Review of "Illegal' Traveler: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders"
By Michelle Carrere Seizer
In “'Illegal' Traveler: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders” anthropologist Shahram Khosravi uses his own experience of traveling from Iran to Sweden through Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as a thread to explore the multiplicity of borders, physical and metaphorical, involved in the migratory experience. Intertwining his journey with the experience of others he meets along the way, Khosravi portrays the limits between life and death, the shifting conceptions of home, the othering and alienating gaze of locals, and the relativity of Universal Human Rights in the framework of nation-states.
The preface and the coda of the book connect through images of death, the ultimate border. The preface provides a symbolic and a physical image. The first image is of the author crossing the border between Iran and Afghanistan in 1987. Through it, he depicts the death of the person he once was and the transformation, through one simple step, into an “illegal” person, whose life would not be the same again, even after obtaining legal status. The second image is of Fatemeh-Kian G.S., a 50-year-old Iranian transgender woman who dies by suicide in a detention center in Sweden after being denied asylum and proper care. The book finishes with Walter Benjamin’s suicide during the Second World War in the border between France and Spain. Both Kian and Benjamin suffer violence even after death, by being denied a proper burial, having been buried with a cross marking their grave, even though both were non-believers. These images symbolize the violation of their dignity that immigrants often experience, and the value that is given to “casualties” of migration.
The topic of death appears throughout the book and, quoting Achille Mbembe, is referred to as “necropolitics”. By this, the author refers to the way in which the border exposes irregular travelers to death (Khosravi, 2010, P. 28). Immigrant lives become an accidental casualty of borders, in them, the limit between life and death becomes diffuse, a matter of chance. Casualties are not desired but are tolerated as a sacrifice to the nation state and its sacredness. At the same time, the act of migrating involves a metaphorical death of the one that was, with every border crossing something is transformed and something is left behind.
“‘Illegal’ travellers find themselves at home in transit halls, while it is the opposite to home for all others. A transit hall is a nonplace, disconnected from local history, identity and culture” (Khosravi, 2010, P.65), through this image, the author illustrates the limbo situation that immigrants face, and which he experienced in his journey. The concept of home shifts, and in his case it seems to have disappeared, therefore he feels more at home in the in-between state of transit halls. In line with what Sara Ahmed proposes in Uprootings/Regroundings Questions of Home and Migration, “Experiences of exile, for example, are experiences of being out of place in one's body” (Ahmed, 2003, P. 11). When describing his crossing from Iran to Afghanistan Khosravi defines it as being “uprooted” and being out of place (Khosravi, 2010, P.24). At the same time, he describes exile as a state of “purgatory”, in similitude to what Ahmed proposes he states, “Exile is when you live in one place and dream in another '' (Khosravi, 2010, P.74). However the process of being regrounded is absent in the book. The author does not include the process of becoming a Swedish citizen and of finding his place in his new country, but instead highlights the in-between process and what makes him feel unwelcome.
At the same time, when he finally manages to visit Iran after his exile he does not feel entirely at home but instead feels like an alien. A reason for this is that he missed many milestones and cannot share all of his traumatic experiences with his family, but also because he failed to perform as a “good immigrant.” A good immigrant is someone who uses his opportunity to access the wealth of living in the West to become successful and help out his family. Pursuing a career in anthropology was not seen as good enough. The failure to perform as a good immigrant is what fills many people’s migratory experience with shame, and in many cases prevents immigrants from returning home. Such is the experience of Ramin, an Iranian friend Khosravi met at New Delhi, who he reunited with 13 years later in Amsterdam. Ramin was deeply depressed in his new home, but refused to go back since he had not achieve the “sufficient” level of success and was ashamed of this. Finally, the author also describes not feeling at home due to the racism he sees, in particular towards undocumented Afghans. His experience as an immigrant made him more empathetic towards others, but at the same time detached him from his hometown.
In his auto-ethnography Khosravi also illustrates metaphorical borders that dehumanize immigrants. Language is an important element. On one hand, in different languages animal terms are used to refer to the people crossing borders and to the smugglers that help them cross (Khosravi, 2010, P 27). Human smugglers are called “coyotes” in Mexico, “snakehead” in China and “sheep” in Iran; while border crossers are called “chicken” in Mexico, “human snake” in China and “skin of sheep” in Iran. The fact that some of these animals – chicken and sheep- are animals commonly used in sacrifices reinforces the necropolitics of the border, where human lives are offered to the sanctity of the nation-state
At the same time, the author describes the “border gaze” that makes it difficult for him to find home in Sweden, and makes him a victim of constant racial profiling. We see the idea of the border gaze in Grosfoguel’s “zones of being and nonbeing” (2015). In it, he elaborates on the characteristics attached to immigrants, even through generations, that prevent a sense of real belonging to the new country[M1] . Through these categories, people are deprived of their individuality but instead are objectified, read and classified through the colonial lenses of race, class and gender in terms of a society’s dominating stereotypes. Returning to the sense of limbo, the border gaze does not exclude “undesirable immigrants” but instead places them “on the ‘threshold’, between inside and outside” (Khosravi, 2010, P 77) and at times endangers their lives. Such is the case of when, in 1991, Khosravi was shot in the face by a racist in a series of xenophobic attacks.
The author also addresses the issue of human rights, or lack of thereof at the border. Quoting Hannah Arendt he declares that there is only one right, the ‘right to have rights’ and that this right, regardless of international treaties, can only be guaranteed in the framework of citizenship and being part of a political community (Khosravi, 2010, P 123). In line with this, refugees and asylum seekers are on the limit, they are dehumanized by their state of statelessness , they live on the border of human rights, exposed to necropolitics. Following this, Khosravi explores the concept of “hospitality.” In particular, the author explores how on many occasions it saved his life and how different nations interpret it. While some expel those who are different, others embrace them, but request that they leave behind what makes them different. In his final notes of the chapter, in line with Hannah Arendt, he suggests that democracies should be judged by how they welcome people who are different, and that true hospitality is the only way for humanity to have a future together.[M2]
In “'Illegal' Traveller” Shahram Khosravi challenges the idea of a “world without borders” by exposing the different borders, physical and metaphorical, that he, his fellow travelers, and the people he interviewed experienced. In his auto-ethnography he effectively explores how immigrants are dehumanized, objectified and denied their rights. However, he fails to portray their process of regrounding, when they finally feel at home in their final destination. Instead of focusing on his journey to becoming a Swedish citizen, Khosravi highlights all that prevents him from feeling at home both in Sweden and in his hometown in Iran. Even though he sheds doubt on the universality of human rights, he proposes embracing them in a sense of true hospitality as the alternative to creating a better world for all.