UNPACKING THE PASSPORT AND THE PRIVILEGE OF MOBILITY
Amanda Elena Brito , Curatorial Research Assistant
When you think of yourself , what are the traits that make you , you ? Is it your laugh ? The inflection of your voice ? Your interests and hobbies ? Your temperament ? The passport , for all of its complexities , sees none of these qualities — nor can it faithfully capture the full spectrum of a person ’ s identity . 1 Instead , individuals passing through security checkpoints and customs agencies are judged solely on the basis of quantifiable metrics such as height , eye color , date of birth , sex , and nationality . As an arbitrary border enforcement tool , the passport ensures that every vestige of an individual ’ s humanity is effectively erased , reducing its bearer to a tepid two by two inch photo bound to a booklet that may or may not symbolize home . 2 In this case , who you are fundamentally has ceased to matter ; you are now a carefully packaged representation of your nation-state and all of its baggage . Your ability to travel , and by extension your right to move about the world , is determined exclusively by the government official on the receiving end of your identifying documents . Is it possible , then , that a document we often take for granted — one that sits forgotten in a drawer until it ’ s time to travel — is one of the most contentious and controversial documents of the modern world ?
This small book , once created to ensure safe passage through foreign lands , has now become one of the key metrics by which society defines personhood . Though passports initially arose out of diplomatic necessity , they have always been entrenched in the negotiation of identity and belonging — singlehandedly determining who can go where and why . The first-ever passport is thought to have emerged in 450 BCE at the behest of Persian King Artaxerxes I , though modern conceptions of the document are more closely tied to the rule of King Henry V . 3 The history of the passport in the United States , by comparison , is intimately tied to Benjamin Franklin , who issued the nation ’ s first passport during the Revolutionary War . 4 Several centuries later , the passport is now an asset : a commodity to be sold and bartered in the pursuit of mobility . For the wealthy , offshore tax havens in the Caribbean have cultivated an economy in which so-called “ golden passports ” 5 serve as clandestine investments rather than indispensable , potentially life-saving documents . For those leading lives ravaged by poverty , war , and famine , the passport is instead an instrument of subjugation — an insurmountable obstacle in the search for safety . Racism and state-sanctioned xenophobia play out in every facet of the booklet , from its mugshot-adjacent photos to the blatantly nationalist — and borderline propagandistic — images embedded in its pages . 6 These troubling attributes persist off the page as well , with several passports being deemed “ second-class ” within the context of what Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov describes as the “ passport apartheid .” 7
The “ passport apartheid ” is a real , yet subtle phenomenon that plays out on a global scale — single-handedly determining the haves and have nots of the movement economy . According to Henley & Partners , Middle-Eastern and African countries form the bottom echelon of passport strength indexes , with Afghanistan constituting the “ weakest ” or most restrictive passport with an access score of 112 . The most “ powerful ” nations , by contrast , include Singapore , South Korea , Germany , and Spain ; with Japan placing first overall with an access score of 193 . The Passport Index produced by Arton Capital , however , lists the United Arab Emirates as its most powerful nation , with an overall mobility score of 181 . 8 These highly subjective , constantly fluctuating rankings have realworld implications on the global migration crisis by calculating individual validity vis-à-vis predetermined factors such as geopolitics and economics . Per the aforementioned Passport Index , as a first-generation American I am worthy of movement — the owner of a passport that sports an overall mobility score of 173 and 87 % world reach . For my Cuban émigré parents , that right to movement disappears : obfuscated under the ill-fated circumstance of having been born under a blacklisted communist government . 9 If they were to sacrifice their American passports and return home , their mobility would be radically diminished from 87 % to 40 %— the price to be paid for the scourge of their nationality .
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