Desperate passage: violent mobilities and the politics of discomfort

Journal of Transport Geography 19 (2011) 1046–1052

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Desperate passage: violent mobilities and the politics of discomfort Craig Martin Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords: Violent mobilities Paul Virilio Desperate passenger Capsularisation

a b s t r a c t This article addresses the ongoing debates on the politics of migration. In particular it investigates the turbulent mobilities of the ‘desperate passenger’ as a means to position the role of corporeal passage within this debate. It argues that forms of desperate passage differ markedly from other forms of corporeal mobility due to the limitations of choice. Given that undocumented migrants are ‘locked out’ of legitimated mobility networks, alternative forms of movement are often necessitated, in this case the infiltration of non-corporeal networks such as the underside of lorries. These acts of desperate mobility are used to discuss the inherent ‘violence of speed’ as outlined by Paul Virilio (2006a,b). In contrast to the protective, capsularised mobilities of legitimated passengers, it is suggested that the desperate passenger has to enact such violent mobilities in order to reach their destination. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction A recent BBC television news report (BBC News, 2009a) featured the apprehension by Customs officials of eleven Afghan undocumented migrants at the Port of Dover in the United Kingdom. Discovered in a lorry carrying goods from Poland, these men were travelling in an environment of extreme sensory and physical deprivation that lay outside of the established expectations and networks of corporeal mobility. Given that they boarded the lorry only 5 h earlier at Calais they were more fortunate than the many individuals who perish in similar circumstances (Carrell, 2008; Steglich, 2000). Instead of the comforts afforded to those individuals deemed ‘legitimate’ to travel, these desperate acts of mobility take place without the necessary sanitation requirements, without light, without rights. Due to the various forms of migration necessitated by economic or political uncertainty, the chance of birthplace or, more starkly, the increases in human trafficking, the circumvention of traditional modes of ‘passengering’ in environments of extreme physical and psychical depravity are often the only means to reach safety, or indeed a life of further precarity (see Waite, 2009). By boarding the lorry at Calais bound for the Port of Dover this example not only exemplifies the strategic importance of the sites of interconnection in the global transport networks (Graham and Marvin, 2001), but more tellingly it points to the unorthodox modes of transit that undocumented migrants have to appropriate in order to circumvent the securitising gaze of border authorities, as well as harnessing the motive speed of such networks. Both the network itself and the ‘vehicles’ are sites and spaces of capitalist flow, but, as I suggest in this paper, these

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are also the entrance points for the performance of desperate, precarious mobilities. Critically the actions of undocumented migrants highlight the way in which differing mobilities interconnect, fostering Adey’s point that, ‘‘while everything might be mobile, mobilities are very different, and they also relate and interact with one another in many different ways’’ (Adey, 2006, p. 83). Using this example as a starting point, in this paper I attempt to situate the regimes of passengering within the context of ‘illegitimated’ mobilities. In doing so I try to argue in favour of a more complex constitution of how the passenger, in this case the undocumented migrant, is caught up in the ‘violence of speed’ that Paul Virilio identifies (2006a). Rooted in the military domination of space, movement is a form of violence in its utilisation of organisational power to implement strategic gain (Virilio, 2006b, p. 62). In singling out the ‘violence’ of accelerated mobilities my intention is to stress the relationship between the perceived technological surety of contemporary conceptions of capitalist flows (see for example Friedman, 2005) and the exclusion of specific peoples (and things) that are deemed to be outside of the normative demarcations of legitimacy. Through their disqualification from the rights to mobility such peoples have to resort to being taken up in the violence of speed, utilising a form of parasitic harnessing that is fraught with danger (see Serres, 2007). As will be outlined, such parasitic acts do not imply a simplistic conception of one-way reliance, but serve to reveal the inherently parasitic necessity of all mobilities: by this I suggest that the development of transportation networks display a parasitic reliance on the natural contours of land or as Virilio describes, a form of zoophilia (Virilio, 2006a, p. 39), where the genealogy of military speed rests upon the harnessing of animal (and then machinic) motive force. The geographies of the desperate passenger represent the tangled networks of mobility, where the movements of commodities

