Publication

Using the Uyghurs of Kyrgyzstan as a case study, this paper examines what migration might look like if territories did not exist. It explores how migration might develop if it occurred within a hypothetical terrain of different possibilities rather than in the existing world, consisting of discrete territories. The author shows that a number of different Uyghur political geographies co-exist and that migration – real and imagined – is not just migration, but is bound up with different conceptualizations of movements and territories. This implies that migration is just as much an effect of on-going ‘geographical’ imagination, as it is based on quantifiable movements.