Border Perspective: Migration Studies in Dark Times

This article interrogates the limitations and potentialities of migration studies during the current conjunctural crisis that is marked by the convergence of two dark forces: borderless wars that unsettle lives, produce death, and generate mass displacement, and endless borders that foreclose mobility for those seeking survival. The “darkness” does not refer to the horror itself, but to the ways in which horror is obscured, falsified, or misrepresented in public discourse. The urgent questions, then, are: What kind of knowledge do we need in times saturated by disaster and denial? Who needs migration studies now? This article reflects on both the limitations and the possibilities of producing knowledge about migration. I argue that part of the problem lies in epistemic darkening: a process through which migrants’ knowledges are obscured or reduced to evidence. One way to confront this problem is through a repositioning of perspective, what I call border perspective. Border perspective entails approaching the border from the standpoint of those for whom it is constructed. Such a repositioning is both an epistemological and a political necessity. Those who encounter the border do not a priori accept the “regime of truth” that underpins the border regime. Attending to their perspectives not only reveals the limits of dominant ways of knowing migration, but also opens alternative ways of understanding the dark conjuncture that shapes our present.