'Illegal' Traveller

This was an interesting read from start to finish. The auto-ethnographic framing provides a hands-on perspective to questions easily dismissed as too theoretical, far-fetched or even general (as in being able to apply to all and anyone who has ever felt displaced) to have relevance in discussions on migration and refugees, as well as racism and nationalism.

The border as intertwined between the imagined communities of nations is something Khosravie doen't really discuss explicitly until the latter part of the book, but it's nonetheless present throughout the entire text. Crossing - or rather entering - it, transforms the human and displaces her to outside a world where nationality defines her very existance and thus strips her of her (human) rights.

Leaving is easy. It's entering that's at the root of the problem. I appreciate the way Khosravi manages to navigate through immigration policies and the often atrocious handling of refugees without getting caught in the sort of resigned moralizing so common when discussing these issues. Instead, the bureaucracy of immigration services and border control, as well as the rituals of border crossing (not rarely involving bribes and/or sexual violence) are discussed as inevitable, albeit tragic, consequences of the existance of borders in themselves.

The notion of home, he reflects, is also the notion of having the right to define who has the right to enter that home; who is welcome and who is not. And the notion of being an "illegal" traveller is in that same logic the notion of being bereft ot that right - of having no home and thus being at the mercy of those that have homes. This said as a manner of speaking. Khosravi - between the lines, at least, implies his own sense of homelessness in Sweden, even though he has been granted asylum, has a home and a job there. Even formally a swede, he still suffers that homelessness as someone having been "let in". Immigration policies revolve in that sense around "letting the right one in" - a perhaps subconscious nod to the vampiric myth that says it (the vampire/other) cannot enter a home (or nation) unless invited, baked in with the immigrant as a symbol/cause for the downfall of nations; an entity that threatens to suck the lifeblood from the people already living there if invited.

During the course of the book, Khosravi also uses the term "necropolitics" in describing the terms under which these people live during their time as "illegal" travellers. He also describes societies as being either anthropophagic (cannibalistic) or anthropoemic (vomitory) in regard to their imimgration policies. The former bears recemblance to a strictly assimilating policy, where the immigrant - those aspects that make her stand out as an other - are devoured by the welcoming society, while the latter focuses on ejecting unwanted entities by either sending them away or incarcerating them.

All in all, an interesting read. I have not mentioned everything I take with me from this book, but this should be enough to make you want to tead it too, I hope.