This edited collection goes beyond the limited definition of borders as simply dividing lines across states, to uncover another, yet related, type of division: one that separates policies and institutions from public debate and contestation. Bringing together expertise from established and emerging academics, it examines the fluid and varied borderscape across policy and the public domains. The chapters encompass a wide range of analyses that covers local, national and transnational frameworks, policies and private actors. In doing so, Migration, Borders and Citizenship reveals the tensions between border control and state economic interests; legal frameworks designed to contain criminality and solidarity movements; international conventions, national constitutions and local migration governance; and democratic and exclusive constructions of citizenship. This novel approach to the politics of borders will appeal to sociologists, political scientists and geographers working in the fields of migration, citizenship, urban geography and human rights; in addition to students and scholars of security studies and international relations.

In recent years the borders of Europe have been perceived as being besieged by a staggering refugee and migration crisis. The contributors to The Borders of "Europe" see this crisis less as an incursion into Europe by external conflicts than as the result of migrants exercising their freedom of movement. Addressing the new technologies and technical forms European states use to curb, control, and constrain what contributors to the volume call the autonomy of migration, this book shows how the continent's amorphous borders present a premier site for the enactment and disputation of the very idea of Europe. They also outline how from Istanbul to London, Sweden to Mali, and Tunisia to Latvia, migrants are finding ways to subvert visa policies and asylum procedures while negotiating increasingly militarized and surveilled borders. Situating the migration crisis within a global frame and attending to migrant and refugee supporters as well as those who stoke nativist fears, this timely volume demonstrates how the enforcement of Europe’s borders is an important element of the worldwide regulation of human mobility. Contributors. Ruben Andersson, Nicholas De Genova, Dace Dzenovska, Evelina Gambino, Glenda Garelli, Charles Heller, Clara Lecadet, Souad Osseiran, Lorenzo Pezzani, Fiorenza Picozza, Stephan Scheel, Maurice Stierl, Laia Soto Bermant, Martina Tazzioli

What level of policy convergence has been achieved by EU member states on immigration, borders and asylum? Although this question may sound rather theoretical, in practice it has profound consequences on the everyday life of individuals and the very nature of the EU. Common action in this field is exacerbated by the significant obstacles that negatively impact the quality of policies and the success of their implementation. Together with the tense EU struggle between the intergovernmental and community method of governing, these factors are detrimental to an EU-wide policy for promoting freedom, justice and stability in an enlarging Union. In response, authors Thierry Balzacq and Sergio Carrera undertake a critical analysis of the most recent policy developments in this politically sensitive domain. They investigate persistent barriers to harmonisation and suggest how the EU may achieve policy optimalisation. Their work progressively develops a set of recommendations, aimed at overcoming current vulnerabilities in policy approximation and achieving the most appropriate action to ensure equal treatment and social cohesion in the EU.

Drawing on the concept of the ‘politics of compassion’, this Handbook interrogates the political, geopolitical, social and anthropological processes which produce and govern borders and give rise to contemporary border violence.

This book provides an explanation for the fundamental disagreement pertaining to immigration and asylum in Europe. Since the collapse of consensus with the end of the Cold War, immigration and asylum have increasingly emerged as a central socio-political issue in Europe. The present work attempts to move beyond the complexity of ‘managing’ migratory flows by focusing on the most daunting issues arising from the response to the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. This debate is intimately connected to borders, security, belonging, citizenship and labour precarity/inequality. The book addresses some crucial dimensions related to the migration and asylum dissensus by providing an integrated frame of analysis from the point of view of resistance, rather than that of power. It connects notions of belonging and the migrant integration with the processes of de-democratisation, racist populism, citizenship and authoritarian migration regimes, and contributes towards a theory of the asylum and immigration dissensus by examining the potential for transition towards a society of equality and rights. The author proposes that the encounter(s) with surplus populations in Europe, which result in the multiplication of liminal regimes as well as spaces for resistance, generates potential for social imaginaries, promising a society unimaginable in previous epochs. This book will be of much interest to students of migration and border studies, global governance, European politics and International Relations.

This book responds to global tendencies toward increasingly restrictive border controls and populist movements targeting migrants for violence and exclusion. Informed by Marxist theory, it challenges standard narratives about immigration and problematises commonplace distinctions between ‘migrants’ and ‘workers’. Using Britain as a case study, the book examines how these categories have been constructed and mobilised within representations of a ‘migrant crisis’ and a ‘welfare crisis’ to facilitate capitalist exploitation. It uses ideas from grassroots activism to propose alternative understandings of the relationship between borders, migration and class that provide a basis for solidarity.

A major new exploration of the refugee crisis, focusing on how borders are formed and policed Forty thousand people have died trying to cross between countries in the past decade, and yet international borders only continue to harden. The United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union; the United States elected a president who campaigned on building a wall; while elsewhere, the popularity of right-wing antimigrant nationalist political parties is surging. Reece Jones argues that the West has helped bring about the deaths of countless migrants, as states attempt to contain populations and limit access to resources and opportunities. “We may live in an era of globalization,” he writes, “but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.” In Violent Borders, Jones crosses the migrant trails of the world, documenting the billions of dollars spent on border security projects and the dire consequences for countless millions. While the poor are restricted by the lottery of birth to slum dwellings in the ailing decolonized world, the wealthy travel without constraint, exploiting pools of cheap labor and lax environmental regulations. With the growth of borders and resource enclosures, the deaths of migrants in search of a better life are intimately connected to climate change, environmental degradation, and the growth of global wealth inequality. Newly updated with a discussion of Brexit and the Trump administration.