ABSTRACT
Critics may say that activists and scholars contradict themselves when they simultaneously pursue contingent possibilities and possibilia. It is inconsistent, they may argue, to ask the nation state to accommodate migrants by granting them domicile citizenship and simultaneously chip away at the state’s legitimacy to grant or deny rights to migrants. Critical scholars are well aware that the very concept of the migrant is a construct of international bordering practices in the first place. Being a “migrant” implies that one has crossed an international border. An interesting example of how migration is currently rethought is found in the notion of “autonomy of migration.” This notion suggests that migrants respond to border regimes trying to inhibit their migration in autonomous and creative ways. Autonomous migration consists of a dynamic relationship between people who are enacting their freedom of migration and the forces that seek to constrain this freedom.
