Europe’s Border Crisis: Biopolitical Security and Beyond
ISBN: 9780191809293
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: European Union;

Europe's Border Crisis explores current dynamics in EU border security and migration management. It argues that a crisis point has emerged because 'irregular' migrants are seen as both a security threat to the EU and also as a life threatened and in need of protection. This leads to paradoxical situations whereby humanitarian policies and practices expose 'irregular' migrants to often dehumanizing and sometimes lethal border security mechanisms. The dominant way of understanding these dynamics -- one that blames a gap between policy and practice -- fails to address the deeper issues at stake and ends up perpetuating the terms of the crisis. Drawing on conceptual resources in biopolitical theory the book offers an alternative diagnosis and sets out a new research agenda for the interdisciplinary field of critical border and migration studies.


Nick Vaughan-Williams is Professor of International Security and Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. From 2016 to 2019 he holds the Philip Leverhulme Prize for outstanding research in Politics and International Relations. His programme of research, supported with grants from the British Academy, UK Economic and Social Research Council, and Leverhulme Trust, focuses on the relationship between sovereignty, subjectivity, and the spatial dimensions of security - particularly the changing nature of borders and bordering practices in global politics. His book Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power (2009, 2012) was Gold Winner of the Association for Borderlands Studies Book Award. He is co-author of Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (2010, 2014) and Everyday Security Threats: Perceptions, Experiences, Consequences (2016).

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