Collaborative essay, which joins a bundle of essay in a book on migration and data currently being printed at Nijmegen University. Expected summer 2022.

Abstract

The term “irregular” attached to “migration” or a “migrant” assumes the existence of regular migration and a regular migrant. However, who defines a process, person or activity as regular or irregular, and as migration or not migration, and migrant or not migrant? In this chapter, we unfold these terms in relation to actual bodies that move in relational space and time. We deploy research through relational autobiographical methods viewing our own histories alongside the practice of care of our current-day narratives. Our wish is to attend to the violent terminology of ‘ir/regular’ migrants’ through the act of sharing our collective biographies with the purpose of delegitimising the current language of irregularity used by the European Commission. We speak from the geopolitical body, claiming the right to our voice and practice by deploying poetics.