De-presentify the border: Social imaginaries and mobility justice

Abstract

This paper explores the practices of solidarity with people in transit across various border areas of the Mediterranean, in Italy and in Tunisia. Grounded in cultural sociology, the study examines how social actors organize their mobility in the face of"necropolitical inhospitality" (Mbembe 2003). The text investigates the mechanisms of self-organization and dynamics of solidarity that enable migrants' movements, while also questioning the visions of the future that shape and are shaped by bordering processes. The paper delves into the "philosophies of history" born from the desire and practice of crossing the border, exploring how temporalities are conceived, what past is ingrained, and how the idea of "modernity as linear trajectory" is challenged. Theborder is conceptualized as a privileged context for investigating contemporary "horizons of expectation", where the non-mobility of some is governed alongside the hyper-mobility of others. The paper aims to critically engage with the promise of development for all, the contradictions of modernity, and the ways in which Europe's reluctance to assert rights is manifested at the border. By focusing on the border as a specific scenario of future-making, the essay explores the actions of disobedience to immobility and their implications as acts of "depresentification".