Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2026
Not all those at the borders, such as tourists, migrants, or foreign nationals, are recognized as strangers; some will seem more 'at home' than others, some will pass through, with their passports extending physical motility into social mobility. There is no question posed about their origin. The stranger's genealogy in contrast is always suspect. The stranger becomes a stranger because of some trace of a dubious origin. Having the 'right' passport makes no difference if you have the wrong body or name: and indeed, the stranger with the 'right' passport might cause particular trouble, as the one who risks passing through. The discourse of 'stranger danger' reminds us that danger is often posited as originating from what is outside the community, or as coming from outsiders, those people who are not 'at home', and who themselves have come from 'somewhere elsewhere' (where the 'where' of this 'elsewhere' always makes a difference). The politics of mobility, of who gets to move with ease across the lines that divide spaces, can be re-described as the politics of who gets to be at home, who gets to inhabit spaces, as spaces that are inhabitable for some bodies and not others, insofar as they extend the surfaces of some bodies and not others. (Ahmed, 2007: 162)
Instead of flowing easily from one side of the border to the other and back, the bodies Ahmed describes above encounter friction. These bodies hesitate in interaction with borders, which frame them as strange when crossing, but strange in a specific way – the body does not match an assumed categorization made by the passport. Their genealogy, their locality, their place of home becomes suspect – a facet of simply being that they must negotiate in order to pass through.
As people migrate from place to place around the globe, more and more 'next generations' are born into a place where they both belong and do not belong – they are 'from' there, but also 'from' somewhere else.
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