The Doctrine of Fragmentation–Reconstitution in Visa Classes, Accumulation, and the Socio-Political Value of Migrant Governmentality

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-8-2025

Publication Title

International Migration

Abstract

Migrants often say their ‘visa is being processed’. The person on a visa to work, study or seek entry for asylum does not carry themselves intact into the lives that follow: restrictions, temporariness and dependencies shape migrant lifeways in profound ways. Building on critical migration and feminist perspectives on accumulation and migrant governmentality, this paper utilises insights from research on work visas to conceptualise how visas and the larger order of visa classes mobilise a doctrine of fragmentation–reconstitution that evacuates vital forms of autonomy from migrants and reassembles them into particular value-productive, governable subjects. Specifically, analysis of US visa classes theorises here the concurrent accumulation of multimodal value, constituted by: labour subordination (economic value), the making of definition and visibility (optogenic value), alongside classificatory knowledge about migrants (epistemic value) and disciplinary power distributed to institutions, such as farms, companies or universities, that is, where migrants become subjects of governmentality (political value).

Volume

63

Issue

6

First Page

e70108

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