The Passport

Abstract

This chapter explores the passport both as an object of concern for international law and as an object that has been shaped through international action and institutions. It unpacks this dynamic relationship along four registers: first, as a historical object that functions as a technology of statecraft and emerged with the consolidation of the modern territorial nation state; second, as an object of government that works towards the control of individuals, the construction of border regimes and the global segregation of populations; third, as a jurisprudential object that crafts a particular juridical human; and finally, as an object of resistance taken up in political struggles to challenge the nation state’s asserted monopoly on territorial authority. Along each of these registers, the passport as an object of international law offers insight into the history and ontology of international law as well as the regimes, epistemologies and material practices of its institutions and actors, revealing how the deeply state-centric order produced through international law regulates human mobility and identity.

Keywords: international law, migration, borders, passport, human mobility