Paper short abstract:

I use experimental methods combining ethnography and digital tools to explore alternatives narratives of migration. I argue for a potential line of inquiry exploring the (dis)encounters between STS and decolonial feminisms, to reflect on how we envision and imagine the future of STS research.

Paper long abstract:

Building on STS critical research in the field of border/migration, I use experimental methods combining ethnography and digital tools to explore alternatives narratives of migration. How to gain a better multimodal understanding of those relations unknown by borders? How to make graspable those lived experiences that fall beyond our understanding of borders and migration? And how can STS and digital methods participate in this transformative process? 

For partially answering these questions, I pay attention to a set of frequent material practices in contexts of migration control: handcrafting by people on the move. I thereby present/demonstrate 2 ongoing digital experiments tracing the trajectories of handicrafts and the lived experiences of different actors around them. Based on preliminary ethnographic work, I draw on the feminist decolonial work of Maria Lugones and her notion of "Tantear", a productive unknowing that allows individuals to make sense of themselves, each other, and their praxis beyond predetermined understandings or fixed visions of their identities and the future. I articulate this notion to reflect on the politics of STS, the relations we build in the field, and the tensions of transforming the way we understand “knowledge-making” in contexts of migration control, among other topics.

STS informed digital experiments with handicrafts, I claim, allows “tantear” back and forth in time and space beyond borders. I therefore argue for a potential line of inquiry exploring the (dis)encounters between STS and decolonial feminisms, to reflect on how we envision and imagine the future of STS engaged research.