Specters at the Port of Entry: Understanding State Mobilities through an Ontology of Exclusion

摘要

This paper suggests that recent literature on the 'new mobilities paradigm' largely overlooks the role of state mobilities. It argues for the inclusion of state mobilities, and addresses a range of sites of study to build this case. These landscapes offer material expressions where state mobility can be examined. The paper then offers a sustained examination of the port of entry as a seemingly static and yet increasingly mobile expression of state infrastructure and power. The ports of entry under examination are all found in close proximity to the US-Canada border. The provisional nature of their appearance and disappearance highlights the dialectical spatial relations between mobilities and moorings, working simultaneously to conceal exclusion and shrink spaces of asylum. This concealment requires, in turn, an ontology of exclusion.