Colonially Mediated Spaces and Beings addresses the intricate interplay between identity, mobility, and power, focusing on how these dynamics are mediated by omnicolonialism and reclaimed through translocal networks of resistance and belonging. Ibnelkaïd first asserts that our lived experience is fundamentally relational, dialogical, and situated. Individuals exist at the intersection of movement and attachment – across spaces, temporalities, relationships – that give meaning and orientation to their lives. However, as Ibnelkaïd demonstrates, this nexus is disrupted by the omnicolonial matrix, which operates materially and ontologically to inhibit empathy, weaponize emotions, and alienate intersubjectivity. Exploring the case of high-skilled racialized migrants in Finland – regularly ranked the “happiest country in the world” – the author analyzes how migration regimes in Fortress Europe enact racialized geographies and commodify life itself. To explore these dynamics, Ibnelkaïd introduces Critical Phenomenology of Interaction – a novel framework for examining how digital-algorithmic and capitalist-imperialist structures shape our being-in-the-colonial-world. Ibnelkaïd shows how micro-coloniality is both (re)produced in everyday social interactions and resisted through collective emotional, sensory and epistemic intelligence. Written from the perspective of an Indigenous Amazigh migrant woman and scholar, this work is a global call for liberation. Liberation from colonialism, imperialism, capitalism. Liberation of the minds, the borders, the peoples.
Navigating the intricate relationships between mobility, identity, and power structures, Samira Ibnelkaïd presents a novel framework that challenges dominant narratives that frame migration as a crisis and racialized individuals as threats.
