Shifting Borders, Shifting Political Representation

Ahlhaus, Svenja

Abstract

The current context of regressive border regimes challenges critical theory’s commitments. Can we still take recent legal and political practices as starting points for reimagining political norms and institutions based on a reconstruction of hidden emancipatory potentials? The chapter argues that critical border theory could benefit from recentering the idea of political representation, and especially from building on insights of the recent constructivist turn in representation theory. Understanding political representation as shape-shifting and constituency-mobilizing changes long-held assumptions about the spaces, subjects, and demands articulated in border politics. While this representative perspective has diagnostic advantages, it is unable to criticize the legitimacy of existing border regimes owing to its thin normative assumptions. Reconstructive approaches to border politics should therefore use the diagnostic tools of the recent representation scholarship without committing to their limited critical potential