Abstract
Based on research conducted among EU border enforcement officials, this article embarks on a discussion about complicity and critical analysis within border and migration studies. The study of borders and migration in the context of the EU is a highly politicized issue, and several scholars have pointed out that critical research easily comes to serve into a “knowledge loop” (Hess, 2010), or play part in the proliferation of a “migration business” (Andersson, 2014). In this article, I will argue that in order to not reproduce the vocabulary or object-making of that which we study, we need to study processes of scale-making (Tsing, 2000) and emphasise the multiplicity of borders (Andersen & Sandberg, 2012). In the article, I therefore present three strategies for critical analysis: First, I suggest critically assessing the locations of fieldwork, and the ways in which these either mirror or distort dominant narratives about the borders of Europe. Secondly, I probe into the differences and similarities between the interlocutors’ and researchers’ objects of inquiry. Finally, I discuss the purpose of ‘being there’, in the field, in relation to ethnographic knowledge production. I ask whether we might leave behind the idea of ethnography as evidence or revelations, and rather focus on ethnography as additions. In conclusion, I argue that instead of critical distance, we as scholars should nurture the capacity of critical complicity.
Highlights
When I carried out research among border officials in the EU between 2015 and 2017, I experienced how I was at times recognized by gatekeepers and interlocutors as a knowledge producer who could feed into the “knowledge loop,” as ethnologist Sabine Hess (2010) has called it
Critical scholars have pointed to the study of illegalised migrants as “epistemic violence” (De Genova, 2002, p. 422), in that such study reproduces the categorisations of state actors
A hope that these other ways of portraying and telling the story can push for change by making the opposition against a system seem open-ended, instead of stuck in a ‘loop’ or ‘business.’ Through the article I have proposed that such change might come about if we as critical scholars nurture the capacity to bring together unlikely locations, objects, and questions, thereby moulding our objects of research in ways that connect differently from what we are normally presented with
Summary
When I carried out research among border officials in the EU between 2015 and 2017, I experienced how I was at times recognized by gatekeepers and interlocutors as a knowledge producer who could feed into the “knowledge loop,” as ethnologist Sabine Hess (2010) has called it. Social Inclusion, 2020, Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 169–177 control premises Did this precondition, mean that my research and analysis was bound to be absorbed into a ‘knowledge loop,’ bound to be rendered part of an efficiency strategy—and in which ways would that be a problem?. Based on such field research experiences, and on the questions arising from them, I will engage in a discussion about complicity and reproduction within critical border and migration. In the book Illegality Inc., anthropologist Ruben Andersson (2014) discusses these issues in terms of “complicity.” In his ethnography of the European border regime, he describes illegalised migration to Europe as a business that constantly adds fuel to its own engine; a business which, beyond state actors and migrants, involves many other actors, for instance academics, journalists, activists, populations, and private companies. We might be able to avoid the reproduction of the vocabulary, scales, or connections of that which we study, and we might be able to reposition our complicity
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