Polina Manolova - (Re)bordering through Papers

(Re)bordering through Papers: Differential Inclusion in the Intra-EU Migration Regime
Research Factory, Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION

Polina Manolova, PhD (University of Tübingen)

Wed., June 01, 2022, 16:15-17:45

In this talk, I look at the relationship between migration governance, temporalities of ‘arrival’ and labour market precarity in the consolidation of a particular regime of subor- dinated inclusion of EU migrants. Drawing on ethnographic and activist research with an ethnically diverse group of Bulgarian migrants in Britain and Germany, I explore how a recent turn to politics of bureaucratic bordering in West European states unmakes the formal rights of EU citizenship and reduces incorporation to pathways of irregularity. The project takes up the methodological challenge to expand a narrow legalistic lens on migration governance by unpacking the everyday sites of contestation where migrants enact their claims for belonging and deservingness. Furthermore, my analysis reflects on the implications of bordering technologies for the disciplining of specific migrant subjectivities of ‘in-betweenness’ and their instrumentalization in reproducing the exploitative logics of East-West mobility.