Migrations and Border Processes: Practices and Politics of Belonging and Exclusion in Europe from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century brings together scholars from history, sociology and anthropology to explore cross-boundary mobility and migration during the formation, development, and transformation of the modern (nation-)state explicating the conflictive and fluctuating character of borders. Current media images of a "fortress Europe" suggest that migrations and borders are closely connected. The historical perspective demonstrates that such bordering processes are not new. However, they have developed new dynamics in different historical phases, from the formation of the modern (nation-)state in the nineteenth century to the creation of the European Union during the second half of the twentieth century. This book explains the dynamic relationships between borders and migratory movements in Europe from the nineteenth century to the present by approaching them from four different, overlapping angles: (1) the multiple actors involved, (2) scales and places of borders and their crossings, (3) the instruments and techniques employed and (4) the significance of social categories. Focusing on the historical, local specificity of the complex relations between migrations and boundaries will help denaturalize the concept of the border as well as further reflection on the shifting definitions of migration and belonging. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

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.

The crossing of national state borders is one of the most-discussed issues of contemporary times and it poses many challenges for individual and collective identities. This concerns both short-distance mobility as well as long-distance migration. Choosing to move - or not - across international borders is a complex decision, involving both cognitive and emotional processes. This book tests the approach that three crucial thresholds need to be crossed before mobility occurs; the individual’s mindset about migrating, the choice of destination and perception of crossing borders to that location and the specific routes and spatial trajectories available to get there. Thus both borders and trajectories can act as thresholds to spatial moves. The threshold approach, with its focus on processes affecting whether, when and where to move, aims to understand the decision-making process in all its dimensions, in the hope that this will lead to a better understanding of the ways migrants conceive, perceive and undertake their transnational journeys. This book examines the three constitutive parts discerned in the cross-border mobility decision-making process: people, borders and trajectories and their interrelationships. Illustrated by a global range of case studies, it demonstrates that the relation between the three is not fixed but flexible and that decision-making contains aspects of belonging, instability, security and volatility affecting their mobility or immobility.

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.

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

This book deals with the ongoing processes of migration and boundary-(re)making in Europe and other parts of the world.

Thanks to hundreds of interviews with Mexican deportees, this book puts a real face on discussions of immigration and border policies--Provided by publisher.