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).