Border Vigils

Border Vigils
Author: Jeremy Harding
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2012-10-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1781680639

Ours is an era marked by extraordinary human migrations, with some 200 million people alive today having moved from their country of origin. The political reaction in Europe and the United States has been to raise the drawbridge: immigrant workers are needed, but no longer welcome. So migrants die in trucks or drown en route; they are murdered in smuggling operations or ruthlessly exploited in illegal businesses that make it impossible for the abused to seek police help. More than 15,000 people have died in the last twenty years trying to circumvent European entry restrictions. In this beautifully written book, Jeremy Harding draws haunting portraits of the migrants – and anti-immigrant zealots – he encountered in his investigations in Europe and on the US–Mexico border. Harding’s painstaking research and global perspective identify the common characteristics of immigration policy across the rich world and raise pressing questions about the future of national boundaries and universal values.

Violent Borders

Violent Borders
Author: Reece Jones
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2016-10-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784784729

This engaging analysis of the refugee crisis explores how borders are formed, policed—and used to inflict violence on the poor. “In an era of terrorism, global inequality, and rising political tension over migration, Jones argues that tight border controls make the world worse, not better.” —Boston Globe 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.

Empire of Borders

Empire of Borders
Author: Todd Miller
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784785148

The United States is outsourcing its border patrol abroad—and essentially expanding its borders in the process The twenty-first century has witnessed the rapid hardening of international borders. Security, surveillance, and militarization are widening the chasm between those who travel where they please and those whose movements are restricted. But that is only part of the story. As journalist Todd Miller reveals in Empire of Borders, the nature of US borders has changed. These boundaries have effectively expanded thousands of miles outside of US territory to encircle not simply American land but Washington’s interests. Resources, training, and agents from the United States infiltrate the Caribbean and Central America; they reach across the Canadian border; and they go even farther afield, enforcing the division between Global South and North. The highly publicized focus on a wall between the United States and Mexico misses the bigger picture of strengthening border enforcement around the world. Empire of Borders is a tremendous work of narrative investigative journalism that traces the rise of this border regime. It delves into the practices of “extreme vetting,” which raise the possibility of “ideological” tests and cyber-policing for migrants and visitors, a level of scrutiny that threatens fundamental freedoms and allows, once again, for America’s security concerns to infringe upon the sovereign rights of other nations. In Syria, Guatemala, Kenya, Palestine, Mexico, the Philippines, and elsewhere, Miller finds that borders aren’t making the world safe—they are the frontline in a global war against the poor.

Illegality, Inc.

Illegality, Inc.
Author: Ruben Andersson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2014-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520958284

In this groundbreaking ethnography, Ruben Andersson, a gifted anthropologist and journalist, travels along the clandestine migration trail from Senegal and Mali to the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Through the voices of his informants, Andersson explores, viscerally and emphatically, how Europe’s increasingly powerful border regime meets and interacts with its target–the clandestine migrant. This vivid, rich work examines the subterranean migration flow from Africa to Europe, and shifts the focus from the "illegal immigrants" themselves to the vast industry built around their movements. This fascinating and accessible book is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of international migration and the changing texture of global culture.

Security and South Asia

Security and South Asia
Author: Swarna Rajagopalan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-03-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317809483

Stephen Philip Cohen can rightly be called the doyen of South Asian security analysis, especially traditional security concerns in the region and advocacy on US foreign policy. The contributors to the volume have all, at different at different points in time, been Cohen’s students, and are now well-known scholars in their own right. Broadly dividing Cohen’s work into categories, the contributors deal with the following issues: how security is understood and how important strategic relationships are framed approaches to and choices made in the areas of military structure, arms production, and investment in science and technology how and why civil society groups are mobilized towards political ends—specifically looking at ethnic mobilization in diaspora communities, non-official initiatives for peace in South Asia, and the role of state and non-state actors in disaster management the role of the army. The essays reflect a view of security as something people choose to make for themselves through an exercise of agency that is rooted in the realm of ideas.

The Post-2000 Film Western

The Post-2000 Film Western
Author: M. Paryz
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2015-06-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137531282

This collection explores the post-2000 film Western. With examples ranging from major American films, through acclaimed international productions, to works such as experimental films and television commercials, the contributors seek to account for the appeal and currency of the film Western today.

Immigration Canada

Immigration Canada
Author: Augie Fleras
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774826827

Beyond the romanticized image of newcomers arriving as a “huddled mass” at Halifax’s Pier 21, understanding the reality and complexity of immigration today requires an expert guide. In the hands of scholar Augie Fleras, this intricate and ever-changing subject gets the attention it deserves with analysis of all aspects, including admission policies, the refugee processing system, the temporary foreign worker program, and the emergence of transnational identities. Given the unprecedented number of federal policy reforms of the past decade, such a roadmap is essential. Immigration Canada describes, analyzes, and reassesses immigration in a Canada that is rapidly changing, increasingly diverse, more uncertain, and globally connected. Drawing on the best Canadian and international scholarship, Fleras investigates related topics such as integration, identity, and multiculturalism, to consider immigration in a wider context. By thoroughly capturing the politics, patterns, and paradoxes of contemporary migration, this book rethinks the thorny issues and reframes the key debates.

Humanitarian Borders

Humanitarian Borders
Author: Polly Pallister-Wilkins
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-06-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1839765992

The seamy underside of humanitarianism What does it mean when humanitarianism is the response to death, injury and suffering at the border? This book interrogates the politics of humanitarian responses to border violence and unequal mobility, arguing that such responses mask underlying injustices, depoliticise violent borders and bolster liberal and paternalist approaches to suffering. Focusing on the diversity of actors involved in humanitarian assistance alongside the times and spaces of action, the book draws a direct line between privileges of movement and global inequalities of race, class, gender and disability rooted in colonial histories and white supremacy and humanitarian efforts that save lives while entrenching such inequalities. Based on eight years of research with border police, European Union officials, professional humanitarians, and grassroots activists in Europe’s borderlands, including Italy and Greece, the book argues that this kind of saving lives builds, expands and deepens already restrictive borders and exclusive and exceptional identities through what the book calls humanitarian borderwork.

The Practice of Global Citizenship

The Practice of Global Citizenship
Author: Luis Cabrera
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-10-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139492543

In this novel account of global citizenship, Luis Cabrera argues that all individuals have a global duty to contribute directly to human rights protections and to promote rights-enhancing political integration between states. The Practice of Global Citizenship blends careful moral argument with compelling narratives from field research among unauthorized immigrants, activists seeking to protect their rights, and the 'Minuteman' activists striving to keep them out. Immigrant-rights activists, especially those conducting humanitarian patrols for border-crossers stranded in the brutal Arizona desert, are shown as embodying aspects of global citizenship. Unauthorized immigrants themselves are shown to be enacting a form of global 'civil' disobedience, claiming the economic rights central to the emerging global normative charter while challenging the restrictive membership regimes that are the norm in the current global system. Cabrera also examines the European Union, seeing it as a crucial laboratory for studying the challenges inherent in expanding citizen membership.

The Uninvited

The Uninvited
Author: Jeremy Harding
Publisher: Profile Books Limited
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781861972118

Documentary journalism! Part one reports on the influx of refugees to Europe coming from Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, North Africa and part two gives an overview of the European asylum debate by looking at the situation of the growing numbers of illegal immigrants.