Description
That people exceed the boundaries of their envisaged emplacement in the world of states is typically presented as the ‘migration problem’, a problem that is only set grow due to new and persistent conflicts, the climate emergency and demographic change. While politicians argue about how to solve the asserted problem, people from ‘here’ and from ‘elsewhere’ necessarily live in relation, making (multiple) futures. This paper highlights how the problematisation of migration shapes hierarchies of migrant-citizen relationality. Using the Federal Republic of Germany as an illustration, it traces language requirements as technologies of futurity. Conceptually, the paper thinks through the production, significance and seductiveness of hierarchy in citizen-migrant relationality with a particular focus on how futurities are enabled and foreclosed. It will seek out openings to futures that disrupt dominant understandings of entitlement within and beyond immigration regulations.
