Borders and boundaries as resources for mobility. Multiple regimes of mobility and incoherent trajectories on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border

Relations between mobility and immobility, as well as between the spatial dynamics of migration and obstacles to mobility, are at the core of current debates in the fields of migration and border studies. This paper contributes an investigation into how different mobility regimes intersect with migrants’ life stories. The analysis draws on ethnographic research carried out in Mekelle (an Ethiopian city near the border with Eritrea), where different migratory trajectories and mobility regimes overlap. Mekelle is a place of arrival and return for Eritrean refugees and Ethiopian returnees, and is also a space of transit and departure for the migratory flows towards the Global North. By describing migrants’ manipulation of legal labels (to navigate their present lives in transit, and to plan their ways ahead to the desired destinations) the paper shows how borders are not only obstacles, but also can be used as resources for mobility. It is argued that these uses, should not be considered merely unlawful but activities entangled in complex social, emotional and political worlds and moral economies. From these insights, this paper questions static interpretations of mobility, shedding light on the intertwining of symbolic boundaries and legal labels in migratory trajectories, and cautioning against the use of concepts such as forced migration, refuge, transit migration and return migration.