International Collaboration | CFP | Precarious Migrants, Racial Borders and Liminal Margins

Precarious Migrants, Racial Borders and Liminal Margins

Guest Editors: Om Prakash Dwivedi, Binayak Roy and Mustafa Zeki Çıraklı 

CFP 

In this age of an increasingly globalized world, what do migrants, borders and margins mean? Migrants have different reasons to move from one place to another, and it would be naïve to see their movements entirely as a search for a home or a destination. In the same way, the nature of borders has undergone a radical change in the recent past. Borders have become more mobile and omnipresent, driven and controlled as they are by technological advancements. Also, migration cannot be located to any geographical location; in fact, it is informed by race, ethnicity, gender, class, education, citizenship status, nationality, sexual orientation, jobs, and other cultural constructs. It is, therefore, no wonder that migration, borders, and margins have always gained immense interest and inquiry in academia.

            Globalization has further ensured that migration is no longer a unidirectional displacement, rather it has acquired different forms, partitioning “people into locals and newcomers; nationals and aliens; residents and migrants; and the sedentary and the mobile.” (Iskander and Landau 2022) Likewise, Achille Mbembe conceptualizes the link between migration and globalization as “borderization” (2019). For Mbembe, borderization is the process by which certain spaces are transformed into uncrossable places for certain classes of populations, who thereby undergo a process of racialization.” (2019) The Othering of these migrants happens to be a regular feature of our global economy resulting in the rise of “the new xenophobia” (Khair 2016) That is to suggest, that the migrants are to be feared, evaded, denied entry, even erased since such figures threaten the very existence of the privileged class. The episteme of the new xenophobia willingly abandons alterity and inclusivity, dividing the zones into liveable and non-liveable, while ensuring that the distinction of the former remains protected, legitimized, and enforced by restricting the latter to the margins.

            Seen this way, these margins are not just sites of coercion and suspension, but also spaces of liminality and reconfiguration. It can be argued that margins are spaces of incremental violence as the form and speed of violence constantly keep changing and increasing. In fact, it often goes beyond our grasp. Additionally, economic precarity and legal fragmentation keep the margins in perpetual crisis. Hence, this special issue lays special emphasis on the various forms of precarity that migrants are subjected to. The social provenance of precarity is relevant to both the margins and the migrants because of the accentuated degree of vulnerability they encounter, facing as they do the changing forms of borders. Low-wage jobs, insecurity, slavery, indentured labour, illegality, and deportability become a defining feature of the migrants’ lives, and the political exclusion guarantees the nation-states to detain, surveillance and dispose of them (Menjívar & Kanstroom, 2013). One must also not forget the role of international brokers in the illegal supply of migrants to cater to the inhuman demands of the global labour markets. (Deshingkar, 2018). Seen in such contexts, precarity can be linked to the ways migration is controlled and shaped by immigration markets or regimes, thus reinforcing “the ongoing interplay of neoliberal labour markets and highly restrictive immigration regimes,” which is also conceptualized as “hyper-precarity” (Lewis et al., 2015).

Furthermore, it is also possible to envisage the margins as the points of “encounter”, in Deleuzean sense. So, “instability”, “insecurity”, and “vulnerability” may emerge as potential “flights of amor fati” or “driving force of creativity”, and it is equally important to consider the challenges and opportunities for both migrants and receivers. The discussions can be extended to reconsidering the “centre, order and margin” and to the re-interpretation of cultural re-integration under the shadow of job market competition, limited public services and shared environment that may trigger new societal frictions (Castles et al. 2014; Czaika & de Haas, 2013).

This special issue of the Journal of Narrative and Language Studies aims at examining and critiquing the xenophobic cultural tendencies that peril the migrants’ lives. The following questions are at the core of this special issue:

• How do we frame the precarity-migration nexus in the age of globalization?
• What is the relationship of brokers with the international labour market in the context of the ongoing precaritisation of migrants?
• In what ways do the institutions perpetuate inequality and violence in the migrants’ lives?
• What could be the epistemological frameworks for the precarious migrants to navigate and dismantle structures of power?
• How do we postulate an interventionist phenomenology of borders and migration in the increasingly globalized world?
• In what ways can the narratives of migrants, borders, and margins can also be sites of resilience and resistance?

The special issue aims to encourage theoretical investigations into topics that pivot around the themes of precarious migrants, racial borders, and liminal margins. We solicit articles that deal with the above-mentioned themes via literature and cinema. Scholars are invited to submit an abstract of 300 words that investigates the following issues that are not by any means exclusive:

• The new xenophobia
• Decolonizing borders
• Epistemes of open borders
• Incremental violence and migration
• Neoliberalism and precarious migrants
• Surveillance and migration control
• Migration technologies and border control
• Liminal margins
• Racial borders and necropolitics
• Racial climate and climate displacement
• Insurgent citizenship
• Resistance and resilience in migration
• Narratives of refugees and human rights
• Migration and environmental catastrophe
• Migration, precarity and agency
• Literary and cinematic representation of violence in the lives of migrants and refugees.
• Positive side effects of migration; opportunities for both migrants and receivers
• Cultural and discursive elements of “so-called” instability, insecurity and vulnerability
• Margins as the points of “encounter”, “flights of amor fati”, or “driving force of creativity”
• Precaritisation and environmental aspects
• Environmental racism
• Environmental justice

Timelines:

Abstract submission: January 10, 2025

Intimation of selected abstracts: January 31, 2025

Submission of full article: August 20, 2025

Publication of the Special Issue: April 20, 2026

Contact Editor: om_dwivedi2003@yahoo.com