciplinary reading group. Despite both its challenges and flaws, to each of us the book’s engagement with a vast array of debates, discourses, theories and political and geographical contexts raised different sets of questions, challenges and issues of concern/matters of interest which prompted highly stimulating and insightful discussions among the group as a whole. The book thus proves capable of inspiring and enriching cross-disciplinary debates as well as infusing fresh perspectives into critical and politically engaged research in human geography. This is enabled not least by the intimate connection between activist and scholarly traditions evident throughout the text. It is also important to keep in mind that many of the ideas presented are tied to the authors’ political engagements, not least in the context of migrants’ mobilizations in Genoa in 2001. Overall, the book will be most rewarding either for scholars already deeply immersed in advanced discussions of borders and migration or for larger collectives of the less thoroughly initiated.