Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity

Description

Rejecting claims that migration is a crisis for Europe, this book instead suggests that the 'migration crisis' reflects a more fundamental breakdown of a modern European tradition of humanism. Squire provides a detailed and broad-ranging analysis of the EU's response to the 'crisis', highlighting the centrality of practices of governing migration through death and precarity. Furthermore, she unpacks a series of pro-migration activist interventions that emerge from the lived experiences of those regularly confronting the consequences of the EU's response. By showing how these advance alternative horizons of solidarity and hope, Squire draws attention to a renewed humanism that is grounded both in a deepened respect for the lives and dignity of people on the move, and an appreciation of longer histories of violence and dispossession. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers working on migration in political science, international relations, European studies, law and sociology.

Vicki Squire is Professor of International Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, UK, and co-editor of the flagship ISA journal International Political Sociology. She is author of The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum (2009), The Contested Politics of Mobility (2011), Post/Humanitarian Border Politics Between Mexico and the US (2015), and Reclaiming Migration (co-authored with Perkowski, Stevens and Vaughan-Williams, 2020).

'This book masterfully documents how the barbarians appearing at the frontiers of Europe are none other than the European governments themselves and how the European licence to dictate the measure of a human is being revoked by acts of hope and solidarity.' Engin Isin, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London 'Vicki Squire's Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity offers a most insightful and compelling analysis of EU practices of governing migration and the involvement of activist groups in contesting the power relations through which death and vulnerability become normalised. It draws crucial attention to multifaceted dynamics of power and violence that underscore the 'Mediterranean migration crisis', including the deaths and vulnerabilities of people on the move and the modern European tradition of humanism. It provides a significant analysis of activist interventions that not only disrupt the so-called crisis but also facilitate alternative horizons of solidarity and hope and contribute to solidaristic social movements. Europe's Migration Crisis is powerfully argued, deeply compassionate, and indispensable reading for scholars of migration and refugees.' Suzan Ilcan, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo and Balsillie School of International Affairs, Canada