Im/Mobility, Power, and In/Visible Refugees

Abstract

There are, to date, numerous studies by academics in various fields on the current refugee crisis. However, only a few have made use of first-hand accounts narrated by refugees as an entry point for discussing human im/mobility and in/visibility. This paper, based on an interview with a young refugee, called I.B., and his creative work, goes beyond the day-to-day type of chronological refugee narrative and examines the research done by Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Frantz Fanon and Natasha King that has engaged in concepts of im/mobility, displacement, exile, migration, refugee, border crossings, power structures and resistance. This paper argues that refugees, by occupying an in-between space, are enabled to shed light on im/mobility closely intertwined with in/visibility.