The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity

Irregular migration has emerged as an issue of intensive political debate and governmental practice over recent years.

Critically intervening in debates around the governing of irregular migration, The Contested Politics of Mobility explores the politics of mobility through what is defined as an ‘analytic of irregularity’. It brings together authors who address issues of mobility and irregularity from a range of distinct perspectives, to focus on the politics of control as well as the politics of migration. The volume develops an account of irregularity as a produced, ambivalent and contested socio-political condition, showing how this is activated through wide-ranging ‘borderzones’ that pull between migration and control. Covering cases from across contemporary North America and Europe and examining a range of control mechanisms, such as biometrics, deportation and workplace raiding, the volume refuses the term ‘illegal’ to describe movements of people across borders. In so doing, it highlights the complexity of relations between different regions and between a politics of migration and a politics control, and makes a timely intervention in the intersecting fields of critical citizenship, migration and security studies.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, international relations, sociology, migration and law.

Vicki Squire is RCUK research fellow at the Centre of Citizenship, Identities and Governance and the Department of Politics and International Studies, the Open University, UK. Her research focuses on issues of migration, citizenship and security. She is author of The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum (2009).

1. The Contested Politics of Mobility: Politicising Mobility, Mobilising Politics Vicki Squire Part 1: Politicising Mobility 2. Politicising Mobility Vicki Squire 3. Freedom and speed in enlarged borderzones Didier Bigo 4. Rezoning the Global: Technological Zones, Technological Work, and the (Un-) Making of Biometric Borders William Walters 5. Borderzones of Enforcement: Criminalization, Workplace Raids, and Migrant Counterconducts Jonathan Xavier Inda 6. Alien Powers: Deportable Labour and the Spectacle of Security Nicholas De Genova Part 2: Mobilising Politics 7. Mobilising Politics Vicki Squire 8. The Gaze of Autonomy: Capitalism, Migration and Social Struggles Sandro Mezzadra translated by Rodrigo Nunes 9. Governing Borderzones of Mobility through E-borders: The Politics of Embodied Mobility Kim Rygiel 10. Legal Exclusion and Dislocated Subjectivities: The Deportation of Salvadoran Youth from the United States Susan Bibler Coutin 11. Forms of irregular citizenship Peter Nyers 12. Citizens despite borders: Challenges to the Territorial Order of Europe Enrica Rigo 13. Epilogue, The Movements of Politics: Logics, Subjects, Citizenships Engin Isin