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and people collide. In the case of undocumented migrants evergreater attempts are made to secure the potential sites of infiltration, given that recent reports estimate some 800,000 people are annually smuggled across borders (Bhabha and Zard, 2006, p. 6). It is clear, however, that a contradiction lies at the heart of attempts to securitise such acts of infiltration. There is a paradox at the drive for efficiency on the one hand, and distaste, on the other, at ‘illegitimated’ individuals attempting to utilise the interconnections and efficiencies of such networks (Dillon, 2005, p. 3). The drive toward efficient flows of trade that exemplifies the spatio-temporality of capitalism parallels the attendant entrenchment of sovereign boundaries and specific claims surrounding the illegality of undocumented migration. As such the strategies to promote free trade facilitate the parallel mobilities of undocumented peoples through a heightened desire to participate in the ‘promises’ of neo-liberal capitalism (Kumin, 2000, p. 19). To consider the relationship between differing forms of mobility I employ the central ‘character’ of the ‘desperate passenger’, a figure who is thrust-up in the violence of global flows. Although aware of the overt generalisation of this characterisation I endeavor to use this personage to conceptualise the relationship between lawful global mobility networks and their infiltration.1 By focusing on the critical mobilities of the passenger in a wider sense I hope to outline how the efficiencies of global spatialities are part of the violence of accelerated capitalism that results in a ‘politics of discomfort’ for the desperate passenger.

2. ‘Taking-up’ the journey of the desperate passenger The desperate passenger differs profoundly from the cosmopolitan business and tourist elites that typify contemporary global citizenship (Urry, 2000, p. 163). Instead of possessing the rights and ability to move freely across international borders (Torpey, 2000) the desperate passenger has to negotiate a very different range of mechanisms. According to Castles it is difficult to ascertain the various forms of migration due to the increasingly blurred lines between undocumented migration, the use of smuggling networks by individuals and the implications of forced migration in the form of human trafficking (Castles, 2003, p. 15).2 The desperate passenger as used in my own argument is intended as an overarching moniker that covers those individuals propelled into violent mobilities through economic deprivation, political upheaval or indeed the forced migration necessitated by large-scale industrial development. The term is also intended to represent forms of voluntary migration for economic gain, as well as the growing threat of the exploitative forced migration of sex trafficking. In relation to the constitution of contemporary capitalism Castells highlights the contradictory nature of the link between migration and capitalism; although global capitalism promotes a culture of economic abundance, the movement of people seeking greater surety is highly securitised. As a partial result of this, he argues, we see the increased desire to migrate for economic stability and also the growth in illicit practices of people smuggling (Castells, 2000, p. 179). Similarly Geddes asserts that the policies of various western states ‘‘can actually contribute to the perception of a migration crisis because being ‘tough’ fuels new evasions such as those offered by traffickers and smugglers’’ (Geddes, 2005, p. 330), a situation that relies on the use of irregular mobility networks. It is clear from these arguments that capitalism produces 1 Inevitably this approach is speculative, however I concur with Thrift’s assertion that social theory is ‘‘an art of controlled speculation, not [. . .] a faithful rendition of what may be going on, as if that were indeed possible’’ (Thrift, 2008, p. 255 no. 3) 2 Indeed such blurring may also be ascribed to the illegibility of the experiences encountered by desperate passengers. Whilst there are extremely valuable ethnographic accounts (see Courau, 2003) my own approach does not claim to articulate the specificities of such experiences.

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its own shadow mobilities, indeed for Bhattacharyya there is a direct correlation between sanctioned commodity networks and global criminal activities (Bhattacharyya, 2005, p. 32). In terms of transport infrastructure we see, for example, how the standardised commodity networks of containerisation provide the means to smuggle tobacco through the parasitical harnessing of both systemic functionality alongside the potential adaptation of the shipping containers themselves with the construction of false floors (HM Treasury/HM Revenue and Customs, 2006, p. 13). The common thread that links the various desperate passengers is the lack of legal right they have to their own mobility (and thus identity, according to Urry, 2000, p. 49) through dint of circumstance. This highlights perhaps the most critical factor in the debates on the mobilities of various individuals: the choice of when to move, the ability to do so, and the specific mobility networks that are utilised. Choice, as the supposed freedom of liberal capitalism, suggests the affordance of the right to move at will. Cresswell (2006, p. 256) notes how Bauman’s work on the vagabond and the tourist exemplifies the divergences in the ability to move.3 For although Bauman may argue that ‘‘nowadays we are all on the move’’ (Bauman, 1998, p. 77), there are clear qualitative differences. The cosmopolitan mobilities of legitimated individuals mask the struggles to move for reasons of political turmoil or natural catastrophe. Thus articulating the asymmetrical networks of mobility, where one group are provided with the means to travel without impediment and in circumstances that provide necessary forms of comfort; the other impeded in every movement they attempt to make, and as I maintain in this paper, the comforts afforded legitimated passengers are absent.4 Bauman (1995, p. 95) accentuates the value of push and pull factors as measures of mobility, most tellingly again in regard to the vagabond and the tourist.5 The tourist speaks of impatience, informed by the ‘pull’ of novelty and the experiences offered by the far-off. They appear to move on purpose, with the comfort of knowing that they can return to the safety of home when they so choose. Their mobility is cushioned by a proliferation of safe, ‘‘well marked escape routes’’ (Bauman, 1995, p. 96) that furnish the tourist with a form of protective cocoon, both physically and emotionally. There is, to use Cresswell’s phrase, a ‘‘voluntarism’’ of sorts (Cresswell, 2006, p. 256). However, the question of the freedom to move emphasises an altogether different situation for the desperate passenger. For the desperate passenger the issue of purpose becomes a decisive one—theirs is a desperate need to escape, or more critically an ‘in-voluntarism’ in relation to human trafficking. The routes of escape or forced transit for the desperate passenger are markedly different to those offered to the tourist. Often these are not routes designed for corporeal mobility but instead are intended for alternate forms, including commodity flows. Such routes lie outside of the normative codings of corporeal mobility altogether and are fraught with intense danger, including death (Chrisafis, 2009, p. 12). As we saw with the introductory example (BBC News, 2009a) the desperate passenger has to rely on multifarious tactics to illicitly cross borders through the infiltration of various transport networks. These include stowing away on cargo ships (Carrell, 2008; IMO, 2009); the underside of lorries (Chrisafis, 2009, p. 12; Kenyon, 2009); the wheel wells of aircraft (New York Times, 1993, p. 33); inappropriate small-scale sailing vessels (BBC News, 2009b); or railway freight trains (Scarpellino, 2007, p. 330). The final instance concerns the movement of undocumented migrants travelling from

