Thinking beyond the Imposter: Gatecrashing Un/ Welcoming Borders

Abstract

This chapter interrogates the use of imposter as a way of rethinking social relations involving traditionally marginalised groups. In order to do so, this chapter revisits the case of migration management infrastructures and the challenges they pose for people on the move. By drawing on multi-sited ethnographic recollections, this chapter initially analyses instances where evaluators, rather than applicants, engage in faking practices. Subsequently, this chapter describes collective material practices employed by social movements to challenge the containment posed by state-infrastructures and to produce alternatives to it. Hence, state-infrastructures are reframed as ´gates´, paradoxically posing an invitation to participate in the modern project of human rights, but at the same time enacting its trespassers as unwelcome visitors. Gatecrashing is proposed as a better way to describe how engaging in crafting practices allows people on the move unexpectedly to trespass borders as sociotechnical ´gates´ of containment and to coexist with the un/welcoming paradox of border regimes.