Samid Suliman

Mobility and the kinetic politics of migration and development

The basic claim of this article is that when the ‘migration-development nexus’ is conceived through a ‘mobilities’ lens, a different account of politics is possible. I refer to this different account of politics as ‘kinetic politics’, to denote that polity formations and political relations are not spatially determined (that is, by processes of boundary formation and relations that travel across these boundaries), but are constituted through movement as people come and go. I argue for a methodological reorientation towards understanding the kinetic politics of development, in order to apprehend the ways in which migrants and migrancy are implicated in the constitution of the polities through which ‘development’ is organised. The recognition of movement as a transversal political relation that cuts across territorial boundaries has implications for the ways in which development is analysed and pursued. I propose that this line of inquiry opens up space to think critically about whether or not formal political membership will remain tethered to problematic territorial and technocratic approaches to ‘sustainable’ development. Might there be space for thinking about migrancy as the basis for rights, and political community as inherently kinetic?

Rethinking about Civilizations: The Politics of Migration in a New Climate

Abstract In this paper, I will lay out some useful conceptual/theoretical markets that will help us to understand, and resolve, significant political challenges to ‘action’ on climate change migration. Thus, while this paper is concerned with climate change and migration responses, it is also concerned with understanding how we understand migration in the context of climate change, and how climate change forces a radical shift in such understandings. To do so, I pick up on the work of Robert W. Cox and push it in a different direction. In particular, I am interested in his work on civilizations, and how this civilizational account of world politics opens up space for thinking about climate change broadly, and climate change migration specifically. I argue that Cox’s account of ‘inter-civilizational’ politics helps us to solve a pressing analytical problem: how to rethink the coordinates of contemporary cosmopolitics in the ‘Anthropocene’, and reconsider the frames of analysis that we adopt to understand and respond to climate change migration. I demonstrate this by considering two distinctly different ‘civilizational’ accounts of migration and mobility in the Asia-Pacific/Oceania region (one territorial and the other maritime), and consider how these might reveal an important source of future change. By sketching out this approach, my intention is to mobilize the resources offered by Cox in order to further his project of envisaging alternative world orders, and post-hegemonic political relations therein.

Migration and Development after 2015

Abstract In this paper, I will interrogate the new ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs), with a view to understanding the place of migration therein. This analysis is undertaken for the purpose of anticipating (or forecasting) the unintended consequences of the inclusion of migration within this new development agenda. The key argument advanced in this paper is that the SDGs represent a normative framing of migration that sustains a problematic understanding of migration, and reproduces a vision of development that has long been implicated in the production of unequal and deleterious migrant mobilities. I show that while the SDGs redress the previous silence on migration in the Millennium Development Goals, they continue to normalize a problematic understanding of the role of migration in the global organisation of development. This will, in all likelihood, do little to transform the structural and political impediments to sustainable and equitable migrations, and thus deny the promises of development to many people on the move.

Mobilising a theory of kinetic politics

Abstract While mobilities research is cognisant of the need to theorise the politics of mobility, the extent to which a political theory of movement has been developed is debateable. In this paper, I develop a more substantive theorisation of movement as a constitutive political relation in light of the empirical advances generated by mobilities research. This account of kinetic politics is an important conceptual development that holds promise for the closer alignment of mobilities research with critical security studies, which in turn raises the possibility of a fuller understanding of movement in global politics.

Protest : analysing current trends

The politics of the twenty-first century is marked by dissent, tumult and calls for radical change, whether through food riots, anti-war protests, anti-government tirades, anti-blasphemy marches, anti-austerity demonstrations, anti-authoritarian movements and anti-capitalist occupations. Interestingly, contemporary political protests are borne of both the Right and Left and are staged in both the Global North and South. Globally, different instances of protest have drawn attention to the deep fissures which challenge the idea of globalisation as a force for peace. Given the diversity of these protests, it is necessary to examine the particular nature of grievances, the sort of change which is sought and the extent to which localised protest can have global implications. The contributions in this book draw on the theoretical work of Hardt and Negri, David Graeber and Judith Butler, among others, in order explore the nature of hegemony, the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the responses of authorities to protest and emotion and public performance in, and representation of, protest. The book concludes with David Graebers reply to reviews of his recent The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement. This book was published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

Occupation, colonization and dissensus: who are the 99%?