3

See Urry (2000, p. 29) on the metaphorical status of Bauman’s ‘characters’. Asymmetrical networks of mobility are not only played out in the politics of migration, but also through class. As is clear, the rights and ability to move are conditioned by social class, often exemplified by the power relations of vehicular design and layout (see Letherby and Reynolds, 2005, p. 43–46). 5 For further discussion of push and pull factors in human smuggling and trafficking see Bhabha and Zard (2006, p. 6). 4

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Mexico to the USA, a relatively short journey in comparison to the often lengthy, chaotic and traumatic journeys through Europe of Afghan or African migrants for example. In one case a 15 year-old Afghan boy journeyed for over one year to reach the UK, travelling through Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy, then finally through France by train. As Chrisafis suggests, the last part of the Afghan’s journey—crossing the English Channel—proved equally as troublesome as the rest, with five attempts in one week to stowaway on the underside of lorries, only to be apprehended by security patrols (Chrisafis, 2009, p. 12). Similarly there have been numerous media reports of stowaways onboard intercontinental aircraft, with the most precarious mode being the use of aircraft wheel wells. In 1993 the New York Times reported the story of a 13 year old Columbian child who was found alive after tumbling out of the wheel well of a cargo plane at Miami airport (New York Times, 1993, p. 33). The report speaks of the child being covered in frost after the 1000-mile journey, with only the fact that the wheel well was pressurised enabling his survival. 3. Harnessing-force Such examples, indicative of the horrific circumstances of desperate forms of passage, also evince the strategic importance of the vehicles infiltrated in the attempt to make journeys across international borders. Strikingly they also underline the significant role of invisibility: of being concealed from the securitising gaze of state authority. The role of concealment is a practical solution utilised by individuals and smuggling gangs to counter the increases in the policing of commodity networks (Cowen, 2010). That said, commodity networks provide comparatively easier points of infiltration in terms of the potential affordance of invisibility and concealment, however, when compared with traditional corporeal transport networks there is, of course, the concomitant increase in danger. In this situation the mode of passage for the desperate passenger is premised on a form of parasitic movement, where the connected mobilities of ‘legitimated’ networks are harnessed. Tactically we see how this is achieved through the stowing away on the underside of lorries, or in shipping containers—vehicles locked into global mobility networks. These trajectories can be said to rely upon a form of harnessing-force—the motive force of commodity networks is used for unintended forms of corporeal mobility. Central to this is the production of mobility: where the speed of accelerated late Modernity emanates from. As already alluded to, the relation between legitimated and illegitimated modes could be read through the parasitical relations between host and guest. Although such relationships can be seen as positive (see Zaman, 2005, p. 91) the typical conception of parasitic relations is one of exploitative dependency, relying on forms of biological, social or indeed technological provision (see Mumford, 1971, p. 338). In the guise of mobility, forms of parasitism may be read through the classic host/guest relation, with the latter feeding off, or harnessing the productive propulsion of already extant speed. The key point here is that legitimated forms of movement appear to assume authenticity through the production of an originary effort, but crucially the parasitic relations as defined by Serres (2007) destabilise this by arguing that there are no originary forms of effort. Instead, for Serres the very constitution of capitalist relations are parasitic in that they are exploitative of labour, natural resources and, as outlined in the next section, speed.6 Similarly to Serres, in relation to the proposition that these are parasitic acts of 6 Through a typically fabular style Serres conjures his argument with the figures of the tax farmer, the town rat and the country rat: the latter two feeding-off the scraps on the farmer’s table. However, he suggests that they are all parasites (2007:3) as the farmer lives off the exploitation of profit, just as the rats feed off the results of his exploitation.

