Bodies Folded in Migrant Crypts: Dis/Ability and the Material Culture of Border-Crossing

Vasilis Galis, Spyros Tzokas and Aristotle Tympas
Additional contact information
Vasilis Galis: Technologies in Practice, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen 2300, Denmark
Spyros Tzokas: Department of European Civilization Studies, Hellenic Open University, Patra 26335, Greece
Aristotle Tympas: Department of Philosophy and History of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens 15771, Greece

Societies, 2016, vol. 6, issue 2, 1-11

Abstract: This article considers media narratives that suggest that hiding in trucks, buses, and other vehicles to cross borders has, in fact, been a common practice in the context of migration to, and within, Europe. We aim to problematize how the tension between the materiality of bordering practices and human migrants generates a dis/abled subject. In this context, dis/ability may be a cause or consequence of migration, both in physical/material (the folding of bodies in the crypt) and cultural/semiotic terms, and may become a barrier to accessing protection, to entering and/or crossing a country, and to performing mobility in general. Dis/ability and migration have not been associated in the literature. We adopt an analytical symmetry between humans and non-humans, in this case between bodies and crypts. By suggesting an infected, ambivalent, and hybrid approach to the human subject, the body-crypt traveling border challenges the essentialist dichotomies between technology and biology, disability and impairment. The articles and reports upon which we rely were collected through extensive searches of databases/archives of online newspapers and news websites.

Keywords: border-crossing; crypts; migration; dis/ability; narratives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/6/2/10/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/6/2/10/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:6:y:2016:i:2:p:10-:d:67530

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().