A Moving Border

Italy's northern border follows the watershed that separates the drainage basins of Northern and Southern Europe. Running mostly at high altitudes, it crosses snowfields and perennial glaciers--all of which are now melting as a result of anthropogenic climate change. As the watershed shifts so does the border, contradicting its representations on official maps. Italy, Austria, and Switzerland have consequently introduced the novel legal concept of a "moving border," one that acknowledges the volatility of geographical features once thought to be stable. A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change builds upon the Italian Limes project by Studio Folder, which was devised in 2014 to survey the fluctuations of the boundary line across the Alps in real time. The book charts the effects of climate change on geopolitical understandings of border and the cartographic methods used to represent them. Locating the Italian condition alongside a longer political history of boundary making, the book brings together critical essays, visualizations, and unpublished documents from state archives. By examining the nexus of nationalism and cartography, A Moving Border details how borders are both material and imagined, and the ways global warming challenges Western conceptions of territory. Even more, it provides a blueprint for spatial intervention in a world where ecological processes are bound to dominate geopolitical affairs. A Moving Border features a foreword by Bruno Latour and texts by Stuart Elden, Mia Fuller, Francesca Hughes, and Wu Ming 1, and is co-published with ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe.

Moving Beyond Borders examines the life and accomplishments of Julian Samora, the first Mexican American sociologist in the United States and the founding father of the discipline of Latino studies. Detailing his distinguished career at the University of Notre Dame from 1959 to 1984, the book documents the history of the Mexican American Graduate Studies program that Samora established at Notre Dame and traces his influence on the evolution of border studies, Chicano studies, and Mexican American studies. Samora's groundbreaking ideas opened the way for Latinos to understand and study themselves intellectually and politically, to analyze the complex relationships between Mexicans and Mexican Americans, to study Mexican immigration, and to ready the United States for the reality of Latinos as the fastest growing minority in the nation. In addition to his scholarly and pedagogical impact, his leadership in the struggle for civil rights was a testament to the power of community action and perseverance. Focusing on Samora's teaching, mentoring, research, and institution-building strategies, Moving Beyond Borders explores the legacies, challenges, and future of ethnic studies in United States higher education. Contributors are Teresita E. Aguilar, Jorge A. Bustamante, Gilberto Cárdenas, Miguel A. Carranza, Frank M. Castillo, Anthony J. Cortese, Lydia Espinosa Crafton, Barbara Driscoll de Alvarado, Herman Gallegos, Phillip Gallegos, José R. Hinojosa, Delfina Landeros, Paul López, Sergio X. Madrigal, Ken Martínez, Vilma Martínez, Alberto Mata, Amelia M. Muñoz, Richard A. Navarro, Jesus "Chuy" Negrete, Alberto López Pulido, Julie Leininger Pycior, Olga Villa Parra, Ricardo Parra, Victor Rios, Marcos Ronquillo, Rene Rosenbaum, Carmen Samora, Rudy Sandoval, Alfredo Rodriguez Santos, and Ciro Sepulveda.

A picture book debut by an award-winning author about a boy's life on the U.S.-Mexico border, visiting his favorite places on The Other Side with his father, spending time with family and friends, and sharing in the responsibility of community care. Early one Saturday morning, a boy prepares for a trip to The Other Side/El Otro Lado. It's close--just down the street from his school--and it's a twin of where he lives. To get there, his father drives their truck along the Rio Grande and over a bridge, where they're greeted by a giant statue of an eagle. Their outings always include a meal at their favorite restaurant, a visit with Tío Mateo at his jewelry store, a cold treat from the paletero, and a pharmacy pickup. On their final and most important stop, they check in with friends seeking asylum and drop off much-needed supplies. My Two Border Towns by David Bowles, with stunning watercolor illustrations by Erika Meza, is the loving story of a father and son's weekend ritual, a demonstration of community care, and a tribute to the fluidity, complexity, and vibrancy of life on the U.S.-Mexico border. Available in English and Spanish.

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.