desperate passage Deleuze has spoken of other forms of movement beyond the authority and authenticity of motive origins. In his essay Mediators (Deleuze, 1992) he outlines an alternative to propulsive force in the form of his concept of ‘putting-into-orbit’. Whilst framed around sporting pastimes his argument provides a valuable elaboration of the harnessing power of parasitic passage. He states that: ‘‘Many of the new sports – surfing, windsurfing, hang gliding – take a form of entry into an existing wave. There’s no longer an origin as starting point, but a sort of putting-into-orbit. The basic thing is how to get taken up in the movement of a big wave, a column of rising air, to ‘‘come between’’ rather than to be the origin of an effort’’ (Deleuze, 1992, p. 281) The description of entry into already existing movement resonates with my contention that the desperate passenger performs a similar ‘taking-up’ or harnessing of already extant mobilities. Although an analogical device, the notion of being taken up describes the tactical exploitation of logistical efficiency seen in commodity distribution. However, as I acknowledge in the next section, Deleuze’s argument may be extended in order to suggest that all forms of corporeal mobility are determined in part by a form of harnessing – that is, the transference of motive power from the body onto the vehicles of transit. Crucially, the difference between the exploitation of motive power in the development of late Modernity’s speed and that of desperate passage lies in the legitimacy of such transference. The tourist, or legitimated passenger, is protected and cushioned from the mechanisms of these transferences. The desperate passenger has to enact this ‘taking-up’ at its most brutal. 4. Enacting the ‘violence of speed’ In this section I turn to the question of corporeal passage, specifically in terms of how the moving body is caught up in the acceleration of late Modernity. In doing so I aim to consider Virilio’s dictum that ‘‘the progress of speed is nothing other than the unleashing of violence’’ (Virilio, 2006a, p. 45). My intention is to accentuate the relationship between the voluntarism of legitimated mobilities as already attested to, and the cushioning from the violence of speed that this provides. Utilising the notion of violent mobilities of speed I argue that such forms of violence are masked by relations of force (in the form of cushioning) which counter the effects of the speeding body, in this case through the protective cocooning of capsularisation (de Cauter, 2004), seen in particular with the development of corporeal transport technologies. Whilst the apparent ease with which the tourist can travel would appear to underscore the efficiencies of global mobility networks, I consider how, by contrast, the mobilities of the desperate passenger may be said to unmask the inherent violence of speed through the taking-up of non-standard mobilities devoid of the protective cushioning of capsularisation. It is clear that the body of the legitimated passenger is dependent on the networks of mobility, there is a transference of effort from the human body to the accelerative technologies that facilitate movement. To an extent the parasitic harnessing of motive energy begins with the conscious tethering of non-human force for the purpose of increased corporeal acceleration. Virilio suggests that the control of movement is premised not only on the ability to move individuals or commodities, but critically at the root of this power is the mobilisation of political and military force through the domination of time and space (Virilio, 2006a, p. 40). This is perhaps most evident in the perceived capacity to marshal armies and munitions i.e., through military logistics (see Tomlinson, 2007, p. 56–64; Van Creveld, 1978). Logistics as the art of strategy is capable of delivering the potential of attack through

