Nail argues that traditionally we associate “stasis” with success. “Place-bound membership in a society,” writes Nail, “is assumed as primary.” Migrants, as individuals who lack “a static place,” are instantly designated “failed citizens.” This mindset has impacted the way we see and study migrants and human migration in that it instantly designates these individuals as “lesser” because they “belong nowhere.”
Migration, no matter the time period in which it is occurring, stems ultimately from the same thing: expulsion. Nail explains this concept as critical in the study of migration for it moves migration as a subject from the historical to the social. This is to say that migration ultimately exists as a social phenomenon based on the reality that humans forcibly remove other humans. Nail explains that history traditionally is told from the perspective of the state. Seeing that states define history, the stories of the stateless (migrants) are often left out or deemed unimportant. Nail notes Hegel in this argument, quoting that “In world history . . . we are concerned only with those peoples that have formed states [because] all the value that human beings possess, all of their spiritual reality they have through the State alone.” Seeing that historically the state is the only source of significance for people in a historical sense, the migrant has historically been labeled as an individual devoid of any significance.
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AuthorStudent at the University of Washington, Sophie Aanerud, will be studying abroad in Berlin, Germany. Here are some of her thoughts . . . Archives
August 2017
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