Thinking with maintenance and repair to account for obduracy of macro-orders: The case of informational migration management in Europe

This paper discusses maintenance as a topic of analysis and theory in STS and sociology, it brings together previous theoretical and empirical insights on the dynamics of maintenance. Our aim is to establish maintenance as an analytical tool to discuss and analyze those practices that sustain modern orders, the nation-state and the EU in particular, especially practices involving various (data) infrastructures. The paper discusses two theoretical papers on maintenance, followed by borrowing three recent insights on maintenance and repair as they have been discussed in STS and Sociology – in order to conceptualize maintenance as both an object of study and as a process of sustaining order. Based on this understanding, it makes maintenance visible in various settings and analytical levels in institutions and international dynamics by highlighting European responses to the so-called migration crisis, focusing on the role of international organizations, specifically the IOM in supporting the EU and member states; highlighting their practices as dynamics of maintenance. Organizations such as the IOM operate outside of individual states, but do operate for and on them in various ways. Their migration management practices of data and knowledge production about people on the move are analyzed as practices of maintenance: maintenance of the state, supranational organizations, and ‘orderly and humane migration’ (IOM 2019). Our endeavor is produced in the context of the ongoing Processing Citizenship team project focused on the co-production of migrants and polities (http://processingcitizenship.eu ) and aims to construct a political and situated analysis of infrastructure maintenance beyond state power.