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spatio-temporal control. For if the enemy believes that the opposing side has the means to effectively move bodies and objects at will without being seen to do so, then they also have the means to attack wherever and whenever they have desire to do so: ‘‘Thus, it is above all a new idea of violence that no longer comes from direct confrontation and bloodshed, but rather from the unequal properties of bodies, evaluation of the number of movements allowed them in a chosen element, permanent verification of their dynamic efficiency’’ (Virilio, 2006b, p. 62). From his identification of a new form of violence Virilio situates violence at the core of the means to implement movement. Of course, such a forthright claim has to be unpacked, particularly as it implies the union between mobility and the logistics of violence. Violence can be a form of gestural affect, that of civil unrest, crime, mass-murder or terror (see Balibar, 2009). It is identified with a wilful assault on the physical or political body. However Abel (2007, p. 2) maintains that the issue of violence operates at the level of individual violation as well as that of the less immediately verifiable: including language; capitalism; and security—all are forms of violation which demonstrate the multiplicity of violence. Similarly Benjamin situates the question of violence not only with the individual but also with the state, noting how the ‘‘law sees violence in the hands of individuals as a danger undermining the legal system’’ (Benjamin, 1999, p. 280), whereas in the hands of the state violence is concerned with justified legal ends. Although there is not the opportunity to pursue the depth of Benjamin’s argument it is important to stress how the critique of violence put forward by him highlights the legal fortifications constructed in order to sanction specific forms of violence in the name of violence as legal right. Structural in tone, this posits the deeper and more complex concept of violence as a form of indiscernible instrumentalisation of the individual subject. Indeed, perhaps one way of approaching the discussion of violence and speed is through the question of visibility and invisibility—with the immediately verifiable effects of individual violence, be they physical injury or damage, but equally the imperceptible mechanisms which produce the more visible manifestations. Zˇizˇek’s work in this area has described the most visible articulation of violence as subjective: those modes of overt, identifiable aggression (Zˇizˇek, 2008, p. 2). One could add to Zˇizˇek’s position that the subjective expressions of violence are similarly the most mediated, in that they are often spectacularised in their representations (see Jay, 2003, p. 2). However, in terms of the indiscernible production of instrumental modes of control Zˇizˇek also proffers a valuable elaboration of this by identifying an objective background that is said to precede the subjective forms (also see Balibar, 2009, p. 22). Objective violence is defined by two categories: symbolic and systemic. For Zˇizˇek symbolic violence is most readily seen through language and other representational forms, whereas systemic violence accounts for ‘‘the often catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning of our economic and political systems’’ (Zˇizˇek, 2008, p. 2). To be sure, the imperceptibility of systemic violence is perhaps the dominant one, for it does not project the discernible representations of the symbolic, rather it appears to be the very constitution of the normative functioning of sovereign power. Systemic violence then is a form of domination whereby the structures of political and economic systems are enacted in order to posit the symbolic or subjective forms as the visible expressions of violence. However, in structural terms it is clear that the exclusion of specific groups (based on class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.) from access to the mechanisms of social formations, but also from corporeal mobility and the potential of acceleration, represents a further form of violence, albeit less immediately perceptible. This can be developed a little further by refocusing the relationship between the subjective and objective in terms of the non-violent. Subjective forms of violence are measured against a ‘norm’,

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which is deemed to be non-violence. In this sense the eruption of violence is seen as a moment of abnormality in comparison with the typical functioning of non-violence. However, Zˇizˇek insists that such a ‘‘non-violent zero-level’’ (Zˇizˇek, 2008, p. 2) masks the operation of the objective forms of violence—i.e., the norm is not nonviolence, but rather the imperceptible functioning of the economy and politics as objective violence. The visibility of subjective violence camouflages the substrata of systemic violence. He contends: ‘‘objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very zero-level standard against which we perceive something as subjectively violent’’ (Zˇizˇek, 2008:2). Systemic forms of violence, then, imply the deep-seated roots of violence as constitutive of all capitalist forms of economic and political life. Moreover, the systemic operates through invisible modes that structure the operation of such forms. As the ‘base’ of violence one might suggest that the systemic acts as an infrastructure of violence, a claim which aligns with Virilio’s argument concerning the militaristic function of all logistical formations: they structure the very mechanisms of domination described by Zˇizˇek. Further to this we can begin to recognise Virilio’s assertion that violence is not solely expressed through direct attack—it is also the organisation of violence.7 The organisational power of logistics is indeed emblematic of systemic domination, and of the practical realisation of spatio-temporal control and order. Arendt discusses such a proposal in relation to the implementation of subjective violence, whereby the ability to employ violence through technological means is a profoundly important facet of its manifestation (Arendt, 1970, p. 4). Such modes of implementation are clearly demonstrated through the various arsenals of weaponry, military transport technologies, but fundamentally through logistical organisation of armament and personnel movements. In similar terms, Thrift develops his discussion of logistical power by noting how such mechanisms ‘‘are founded on the systematic delivery of violence’’ (Thrift, 2008, p. 199 my emphasis). Although his argument is ultimately focussed on ‘softer’ modes of violence in the urban realm Thrift’s suggestion is clear: the ability to structure violence, or to mobilise the technology of violence, is an inherent formula of violence. The mobilisation of violence is a form of violence in its own right. Three terms emerge from this: structure, organisation, and implementation. All posit the mobilisation of subjective, visible forms of violence through the often-invisible systemic infrastructure of logistical power. Given this it is vital to engage with how mobilisation and implementation occurs. Identified earlier in relation to Serres’ development of parasite theory, the nexus of corporeal acceleration—via increasing speed—can be read as a form of violence through the exploitation of motive energy. The domestication of animals through the harnessing of the motive power of the mount, up to the technologies of remote drone aircraft (Helmore, 2009): all attest to the exploitation of speed for military as well as commercial gain. In historical terms Virilio describes a form of ‘zoophilia’—what might be thought of as an appreciation of the potential for acceleration beyond the limitations of the human body and the harnessing of other motive forces, such as the saddled animal (Virilio, 2006a, p. 39). The technology of speed is premised specifically on the relationship between the body of the passenger and the harnessing of the power of the motive vehicle—an entwining of body and animal, and later machine. By encasing the body within the power of the animal/non-animal machine there is a transferral of dominance from animal to human through the harnessing power of control. Here Virilio is highlighting the relationship between optimum efficiency, speed and the control of movement for political, military and commercial

