UK Borderscapes by Le Louvier, Kahina; Hough, Karen Latricia;

Short description:

This book analyses bordering practices and their negative effects as well as the many creative and often grassroots ways in which borders are resisted and reinvented. This book will interest scholars and students in the fields of migration, border and refugee studies, human geography, criminology, sociology and anthropology.

Long description:

This book analyses bordering practices and their negative effects as well as the many creative and often grassroots ways in which borders are resisted and reinvented.

From the hostile environment to Brexit and the Nationality and Borders Bill, the UK border regime has become increasingly strict and complex, operating both at the edge of the state and within everyday life in unprecedented ways. At the same time, this securitisation approach is often contested, and its effects are fought daily by many groups and individuals. This book explores this tension, documenting and analysing how the contemporary UK border is imagined, constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed in multiple ways. To draw together the different pieces that compose this evolving and conflicting landscape, this book uses the concept of "borderscapes", which views borders as sites of multiple tensions between hegemonic, non-hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic imaginaries and practices. This lens enables contributors to draw a multifocal overview of the UK border that includes the different human and material actors that form it, the spaces and practices they shape, and the imaginaries and counter-imaginaries that emerge from their conflictual encounters.

Bringing together contributions by researchers from a variety of disciplines, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of migration and border studies, refugee studies, human geography, criminology, sociology, and anthropology.

This timely and important collection casts critical light on the policies, people, and practices that constitute the borders of post-Brexit Britain. Drawing together insights from a range of leading international scholars and activists, UK Borderscapes unpacks the history, evolution, and effects of bordering, illustrating the harms of border enforcement, and tracing the vibrancy of resistance that confronts bordering. In detailing the growth of migrants? rights movements, forms of everyday solidarity, and the role of materials in contesting borders, the collection illustrates the many and varied sites of everyday resistance that are reshaping borders today.

Jonathan Darling, Durham University, UK.

The book is timely, relevant, and it lifts the veil on how decisions are made by the State and its agents to cap irregular migration via security and border control policies. The equity and fairness of these outcome are evaluated and the conclusion drawn that protection gaps for migrants and asylum seekers exist in law and in policy. Although the focus is on UK Borderscapes, the multi-disciplinary discussion, layered analysis, identification of the power relations which exist, and the proposals offered resonate beyond the UK. It appeals to the Global South audience where natural disasters, poverty, civil war, and gang violence fuel continuous irregular migration, often with inflows to the UK. The book stimulates debate to find balanced and humanitarian solutions and it informs those misled by State propaganda or media headline statements which sensationalise or simplify the plight of migrants.