Drifting as method: Illustrating a concept metaphor for the anthropology of securitised mobility

This article proposes drifting as a conceptual framework for understanding securitised mobility, particularly in maritime and aerial border crossings. Through examples of refugees and migrants in Southeast Asia and Europe, drifting is examined through three interrelated lenses: as an experiential state; as a technology of governance; and as a form of tactical resistance. It demonstrates this first by analysing how the prolonged temporal and spatial liminality of drifting at sea creates distinct forms of social organisation and trauma among refugees. Second, it demonstrates how states weaponise drifting as a deterrence strategy, using deliberate non-rescue and abandonment at sea to create ‘liquid impunity’ in border control. Third, it explores how migrants strategically employ drifting as a form of ‘spatial disobedience’, exemplified by cases of river crossings in Southeast Asia and balloon escapes from East Germany. The article argues that drifting represents a ‘middle voice’ that transcends traditional binary conceptualisations of agency and passivity in anthropological studies on migration and mobility. This analytical framework reveals how human action, materiality, and environmental architectures intersect to produce specific possibilities for movement and resistance. By examining drifting as both process and metaphor, the article advances anthropological theory in two key ways: it provides new tools for understanding how agency emerges through the interplay of human and non-human elements in mobility contexts, and it demonstrates how attention to three-dimensional space can enrich conceptualisations of borders and migration beyond traditional terrestrial frameworks.