Borders, Asylum and Global Non-Citizenship
The Other Side of the Fence

Explores the experiences of irregular migrants and refugees crossing borders as they resist global migration controls.

Heather L. Johnson (Author)

9781107061835, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 June 2014

257 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

'Overall, Borders, Asylum and Global Non-Citizenship: The Other Side of the Fence is an insightful and up-to-date contribution to the literature on sovereignty and migrants, particularly for students who approach the topic for the first time. The introduction of the concept of irregularity in relation to migration and state policy represents a crucial point in understanding contemporary realities.' Veronica Ferreri, Nordic Journal of Migration Research

The experience of border crossing for refugees and irregular migrants challenges global border and migration controls in multiple contexts. Using qualitative field research in Tanzania, Spain, Morocco and Australia, Heather L. Johnson asks how a global regime of migration management and control can be perceived through the dynamics of particular border spaces: refugee camps, border zones and detention centres. She explores how irregular migrants are impacted by the increasingly security-oriented practices of border control, and how they confront these practices. Johnson rejects the characterization of border spaces as exceptional, abject and exclusionary, arguing instead for an understanding of politics as everyday contestation that reveals a radical political agency, re-imagining the global non-citizen as a transgressive and powerful figure. Building on recent scholarship that rethinks irregularity and non-citizenship, her conclusions have broad implications for how we understand irregular migration from a position of dialogue and solidarity.

1. Introduction: situating migrant narratives in irregularity
2. Narratives and moments
3. From forced and voluntary to irregular and regular
4. Framing the migration regime in border control
5. Rethinking irregularity
6. Camps and detention centres: spaces containing irregularity
7. The other side of the fence
8. Irregularizing agency
Conclusion: stories about migration
Appendix: list of interviews
References.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], International relations [JPS], Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB], Refugees & political asylum [JFFD], Research methods: general [GPS]