7 On the relationship between organisation and the violence of space see Vidler (1993, p. 85).

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purposes. It is part of an extended network where breeding, agriculture and technology enact forms of control and utilisation for the purpose of accelerated movement. Speed itself is an extension of these earlier forms of violence as harnessing power. In this scenario there is a twofold form of distribution: violence distributes speed through systemic structuring, and the infrastructure of speed distributes violence beyond its origins, or as Virilio suggests ‘‘the steel that stretches out in front in the sword, in the lance, in the knife as in the rail, is like the road, that disappears over the horizon in a movement of shock and distancing, signalling one violence, one terror’’ (Virilio, 2006a, p. 48). The road is as powerful as the shaft of the sword. 5. Comfort, capsularisation and discomfort The seeming starkness of this argument may emanate from the comfort of corporeal mobility that privileged forms of passengering provide: we are not privy to the roots of violence in our elite, cosmopolitan mobilities, in part due to the spectacularised power of subjective violence over systemic violence. The inherent violence of speed is screened out; its lineage black-boxed in both the ubiquity of transnational mobility itself, but more tellingly by the almost suspended experience of the legitimated passenger.8 Instead of corporeal mobility being an experience of the body thrown through space, the protection of the body by transit vehicles (train, automobile, plane, etc.) cushions the sheer physicality of corporeal movement. According to Virilio legitimated passengers are provided with forms of comfort that protect them from the visibility and physical tumult of acceleration (Virilio, 2006a, p. 54). This ‘politics of comfort’, values ‘‘the corporeal ‘packaging’ of the passenger’’ (Virilio, 2006a, p. 54–55). Such comforting may be said to issue from the sedentary past of the pre-Modern era, a past that is situated in the comfort of the furnished body, a form of cushioning that is then extended to the acceleration of Modernity in order to protect the passenger ‘‘from the assault of the velocity of vectors’’ (Virilio, 2006a, p. 54). Although this does not simply fold the sedentary onto the non-sedentary, of central importance to Virilio’s conception of comfort is his conflation of the French words meuble (furniture) and immeuble (shelter) (Virilio, 2006a, p. 55), whereby the protective cushioning of the padded armchair both separates and shelters the body from the harshness and discomfort of hardness, and later speed.9 In effect his image of a ‘‘mummified’’ body in motion (Virilio, 2006a, p. 55) locates the legitimated passenger within a realm of ‘suspended animation’, suggesting the encapsulation of the legitimated passenger in a hermetic, protected space. The passivity of the legitimated passenger is also present in Schivelbusch’s (1978) seminal work on the spatio-temporality of the railroad where he discusses the role of the in-between space of the railway journey, arguing that the pre-railroad journey was one which enabled the passenger to ‘savour’ the joys of relatively sedentary speeds (Schivebusch, 1978, p. 34). By contrast, and in a tone which might be said to resonate with Virilio’s rather more dramatic position, Schivelbusch references Ruskin’s description of the train traveller as a ‘‘human parcel’’ (Schivelbusch, 1978, p. 35), packaged in their sealed environment, and, as he adds, ‘‘untouched by the space traversed’’ (1978:35). Admittedly, such reasoning does not afford enough significance to the profoundly rich texture of the journey (see Bissell, 2007), including the social relations encompassed by such spaces. It does however emphasise the connection between privileged modes of passengering and the sep8 I do however acknowledge that even subtle registers of affect, such as the sway of a train carriage, may counter this position (see Bissell, 2008) 9 In similar terms Schivelbusch (1986, p. 110 no. 60) describes the development of the Pullman cars on the American railway networks which offered increased comfort for paying passengers whilst the carriages were being shunted across lines.

