Knowing the Border: Epistemic Friction and Irregular Crossings of the English Channel

This article explores epistemic injustice in the context of border crossings. In many contexts around the world borders are fortified not only through walls, fences and guards, but also through knowledge claims about human mobility. We can conceptualise these types of claims as ‘epistemic borderwork’. This article discusses 39 semi-structured interviews with people who crossed the English Channel irregularly, primarily in small boats. These testimonies are less heard in public debate on irregularised Channel crossings. In making such voices visible and audible, we can create an imminently productive dynamic: epistemic friction. Coming from a position of epistemic injustice, we argue that such border knowledge has the potential to act as a powerful tool of disruptive epistemic friction.