The ‘street politics’ of migrant il/legality: Navigating Malaysia's urban borderscape

Abstract

Immigration control constitutes a particular technique for regulating urban space and for controlling and disciplining migrant subjects within it. Unlike other manifestations of state power in exemplary urban settings, the architecture of urban immigration control is not recognisable through grand buildings or walls, but rather through its momentary presence and continuously shifting location: ad hoc identity controls in public spaces, roadblocks in neighbourhood streets or raids against workplaces. Building on fieldwork conducted in the Malaysian city of George Town, this article takes an interest in how migrants navigate this urban borderscape in order to avoid exploitation and encounters with the police. Read through Asef Bayat's notion of ‘street politics’, the article shows how migrants use the means (made) available to them in order to extend their room to manoeuvre. While such tactics are often driven by the force of necessity, they do nonetheless cumulatively encroach on the state's ability to produce migrants as (un)wanted or even (il)legal subjects in the city. Through this, migrants also challenge the very notion of what an exemplary urban space is as well as who is considered a legitimate part of it.