aration from the harsh realities of the accelerated violence of Modernity’s speed culture. The significance of separation becomes even more evident when one considers the work of de Cauter on capsularisation. Echoing Virilio’s work, he notes how the increasing acceleration of the hyper mobilised world necessitates in-built protection for the human body. The role of capsules, he argues, is central to the protective cocooning of the body at these increasing speeds, but also to the constitution of networked mobilities more generally (de Cauter, 2004, p. 96). Added to this the effective separation that the capsule appears to facilitate is characteristic of Zˇizˇek’s description of a supposed ‘non-violent zero-level’, i.e., the protection provided masks the actual systemic violence of speed. Historically this capsular logic has led to the creation of various sociotechnical systems which have facilitated the increased speed and dominance of communication, trade, but most profoundly for my position, corporeal and non-corporeal mobilities in the form of railway carriages, the motorcar, the airplane etc. Without such protection the increasing speed of Modernity would not have been possible, for as de Cauter emphasises, ‘‘the more physical and informational speed increases, the more man (sic) will need capsules’’, thus identifying the relationship between the increased speeds of Modernity and the required ‘‘protection against shock’’ (de Cauter, 2004, p. 95). There is, then, a significant link between Virilio’s position and de Cauter’s: in order to protect the mobile body from the extremes of increasing speed the capsules provide evermore sophisticated forms of protection, be it passenger airbags, noise reduction technology or advanced braking systems. This is a defining condition of contemporary capsularisation and legitimated, cosmopolitan mobilities alike. For in older forms of capsularised society the human body was directly linked to the vehicle (animals, bicycles, skis, roller skates (de Cauter, 2004, p. 95)), whereas with the increasing speed of more recent forms of capsularised society the body remains comparatively suspended—in particular the physical demands of mobility become transferred onto the capsule itself, leaving the passenger inside—akin to Schivelbusch’s ‘human parcel’— protected from the subjective violence of the actual body in movement. As becomes apparent the luxury of comfort and protection is only available to those licensed to separate their bodies through capsularisation from accelerated Modernity’s legacy of shock and systemic violence. The question of separation is not solely demonstrated in relation to the affective tumult of the speeding body, it is also ascribable to the politics of separation. De Cauter suggests that the capsularised ethos is one of inclusion and exclusion, notably in relation to struggles over the meaning of public space (gated communities for example), but also, I would add, with accelerated mobilities. Like the border, the capsule as both a protective cushion for legitimated peoples, and an exclusionary divide barring illegitimated peoples, is symptomatic of the desire in those locked-out to be included in the capsularised network, thus attesting to the earlier argument outlined by Kumin (2000) concerning the immanent bond between securitisation practices and the increasing use of human smuggling syndicates by illegitimated peoples in order to circumvent such modes of barring. Further to this, for Campbell the question of capsularisation serves to ‘‘transgress conventional understandings of inside/outside and isolated/connected’’ (Campbell, 2005, p. 951), as it expands the concept of security toward a more networked approach. It highlights the shifting sites of securitisation, where the exclusionary logic of the border extends to the mobile formations of the capsule. The networked nature of the capsule not only provides the expressions of separation, but also that of connection. Such attempts to connect with the capsularised network of transnational mobilities can take many forms, and as illustrated by the various tactics of infiltration the modes of securing inclu-

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sion are often parasitic—clinging onto the underside of lorries or secretion in shipping containers. The desperation of undocumented immigrants and the politics of people smuggling expose the innate violence of speed for those peoples disqualified from travelling via legitimated means. They are locked out of the packaged mobilities of comfort, often resorting instead to the use of unpackaged forms of discomfort by travelling in inappropriate vehicles. Crucially the desperate passenger is not afforded the comforts of corporeal capsularisation that Virilio and de Cauter speak of. Instead, the cushioning of the privileged passenger that screens out the violence of speed is replaced by a politics of discomfort, most tellingly via the passage in vehicles unintended for human mobility. This distinction between comfort and discomfort is in one sense reliant upon a binary reversal as it provides a valuable illustration of the differences in physical affect inflicted upon the bodies of the legitimated traveller and desperate passenger. For example, Mohammed, an Arab Iraqi, describes a tortuous journey from Iraq to Athens (cited in Courau, 2003, p. 379). The journey, arranged by smugglers, is made up of various modes of transport, including a minibus where Mohammed and his fellow passengers have to lie under the seats. However, the most arduous part of his journey to Athens comes with the group spending some 25 h kneeling in the back of a lorry.10 Discomfort in this instance is clearly a form of physical distress and thus close to the outline of subjective violence, the body in this case fixed in position for an extended period of time. This stands in contrast to Virilio’s argument that comfort breeds docility, the passive body immured in a state of dependency on packaged comfort (Virilio, 2006a, p. 55–56). Whilst the submissive body of Virilio’s cosmopolitan traveller may be inert in its comforted torpor, the fixity of the desperate passenger is of a different register—Mohammed’s account describes the need to remain still in order to avoid discovery at security checkpoints (Courau, 2003, p. 379). Added to this, if we return to the issue of subjective and objective violence discussed in the previous section, the binary relationship is extended. The comfort described by Virilio is a concealment of the systemic violence of accelerative society, whereas the unpackaged environments of commodity mobility serve to underscore this in the most brutal forms of subjective violence on the desperate passenger. The physical and psychological tumult, the subjective violence felt by the desperate passenger is a result of the use of vehicles unintended for human transportation, hence, in part, the exposure of systemic violence. Given the effective barring from cushioned forms of mobility it becomes necessary, then, for the undocumented to literally harness the violence of speed through the use of alternative mobility formations, in many cases those designed for commodity distribution. Following Virilio’s and de Cauter’s work it could be stated that the transferral of physical mobility onto the capsule/ vehicle is overturned in the practices of desperate passage: instead of the comforts of separation there is a reattachment of the body onto capsules not designed for corporeal mobility. Again, this serves to highlight how the comforts of legitimated passage simply disguise the systemic nature of violent mobilities. The physical affect of the body moving at high speed is exposed when such comforts are not present, the systemic violence of mobility imposed on the body of the desperate passenger, the body at one again with the vehicular object at its most rudimentary.

