Paper short abstract:

My paper aims at discussing the idea of a “global subjectivity” expressed by youth through the desire of “being modern” and at observing the clash with the normative classifications imposed through the European border apparatus.

Paper long abstract:

Border regime can be defined as a complex "apparatus" which stretches out the frontier into the daily life of citizens. Legislative, bureaucratic/administrative, securitarian and conceptual devices compose a set of instruments that produce specific forms of social and political experience. At the same time, at the southern shore of the Mediterranean a new sensibility is surfacing: youth are questioning the postcolonial social order through the claim to belong to a global community. This "claim to membership" (Ferguson) may be expressed through a political language (as in the case of the Arab uprising), but also through the self projection beyond the imposed boundaries. "Irregular migration", with its categories and discourses, is only one of the ways in which the right to mobility - in any possible sense - is affirmed and reclaimed. My paper aims at discussing the idea of a "global subjectivity" expressed by youth through the desire of "being modern" (by achieving mobility, consumption, self-improvement, communication, participation) and at observing the clash with the normative classifications imposed through the European border apparatus. I will discuss the mechanisms by which borders try to channel this strength into economically "productive" forms and ends up reproducing the marginalising processes operating in the countries of origin.