East Finnmark – interethnic borderland now and then
A Russian vessel named “Saami” in a Norwegian wharf in Kirkenes in June 2023: the borderland reality on the ground continues as a lived experience even at times…
Tag: Borders
Book Review: The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power by Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou
In The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power, Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou explore how digital technologies are shaping experiences of migration today, focusing particularly on the 2015…
Book Review: ‘Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland’
In the book Ethnicity and Democracy, Mona Chettri offers a rich ethnography originating from fieldwork conducted in three EH borderland areas: Darjeeling (India), Sikkim (India), and Ilam in…
Profit over people? The ‘big business’ of tough immigration laws.
By Renata Carvalho As the new Nationality and Borders Bill sparks yet another wave of debates over the United Kingdom’s immigration tactics, it is important to ask: who…
Ep #85 Photography Through An Ethnographer’s Lens: Image Making with Jason De León
The Familiar Strange · Ep #85 Photography Through An Ethnographer’s Lens: Image Making with Jason De León This week Carolyn sits down with Jason De León, anthropologist, photographer…
Afghanistan’s Global Entanglements
by Magnus Marsden For many viewers in the West, the horrific scenes at Kabul airport in August 2021 appeared to suggest that after a brief period of international…
Mediating Mobility: Migration and Brokerage at the Borders of the State
Natasha Raheja (Cornell University) will present on ‘Mediating mobility: Migration and brokerage at the borders of the State’. Elizabeth Challinor (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa) will ac…
Envisioning a Different Park: Border Walls, Transborder Ties, and Militarized Ecologies
When news broke out on January 20th, 2021, that newly inaugurated President Joe Biden signed a proclamation ending Trump’s Executive Order 9844, which declared a national emergency at…
DNA Testing of Immigrants Is Unethical
The collection of genetic biodata for the reunification of families must safeguard individuals’ agency, provide meaningful informed consent, and protect privacy. DNA testing has been used for nearly…
In the Journals – Policing Migration
A Macedonian police officer raises his baton toward migrants by Freedom House via creativecommons Welcome back to In the Journals! This ongoing series aims to bridge conversations that…
Escape, Exposure, and Life on the Pacific Crest Trail
An act of walking into the wilderness implies an act of walking out of somewhere or something. The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which extends over the US states…
Don’t Come Home this Year
‘Don’t come home this year’ is a short video about Romanian migrants returning home from Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic. The video uses viral live streamed footage of…
REDUX: The Privileged Discomfort of Border Crossings
First published December 6, 2018 As social scientists our work often directly grows out of our personal journeys—journeys that are physical, emotional, intellectual and political. However, this is…
Strange Work in Familiar Places: Inside Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Border Hotels
The new appreciation of previously dismissed types of work may be short lived, and their ongoing fight for a living wage is certainly not won. However, this crisis…
Review: ‘The Gray Zone: Sovereignty, Human Smuggling and Undercover Police Investigations in Europe’ by Gregory Feldman
Irregular migration has been one of the most popular topics of the political debates in Europe for already a few years. Issues of border policing and border control…
Allegro vivace… the Italian laboratory, for better or for worse
This little essay was conceived wandering in the Swiss countryside. I’m on sabbatical leave and my whole work and travel program has been disrupted by the measures taken…
Beyond the Irish Border: A plague on both my houses in the time of COVID-19
Differing approaches to COVID-19 divided by the rolling hills and windy roads (of which there are many) of one of Europe’s most porous borders, have precipitated a personal…
Europe’s Other Walls
The Berlin Wall has always had multiple lives. Beyond its fall lies a story of proliferating borders and exclusions. “Berlin is not the same without a Wall,” said…
Explosive Landscapes
Walls are but the most visible parts of militarized borders. The Berlin Wall did not fall; it was demolished, first by hammer-wielding locals, then by state bulldozers, which…
#Review: Rules, Paper and Status
The arrival of a ‘refugee,’ ‘migrant,’ ‘asylym seeker,’ or the European ‘Other,’ is too familiar to us from political debates. The stage for this spectacle of ‘crisis’ and…
Migrant Caravan in Tijuana: Report from a volunteer lawyer
Tijuana is a city in the north of the state of Baja California in Mexico, close to the San Isidro Land Port of Entry, where wikipedia says 20,000…
#EASA2018 – The Other Protocols
The following words, as well as two other poems to be published on Allegra in the near future were written during three plenaries at the 15th EASA Biennal…
Calais: Eighteen Months On
by Elisa Sandri Calais has frequently made the headlines in the last two decades. The history of this border as a focal point for migration dates back to…
Notes from a blurry border (Part 1): Can that mountain stop me?
While media attention is focused elsewhere, a new phase of the “European border crisis” is unfolding around the snow-covered mountain passes between Italy and France. What might the…