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6. Conclusions Not only are transport networks a space of contestation in terms of access to the power of network belonging, the capsules which constitute the network become strategic points of entry into the networks. Graham argues that de Cauter’s concept of capsularisation offers a productive ‘vehicle’ for understanding the numerous sites of convergence that embody networks, be they urban arenas or global transport systems (Graham, 2004, p. 94). Like Graham’s own work on the sites of combination (Graham and Marvin, 2001) de Cauter’s emphasis on the capsule positions the network within its own networked logic—we cannot separate the network from the monadic entities that traverse them. Capsularisation is an efficacious rejoinder that proffers a variety of important discussions for critical mobility studies. In particular by focussing on the vehicular spaces of passage we are privy to increasing sophistication of contemporary transport. However, as I have attempted to outline in this paper the technological refinement and concomitant rise in comfort are only available to privileged passengers. Whilst these individuals might now recognise their mobility as a form of social positioning and cultural negotiation such entitlements are denied to the non-elites. Instead, if mobility is now ‘‘constitutive of the structures of social life’’ (Urry, 2000, p. 49), the processes of attaining this are far from symmetrical. For the desperate passenger the options of when to travel and more tellingly for this paper, how to travel, are denied to them. Similarly the protection from the violence of speed that I outlined is also withdrawn. It is with the desperate passenger that the systemic ‘violence of speed’ becomes exposed—these individuals have to travel without the protective cushioning of the appropriate capsule. Whilst appreciative that my argument concerning the enactment of violence could be read as somewhat remiss in terms of engaging the specific dangers of this, I argue that this partial abstraction enables a further set of debates on contemporary forms of spatial complexity to be addressed. To sum up, there are important implications for the discussion of mobility when one recognises the collisions of parallel networks of mobility. Where globalisation speaks of global interconnections it is evident from the movement of people and the movement of commodities that the complex regimes of organisation are different, most notably when one is used ‘incorrectly’. These acts of desperate infiltration unveil the systemic modes of control that advanced capitalist spatiality more generally produce. By broaching the security of the various mobility networks the desperate passenger demonstrates that the web of ordering is continually undone at multiple sites. By highlighting the practices of infiltration in a more general sense I have tried to suggest that the rhetorical assumptions surrounding undocumented migration are premised on a spurious logic of sanctioned mobilities, which is torn open by the practices of desperate mobility. As stated at the outset my key aim was to demonstrate the innate violence at the core of accelerated capitalism. Paul Virilio’s work on the politics of comfort helps to delineate the cushioning from the violence of speed that elite peoples are privileged with. My assertion that the desperate passenger enacts the violence of speed was used as a means to illustrate the thrust of accelerated capitalism through a form of systemic violence that is ever-present. References

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Such experiences of extreme physical turmoil are common amongst the journeys of desperate passengers, however there are moments of ‘stillness’ (Martin, 2010) where the journey is punctuated by extended periods of enforced waiting (Jeffrey, 2008). Added to this the journey itself is not the only situation where forms of violence reside – as the case of Mohammed exemplifies, the systemic violence of social exploitation is present in Mohammed’s attempts to reach northern Europe, including periods of homelessness in Athens (Courau, 2003, p. 379).

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