Borders and Ghosts

What initiates migration movements? How can we understand the complex nature of these movements? How can we make visible the migrants' participation in and reshaping of the social world along the paths they move through? Nermin Saybaşılı, taking Jacques Derrida's concepts of "ghost" and "hauntology" as central to her research and utilizing a range of other contemporary theories, examines artworks and visual culture objects such as documentaries, films, and photographs that address migration movements and migrants. Through five different cases of haunting, Borders and Ghosts demonstrates that migration is not a problem in itself, but rather produced as a "problem"; how the problem is closely tied to border construction and border syndromes, displacement and exclusion, intolerance towards differences, and the realities of global production and economy. Yes, there are borders. But there are also ghosts that constantly haunt and violate these borders. Who knows, perhaps they are the true actors of the near future: ghost migration.