Wednesday 15 March, 3-4.30pm

CORRUPTING BORDERS: Navigating ‘illegality’ and ‘deportability’ in Malaysia and Greece

Anja K. Franck (University of Gothenburg)

This research departs from two simple assumptions. The first, that people – no matter their social or legal predicament – will develop strategies aimed at increasing their room to maneuver. The second, that these strategies – when examined collectively – will have political consequences. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in Malaysia and Greece, this research project directs attention towards the various in/formal ways that migrants and refugees navigate securitized border regimes. In the Malaysian case, the study looks at how corruption, and particularly the practice of bribery, is used to avoid arrests in the context of urban immigration policing. In the Greek case, focus is placed on how refugees arriving to the Island of Lesvos use/claim administrative deportation orders as travel documents in order to counter involuntary immobility and secure onward journey towards northern Europe. Departing from these two cases, the research shows how corrupt and informal arrangements are not only important means by which migrants are able to secure entry, transit and stay in foreign territories, but also how these arrangements cofound and destabilize borders: influencing states’ ability to produce migrants as illegal and deportable subjects as well as the very logic, performance and efficiency of border enforcement regimes. In approaching migrants’ decisions, actions and non-compliance as performative of contemporary border regimes the study, as prompted by amongst others Collyer (2016), thus brings together an empirical examination of migrants’ everyday strategies and agency with theoretically and critically propelled scholarly work of borders and/as bordering practices.