Design Politics of the Passport

Mahmoud Keshavarz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Engaging Vulnerability Research Program, Uppsala University, Sweden.

• 1. Introduction: Design, politics and the mobility regimeThe politics of design and the design of politicsBeyond a representative deviceMobility regimes: practices, performances and articulationsTravellers without the ‘right’ papersPassport situations2. HistoriesHaving the ‘right’ paperThe danger of moving actorsKnowing the unknown at distanceThe agent of empireTechnologies of racialization and genderingStateless by passportRedesigning by stampsPassports of the unitedSame technologies, different power3. PowerObjectsPolitical ecologiesBodiesTechnologiesEconomiesInterfacesManipulations4. PassportingMaterialitiesI: how thick is your passport? II: If one can make a passport, one can remake it tooSensibilitiesI: I have not seen such a passport before! II: today, you are going to be a South Korean! Part-takingI: I am a citizen now! II: I have flushed down my passportTranslatingI: where does this passport come from? II: who speaks Hebrew? 5. DissentCriminalization of migration brokeryDifferent brokers of the mobility regimeMigration brokers of the world, unite! We police the policeForged passports as material dissentsCritical designers of the mobility regimeThe violence of material critique6. The design politicsAn articulatory practiceVulnerability of designEthics of design NotesReferencesIndexAcknowledgements

Mahmoud Keshavarz’s original and evocative book, The Design Politics of the Passport, blasts conventional design studies out of the water, brilliantly exposing design’s role in making a world that contains and controls certain subjects more than others.