In spite of a set of central unifying claims, the Occupy movement has generated a powerful challenge to the hegemonic politico-economic order through the expressive and transgressive act of occupation. Through such an act, occupy (verb) has become transformed into Occupy (noun): a resistance politics concerned with (re)claiming physical spaces and creating representational spaces. Following on the heels of the popular uprisings characterized as the ‘Arab Spring’, Occupy seemed to represent – even embody – the moment of democratic reflexivity where, if only just for a moment, the cracks in the façade of liberalism opened up just a little further, exposing the bonds between the decades-old frustrations of postcolonial subjects and the shattered hopes of democratic citizens. Occupy irrupted into the sacred space of global capitalism, and spread from Lower Manhattan to town squares and city centres the world over. However, while Occupy appears to possess some form of popular legitimacy, evidenced by cross-sectional participation and claims of sodality and solidarity with others struggling all over the world against global inequality and injustice, its overall trajectory seems to sit uneasily with other claims for emancipatory postcolonial politics. In October 2011, the grassroots Maori women’s association Te WhaaingaWahine issued a missive: ‘An open letter to the Occupy Movements of Aotearoa/NZ’. The letter, whilst affirming a position of solidarity with the Occupy movement, expressed deep concern over the notion of occupation-as-resistance. Their grievance stems from the continuing experience of colonial occupation endured by these women as (post) colonial subjects. The letter urges the Occupy movement to move beyond the narrow politicoeconomic framing of their protest, and asks them to instead consider the enduring legacies of the colonial encounter that are hardwired into the contemporary global order. On one hand there is Occupy, an emancipatory movement with universal aspirations; on the other there are all those whose lands were occupied, and whose life-worlds continue to be structured by occupation-as-rule. This disjuncture between Occupy and occupation impels us to think deeply about questions of representation in struggles against inequality and injustice, and whether the cry ‘we are the 99%’ actually drowns out a much more diverse range of voices calling for a more just world order. The Declaration of the Occupation of New York, the movement’s first clarion public statement, was accepted by the New York City general assembly on 29 September 2011. This document does not make any demands; it lists a range of grievances levelled at political and economic elites who are believed to have robbed many of livelihoods and futures. Though it

Global development and precarity: a critical political analysis

ABSTRACT Precarity as a concept has come to be conceived as a distinctive experience of neoliberal development, especially in the European context. The experience of precarity, according to some, has influenced efforts aimed at living otherwise from the precepts of neoliberal development. Yet, for others, precarity is producing a ‘new dangerous class’. However, despite different perspectives of the effects and implications of precarity, the analytical purchase and political utility of the concept has received insufficient attention. In this article, we hope to contribute to critical debates on the limitations of ‘precarity’ as a concept for critical political analysis. We argue that in the dominant use of precarity as an analytic of inequality, particular experiences are rendered as historical universals. Consequently, these (particular) experiences are disconnected from global social and political relations of inequality, while at the same time reinforcing a linear and reductionist conception of development. We demonstrate that the temporal scheme represented by the notion of the ‘age of post-Fordism’, which serves as a crucial marker of the explanatory framework of precarity (in Europe), actually misconstrues the politics of global development through inequalities. Moreover, the tendency to focus on subjectification as conditioning the formation of a ‘new’ dangerous class, entails far-reaching omissions of actual transnational political struggles against domination and inequality. Instead of precarity, a critical engagement with the politics of global development ought to be the subject of analysis for understanding contested relations of affluence, insecurity and inequality.