Looking for a Husband with a EU passport (2000-2005). Citizenship as a barrier to circulation

Résumé

In this article, I focus on circulation from the point of view of immigrant subjects, as well as the geographical and social barriers they encounter in their movements. The debates surrounding these issues are explored through Tanja Ostojić’s artistic project Looking for a Husband with an EU Passport (2000-2005). To this end, I adopt a methodology grounded in feminist and biopolitical theoretical frameworks. The intersection of these two fields enables a critical inquiry into how Ostojić’s artistic practice contributes to rethinking debates on citizenship and the circulation of immigrant female bodies within the European Union. Moreover, the convergence of these frameworks makes it possible to identify how her work generates performative disruptions in the power relations that constrain the mobility of certain migrant ‘bodies’. Mapping a gendered body – particularly through the cultural markers that define it – motivates its political reinscription within the systems of power it confronts. While movement entails continuous confrontation with established identity categories, it also opens up possibilities for their re-evaluation – especially in relation to the exclusions they produce. This article thus seeks to examine how Tanja Ostojić reconfigures these power relations between her migrant body and the control mechanisms of the Schengen Area.