The New Passport Poor by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s essay in the The New York Review of Books provides a thoughtful analysis on the value of a passport and the different roles in plays in different societies. In places like the US, passports enable travel and mobility. In more strict regimes, they limit movement.  Case in point: a German can visit 177 countries visa-free; an American, 173; an Afghan, just twenty-four.

Passports, in other words, were invented not to let us roam freely, but to keep us in place—and in check. They represent the borders and boundaries countries draw around themselves, and the lines they draw around people, too.

The article traces history and evolving thought in the development of passports. It reminds me of John Toroey’s The Invention of hte Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and State (Cambridge 2000, 2018) and the socio-legal works detailing the importance of the driver’s licenses and municipal identification cards or matrículas consulares as a substitute identity document in America (see e.g. Els de Graauw and Monica Varsanyi).