The upheavals of the Arab Spring grabbed the world’s immediate attention, and concern quickly grew over their potential aftermath, with the fear that a ‘tidal wave’ of immigrants and refugees would ‘flood’ European territory. The Arab Spring has highlighted the Mediterranean as a migration region, and new research is now required to bring to light too often neglected mobility patterns and border practices that predate and outlast the tumultuous spring of 2011. The edited volume Space, Mobility and Borders in the Western Mediterranean tackles these contemporary issues related to migration in the Mediterranean region. It brings together high-quality, original academic contributions from both empirical and theoretical points of view by scholars from diverse disciplines, who draw upon Anglophone, Francophone, Spanish and Italian research. It reexamines borders in the light of a now full-blown body of literature that seeks to capture the complexity of their contemporary features beyond their most direct visual enactments, in particular the sweeping deployment of policing devices and operations along the North/South fault line. Another distinctive binding thread in this book is that it emphasizes migrants as active subjects interacting with local events, national policies and the bordering process. Offering an examination of the intricate interplay among the events of the Arab Spring, migration’s multiple types and actors, and the evolving relationship between migration control and borders in the region, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars of migration studies, European Union Studies and Mediterranean Studies.

This book has been published by Allenvi (French National Alliance for Environmental Research) to coincide with the 22nd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) in Marrakesh. It is the outcome of work by academic researchers on both sides of the Mediterranean and provides a remarkable scientific review of the mechanisms of climate change and its impacts on the environment, the economy, health and Mediterranean societies. It will also be valuable in developing responses that draw on “scientific evidence” to address the issues of adaptation, resource conservation, solutions and risk prevention. Reflecting the full complexity of the Mediterranean environment, the book is a major scientific contribution to the climate issue, where various scientific considerations converge to break down the boundaries between disciplines.

This collection of essays presents a study of migration cultures in the contemporary Mediterranean with a particular focus on Italy as a point of migratory convergence and pressure. It investigates different experiences of, and responses to, sea crossings, borders and checkpoints, cultural proximity and distance, race, ethnicity and memory, along with creative responses to the same. In dialogic and complementary interaction, the essays explore violence centring on race as the major determining factor. The book further submits that the interrogation of racialized categories represents different kinds of critical response and resistance, which involve both political struggle and day-to-day survival and coexistence. Following the praxis of cultural and postcolonial studies, the essays focus on the present but draw indispensable insight from past connections and heritage as well as offering prognoses for the future. The ambitious aim of this collection is to identify some useful lines of thought and action that could help us to think outside intricacy, isolation and defensiveness, which characterize most of the public official reactions to migration today.

Migration in the Mediterranean region is a widely debated and much studied topic. This is due to the present refugee crisis, consequences of Arab revolutions, the proximity with emigration and transit countries, but also to the involvement of southern European countries and the mass arrival of migrants. The management of Border controls, migration, development, human trafficking, human rights and the clash or convergence of civilizations has generated a great deal of controversy and media attention. Migration in the Mediterranean offers a unique multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework, bringing together scholars from different subject areas. This book aims to address the following research questions: What are the main characteristics of migration movements in this region? What are the most important theoretical challenges? What are the perspectives for the future? This book begins with an overview of the economic perspective of the Mediterranean migration model, with a particular focus on labour market outcomes of migrants. It then presents the original results of field studies on the unintended effects of the EU's external border controls on migration and integration in the Euro-Mediterranean region, before addressing the themes of mobility, migration and transnationalism. This volume focuses on migration with a multidisciplinary approach, with scholars from various areas including sociology, economics, geography, political science and history. This book is well suited for those who study international economics, migration and political sociology.

Rather than divide the medieval Mediterranean into "Christian Europe" and "Muslim North Africa," this book presents the region as a single, mutually influenced, interconnected whole.

The transition zone between Africa, Asia and Europe was the most important intersection of human mobility in the medieval period. The present volume for the first time systematically covers migration histories of the regions between the Mediterranean and Central Asia and between Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean in the centuries from Late Antiquity up to the early modern era. Within this framework, specialists from Byzantine, Islamic, Medieval and African history provide detailed analyses of specific regions and groups of migrants, both elites and non-elites as well as voluntary and involuntary. Thereby, also current debates of migration studies are enriched with a new dimension of deep historical time. Contributors are: Alexander Beihammer, Lutz Berger, Florin Curta, Charalampos Gasparis, George Hatke, Dirk Hoerder, Johannes Koder, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt, Youval Rotman, Yannis Stouraitis, Panayiotis Theodoropoulos, and Myriam Wissa.

In Securitising Asylum Flows, the editors have collected contributions that examine the human rights and rule of law challenges posed by the EU response to the so-called ‘refugee crisis’.