Passport, Surveillance and Reciprocity in Travel: Reconsidering Hospitality through a Criticism of Marc Augé’s ‘Non-Places’

The focus of social scientific investigation on social ties as well as the roots of social disintegration have a long history, spanning at least two centuries. We are specifically interested in what promotes ‘hospitality’ into a norm within polities, leading to further mobilities of humans, ideas and cross-cultural exchange in an ever more globalized world. On this, the social sciences identified an anchor in practices commonly known as reciprocity, which are based on gift exchange or giving-while-taking. As the argument goes, hospitality derives from our social propensity towards reciprocity as an exchange of intangible gifts (cultural habitus). One of the social contexts in which the theory of gift exchange can be implemented concerns the role that the visa and other migratory requirements play in the (temporary or permanent) acceptance of any human subject by a nation-state. As a disciplinary mechanism imposing control over free movement, the passport produces certain types of subjectivity at ‘borderline’ spaces such as airports. We argue that an elaboration over the role of the passport as a regulatory mechanism promotes fresh interdisciplinary observations on the nature of global capitalism via the new mobilities paradigm. To achieve this, we critically elaborate on Marc Augé’s ‘non-places’ in the same context.