Despite -- and perhaps because of -- increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

The most up-to-date analysis of today’s immigration issues As the authors state in Chapter 1, "the movement of people across national borders represents one of the most vivid dramas of social reality in the contemporary world." This comparative text examines contemporary immigration across the globe, focusing on 20 major nations. Noted scholars Peter Kivisto and Thomas Faist introduce students to important topics of inquiry at the heart of the field, including Movement: Explores the theories of migration using a historical perspective of the modern world. Settlement: Provides clarity concerning the controversial matter of immigrant incorporation and refers to the varied ways immigrants come to be a part of a new society. Control: Focuses on the politics of immigration and examines the role of states in shaping how people choose to migrate. Key Features Provides comprehensive coverage of topics not covered in other texts, such as state and immigration control, focusing on policies created to control migratory flow and evolving views of citizenship Offers a global portrait of contemporary immigration, including a demographic overview of today’s cross-border movers Offers critical assessments of the achievements of the field to date Encourages students to rethink traditional views about the distinction between citizen and alien in this global age Suggests paths for future research and new theoretical developments Beyond a Border is a part of the SAGE Pine Forge Sociology for a New Century Series. It offers professors a powerful and timely option to incorporate the topic of immigration in their courses. Contributor to the SAGE Teaching Innovations and Professional Development Award

A powerful manifesto for a world without borders from two immigration policy experts and activists Borders harm all of us: they must be abolished. Borders divide workers and families, fuel racial division, and reinforce global disparities. They encourage the expansion of technologies of surveillance and control, which impact migrants and citizens both. Bradley and de Noronha tell what should by now be a simple truth: borders are not only at the edges of national territory, in airports, or at border walls. Borders are everyday and everywhere; they follow people around and get between us, and disrupt our collective safety, freedom and flourishing. Against Borders is a passionate manifesto for border abolition, arguing that we must transform society and our relationships to one another, and build a world in which everyone has the freedom to move and to stay.

An investigation of borders as moving entities that influence our notions of territory, authority, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. In Borders as Infrastructure, Huub Dijstelbloem brings science and technology studies, as well as the philosophy of technology, to the study of borders and international human mobility. Taking Europe's borders as a point of departure, he shows how borders can transform and multiply and and how they can mark conflicts over international orders. Borders themselves are moving entities, he claims, and with them travel our notions of territory, authority, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. The philosophies of Bruno Latour and Peter Sloterdijk provide a framework for Dijstelbloem's discussion of the material and morphological nature of borders and border politics. Dijstelbloem offers detailed empirical investigations that focus on the so-called migrant crisis of 2014-2016 on the Greek Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos; the Europe surveillance system Eurosur; border patrols at sea; the rise of hotspots and "humanitarian borders"; the technopolitics of border control at Schiphol International Airport; and the countersurveillance by NGOs, activists, and artists who investigate infrastructural border violence. Throughout, Dijstelbloem explores technologies used in border control, including cameras, databases, fingerprinting, visual representations, fences, walls, and monitoring instruments. Borders can turn places, routes, and territories into "zones of death." Dijstelbloem concludes that Europe's current relationship with borders renders borders--and Europe itself--an "extreme infrastructure" obsessed with boundaries and limits.

A critical assessment from the perspective of political and legal theory of how shifting borders impact on migration, mobility and the protection of displaced persons

Since the 1990s, biometric border control has attained key importance throughout Europe. Employing digital images of, for example, fingerprints, DNA, bones, faces or irises, biometric technologies use bodies to identify, categorize and regulate individuals’ cross-border movements. Based on innovative collaborative fieldwork, this book examines how biometrics are developed, put to use and negotiated in key European border sites. It analyses the disparate ways in which the technologies are applied, perceived and experienced by border control agents and others managing the cross-border flow of people, by scientists and developers engaged in making the technologies, and by migrants and non-government organizations attempting to manoeuvre in the complicated and often-unpredictable systems of technological control. Biometric technologies are promoted by national and supranational authorities and industry as scientifically exact and neutral methods of identification and verification, and as an infallible solution to security threats. The ethnographic case studies in this volume demonstrate, however, that the technologies are, in fact, characterized by considerable ambiguity and uncertainty and subject to substantial subjective interpretation, translation and brokering with different implications for migrants, border guards, researchers and other actors engaged in the border world.