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Zusatztext "Hardly a day goes by without some reference in the media to the "problem" of migration. In offering a theoretical account of the figure of the migrant throughout history, Thomas Nail's book thus performs an important service for the interdisciplinary study of one of the most important subjects of our century. Carefully argued, well informed, hugely ambitious, and analytically precise, it will become a standard reference for years to come." Informationen zum Autor Thomas Nail is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. Klappentext Thomas Nail is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. Zusammenfassung At a time when more people than ever are being constrained to move for political, economic, and environmental reasons, this book provides a new political theory of migration, one based on the social primacy of movement. Inhaltsverzeichnis Contents and Abstracts Introduction chapter abstract The Introduction lays out the objectives of the book as a whole. Given the contemporary importance of migration, this book develops a political theory of the migrant. In particular, the aim is to overcome two problems: the migrant has been predominantly understood from the perspective of stasis and the state. If we want to develop a political theory of the migrant itself and not of the migrant as a failed citizen, we need to reinterpret the migrant first and foremost according to its own defining feature: its movement. This allows us to conceptualize the emergence of the historical conditions that give rise to the different types of social expulsion that define the migrant and to diagnose the capacity of the migrant to create an alternative to its social expulsion. 1 The Figure of the Migrant chapter abstract This chapter defines "the figure of the migrant" as a political concept that identifies the common points where mobile figures are socially expelled or dispossessed as a result, or as the cause, of their mobility. The movement of the migrant is thus not simply from A to B but the constitutive condition for the qualitative transformation of society as a whole. This chapter defines the migrant as a figure, which is not a fixed identity or specific person but a mobile social position. One becomes a figure when one occupies this position and may do so to different degrees, at different times, and in different circumstances. The figure of the migrant, for example, is like a social persona that bears many masks (the nomad, barbarian, vagabond, proletariat) depending on the relative social conditions of expulsion. 2 Kinopolitics chapter abstract The history of the migrant is the history of social motion. This chapter defines and lays out the logical structure of social motion or "kinopolitics," the politics of movement. Instead of analyzing societies as primarily static, spatial, or temporal types of entities, kinopolitics or social kinetics understands them primarily as "regimes of motion." Societies are always in motion: directing people and objects, reproducing their social conditions (periodicity), and striving to expand their territorial, political, juridical, and economic power through diverse forms of expulsion. This chapter introduces three key concepts to understanding social motion: flow, junction, and circulation. In this way, it is possible to ...
