Claudia Aradau and Sarah Perret attended the EISA-PEC 2021 this September, and spoke on the panel: Regimes of power/(non)knowledge in governing borders and mobility. They presented a paper that explores the heterogeneity of forms and imbrications of knowledge and non-knowledge as a production of a dissymmetric power relation at the EU Borders.
Focusing on the controversies related to the processing of asylum applications in the European Union, this presentation traced how two forms of non-knowledge – error and fakes - are enacted in public controversies about bordering practices, are entwined with power relations, and foster particular subjectivities. Errors have emerged in relation to border actors’ practices and technologies, while migrant practices, documentation and narratives are deemed to be potentially ‘fake’, ‘fraudulent’ or ‘false’. Aradau and Perret argued that there are important epistemic differences between ‘fake’ and ‘error’, that they are entangled with different techniques of power and produce highly differentiated subjectivities.
More information on the conference & panel:
14th PAN-EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS-EISA: THE POWER POLITICS OF NATURE
13-17 September 2021
17th Sept PANEL: Regimes of power/(non)knowledge in governing borders and mobility