Territory, Migration and the Evolution of the International System

Contemporary international migration makes border controls, bounded citizenship, and sovereign jurisdictions appear increasingly outdated. These policy tools are poor responses to a world characterized by cross-border mobility, transnational interconnections and global diaspora. Are there viable alternatives to this system of territorial and exclusive states?

This book takes a historical trajectory, exploring governments' use of different territorial strategies to manage migration at specific moments during the evolution of the international system, from centralization in Renaissance Italy and expansion under the British Empire to the integration of the European Union. Vigneswaran shows how under each of these regimes, political thinkers and rulers draw upon a 'mental map' – a specific way of imagining political space - to devise their systems of jurisdiction, belonging and immigration control. Using evidence of territorial variation and reform, this book looks to the future of migration regimes beyond the territorially exclusive state.

Darshan Vigneswaran is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society, WITS University, South Africa. He has held fellowships at Oxford University, UK and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany. He is the co-editor of Slavery, Migration and Contemporary Bondage in Africa (2012) and currently studies migration control, state development and policing in India and South Africa.