1st Edition

Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe

By Maurice Stierl Copyright 2019
    252 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    252 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Over the past few years, increased ‘unauthorised’ migrations into the territories of Europe have resulted in one of the most severe crises in the history of the European Union. Stierl explores migration and border struggles in contemporary Europe and the ways in which they animate, problematise, and transform the region and its political formation.

    This volume follows public protests of migrant activists, less visible attempts of those on the move to ‘irregularly’ subvert borders, as well as new solidarities and communities that emerge in interwoven struggles for the freedom of movement. Stierl offers a conceptualisation of migrant resistances as forces of animation through which European forms of border governance can be productively explored. As catalysts that set socio-political processes into frictional motion, they are developed as modes of critical investigation, indeed, as method. By ethnographically following and being implicated in different migration struggles that contest the ways in which Europe decides over and enacts who does, and does not, belong, the author probes what they reveal about the condition of Europe in the contemporary moment.

    This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of Migration, Border, Security and Citizenship Studies, as well as the Political Sciences more generally.

    Introduction 

    1. Resistance as Method 

    2. Migratory Dissent 

    3. Migratory Excess 

    4. Migratory Solidarity 

    5. Diagnostics of EUrope 

    6. Analytics of Power 

    7. A Speculative Blueprint

     

    Biography

    Maurice Stierl is a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Warwick. Previously, from 2015 to 2017, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Comparative Border Studies at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on migration and border struggles in contemporary ‘EUrope’ and is broadly situated in the disciplines of International Relations, International Political Sociology, and Critical Migration, Citizenship, and Border Studies. His work has appeared in the journals Antipode, Citizenship Studies, Globalizations, Movements, Global Society, Spheres, and elsewhere. Dr. Stierl is an Assistant Editor of Citizenship Studies, and a member of the activist project WatchTheMed Alarm Phone and the research collectives Kritnet, MobLab, New Keywords Collective, and Authority & Political Technologies.

    "While this book offers a great deal to theorisations of resistance as well as critical citizenship studies and “autonomy of migration” literature, what I found most exciting was thinking through how each of Stierl’s examples brings to light the messy entanglement of EUrope’s borders and the ever-changing spatialities of migration control."

    Andonea Jon Dickson, Queen Mary, University of London