Informational Seam‐Work: Knowledge Production and Platform Circulation in Chinese Irregular Migration to the US

ABSTRACT How do subordinate populations produce collective knowledge when the act of creating and circulating information is criminalized? This paper examines how Chinese migrants navigating the “zouxian” (走线) route, irregular migration from China through Latin America to the United States, collectively produce, verify, and circulate critical information under conditions of evolving digital surveillance and shifting US immigration policy. Drawing on multi‐platform observation, digital ethnographic methods, technical documentation, and policy analysis from 2022 to 2024, I document three interconnected dimensions of what I term informational seam‐work: semantic neutralization practices that construct interpretive opacity within visible communications; tactical platform circulation that exploits seams between surveillance architectures; and collective governance mechanisms that maintain shared knowledge systems despite active suppression. I also identify a fourth, countervailing dynamic: the structural unreliability of this criminalized knowledge commons, whose conditions of production systematically compromise the quality of the knowledge it sustains. The paper identifies a seam between technical visibility and interpretive legibility, engaging Black studies scholarship without adopting the vocabulary of fugitivity. Rather than framing zouxian as straightforward resistance, the analysis distinguishes the state's tolerance of individual exit from the pressure that falls on the coordination capacity transforming individual aspiration into collectively organized mobility.