New Border And Citizenship Politics

This collection examines the intersections and dynamics of bordering processes and citizenship politics in the Global North and Australia. By taking the political agency of migrants into account, it approaches the subject of borders as a genuine political and socially constructed phenomenon and transcends a state-centered perspective.

Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies. The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies. Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement will be of interest to students and scholars of migration and security politics, globalisation and citizenship studies.

This edited collection goes beyond the limited definition of borders as simply dividing lines across states, to uncover another, yet related, type of division: one that separates policies and institutions from public debate and contestation. Bringing together expertise from established and emerging academics, it examines the fluid and varied borderscape across policy and the public domains. The chapters encompass a wide range of analyses that covers local, national and transnational frameworks, policies and private actors. In doing so, Migration, Borders and Citizenship reveals the tensions between border control and state economic interests; legal frameworks designed to contain criminality and solidarity movements; international conventions, national constitutions and local migration governance; and democratic and exclusive constructions of citizenship. This novel approach to the politics of borders will appeal to sociologists, political scientists and geographers working in the fields of migration, citizenship, urban geography and human rights; in addition to students and scholars of security studies and international relations.

From the intersection of citizenship, critical migration studies, and science and technology studies (STS), this book examines, across the various case studies, configurations between technologies, infrastructures and citizenship that may constrain acts of citizenship in migration and border regimes; constitute contestation and participation over citizenship; or enable and shape alternative acts of citizenship in migration and border regimes. Technologies and infrastructures on the border are designed to position migrants in multiple and potentially contradictory forms; migrants crossing the border, in their turn, may choose to challenge and repurpose those technologies and infrastructures to match their interests. By elaborating on the notion of ‘material citizenship politics’, the contributors provide a detailed analysis of socio-material practices on the border that moves beyond portraying migrants as mere victims of border technologies and migration infrastructures and anchors critique on the inside of those practices. The chapters in this volume hope to contribute to setting the research agenda and to stimulate further research along these lines revisiting the (in)visibilities of migrant subjects along technologies and infrastructures. As the current pandemic unfolds, exposing societal vulnerabilities, this book highlights the need to critically reflect on the establishment of existing technologies and infrastructures in order to examine to what extent those affect and shape migrant subjects in particular, but may also be extended and used on wider populations after being tested and normalized on vulnerable subjects. This book will be of interest to a broad readership across the social sciences, including scholars working in Critical Migration and Border Studies, Citizenship Studies, Critical Security Studies, and Science and Technology Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Citizenship Studies.

This book brings together scholars from various disciplines to explore current issues and trends in the rethinking of migration and citizenship from the perspective of three major immigrant democracies – Australia, Canada, and the United States. These countries share a history of pronounced immigration and emigration, extensive experience with diasporic and mobile communities, and with integrating culturally diverse populations. They also share an approach to automatic citizenship based on the principle of jus soli (as opposed to the traditionally common jus sanguinis of continental Europe), and a comparatively open attitude towards naturalization. Some of these characteristics are now under pressure due to the "restrictive turn" in citizenship and migration worldwide. This volume explores the significance of political structures, political agents and political culture in shaping processes of inclusion and exclusion in these diverse societies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

Borders are changing in response to terrorism and immigration. This book shows why this matters, especially for sovereignty, individual liberty, and citizenship.

Michael Peter Smith and Matt Bakker spent five years carrying out ethnographic field research in multiple communities in the Mexican states of Zacatecas and Guanajuato and various cities in California, particularly metropolitan Los Angeles. Combining the information they gathered there with political-economic and institutional analysis, the five extended case studies in Citizenship across Borders offer a new way of looking at the emergent dynamics of transnational community development and electoral politics on both sides of the border. Smith and Bakker highlight the continuing significance of territorial identifications and state policies—particularly those of the sending state—in cultivating and sustaining transnational connections and practices. In so doing, they contextualize and make sense of the complex interplay of identity and loyalty in the lives of transnational migrant activists. In contrast to high-profile warnings of the dangers to national cultures and political institutions brought about by long-distance nationalism and dual citizenship, Citizenship across Borders demonstrates that, far from undermining loyalty and diminishing engagement in U.S. political life, the practice of dual citizenship by Mexican migrants actually provides a sense of empowerment that fosters migrants' active civic engagement in American as well as Mexican politics.

Questions of migration and citizenship are at the heart of global political debate with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump having ripple effects around the world. Providing new insights into the politics of migration and citizenship in the UK and the US, this book challenges the increasingly prevalent view of migration and migrants as threats and of formal citizenship as a necessary marker of belonging. Instead the authors offer an analysis of migration and citizenship in practice, as a counterpoint to simplistic discourses. The book uses cutting-edge academic work on migration and citizenship to address three themes central to current debates – borders and walls, mobility and travel, and belonging. Through this analysis a clearer picture of the roots of these politics emerges as well as of the consequences for mobility, political participation and belonging in the 21st century.