Europe's Border Crisis
Biopolitical Security and Beyond
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:7th Sep '17
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Europe's Border Crisis explores current dynamics in EU border security and migration management. It argues that a crisis point has emerged because 'irregular' migrants are seen as both a security threat to the EU and also as a life threatened and in need of protection. This leads to paradoxical situations whereby humanitarian policies and practices expose 'irregular' migrants to often dehumanizing and sometimes lethal border security mechanisms. The dominant way of understanding these dynamics -- one that blames a gap between policy and practice -- fails to address the deeper issues at stake and ends up perpetuating the terms of the crisis. Drawing on conceptual resources in biopolitical theory the book offers an alternative diagnosis and sets out a new research agenda for the interdisciplinary field of critical border and migration studies.
Europe's Border Crisis is a work of great interest, which integrates socio-political and philosophical analysis. Drawing on biopolitical paradigms in contemporary political philosophy, it finds keys for interpreting current dynamics within immigration policies and their antinomic consequences. It is a useful and original book that progresses research in this field of study. * Roberto Esposito, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa *
Since the second half of 2015, Europe's focus has been on closing the borders, striking a deal with Turkey to take back refugees from Greece, and shutting down the Balkan route that many thousands took to Northern Europe beforehand. Is there any way to understand these developments, beyond emotional judgements such as callous and deadly or harsh but necessary? Vaughan-Williams, whose book is aimed at broadening the scope of academic research on borders and migration, argues for a new way of seeing the problem. * Daniel Trilling, Times Literary Supplement *
Europe's Border Crisis is a dense, provocative and timely reflection on the debate on border security and migration management in Europe and beyond. The remarkable and innovative work of Nick Vaughan-Williams constitutes a step forward in migration and border studies. * Julien Brachet, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography *
Europe's Border Crisis is essential reading for students of political theory and International Relations. Nick Vaughan-Williams skillfully combines a sophisticated interpretation of the main paradigms of biopolitics with a rich empirical analysis of EU border security policies in a powerful critique of the very foundations of contemporary European politics. He also articulates an affirmative politics of the border, in which the encounter between self and other does not take the exclusionary and violent forms that we observe all around us today. * Sergei Prozorov, University of Helsinki *
Nick Vaughan-Williams' book offers an intellectually stimulating and conceptually challenging and rich discussion of what he terms 'Europe's border crisis.' In view of tragic deaths and human suffering at European/ EU external borders, this book makes a timely intervention in academic and non-academic debates on the controversial politics and paradoxical effects of EU border and migration policies and practices at diverse scales and spaces. * Beste Isleyen, University of Amsterdam *
ISBN: 9780198806790
Dimensions: 232mm x 155mm x 11mm
Weight: 300g
192 pages