By the end of 2020, the number of forcibly displaced people globally had reached 82.4 million as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order (UNHCR, 2021). Efforts to prevent these people from crossing national boundaries have resulted in draconian legislation and the vilification of migrants at various international borders. In the Mediterranean, at the border with ‘fortress Europe’, there have been thousands of fatalities as migrants risk the treacherous crossing in tiny boats. The so-called ‘weaponization of migration’ is apparent in recent events on the Polish-Belarussian border as hundreds of asylum seekers are trapped between rival forces of armed soldiers. Under the UK government's 'hostile environment' policy, many legal immigration routes have been closed, and the rights of asylum seekers have been severely curtailed. The so-called 'migrant caravan', which began in Honduras in October 2018, prompted the US and Mexican governments to deploy active-duty military officers to the border, creating more chaos in the area.

This guide offers theoretical and practical tools for an innovative approach to a key political issue: how, along with our immigrant fellow-citizens, can we build a fair and plural society that ensures the well-being or all? By moving beyond rigid categories like "foreigner", "immigrant" and "illegal, and ambiguous concepts like "identity", "diversity, "immigration control and "integration", this guide suggests that policy makers, civil servants and citizens need to question their own vocabulary if they are to grasp the complexity and uniqueness or people's migration paths. Perceiving migrants simply from the host country's point or view - the security, well-being and life-style of its nationals - has limitations. We cannot see people of foreign origin only as a threat or a resource to be exploited. If we see them as stereotypes, we are seeing only a mirror of European fears and contradictory aspirations. This guide helps readers decode and address the structural problems of our society, looking at the accusations made against migrants And The utilitarian view or the advantages that immigrants bring to host societies. In publishing this guide, The Council or Europe is seeking to initiate an in-depth debate on the migration issue, which is so high on the European political agenda

The international refugee regime is fundamentally broken. Designed in the wake of World War II to provide protection and assistance, the system is unable to address the record numbers of persons displaced by conflict and violence today. States have put up fences and adopted policies to deny, deter, and detain asylum seekers. People recognized as refugees are routinely denied rights guaranteed by international law. The results are dismal for the millions of refugees around the world who are left with slender prospects to rebuild their lives or contribute to host communities. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore lay bare the underlying global crisis of responsibility. The Arc of Protection adopts a revisionist and critical perspective that examines the original premises of the international refugee regime. Aleinikoff and Zamore identify compromises at the founding of the system that attempted to balance humanitarian ideals and sovereign control of their borders by states. This book offers a way out of the current international morass through refocusing on responsibility-sharing, seeing the humanitarian-development divide in a new light, and putting refugee rights front and center.

The Border and Its Bodies examines the impact of migration from Central America and México to the United States on the most basic social unit possible: the human body. It explores the terrible toll migration takes on the bodies of migrants—those who cross the border and those who die along the way—and discusses the treatment of those bodies after their remains are discovered in the desert. The increasingly militarized U.S.-México border is an intensely physical place, affecting the bodies of all who encounter it. The essays in this volume explore how crossing becomes embodied in individuals, how that embodiment transcends the crossing of the line, and how it varies depending on subject positions and identity categories, especially race, class, and citizenship. Timely and wide-ranging, this book brings into focus the traumatic and real impact the border can have on those who attempt to cross it, and it offers new perspectives on the effects for rural communities and ranchers. An intimate and profoundly human look at migration, The Border and Its Bodies reminds us of the elemental fact that the border touches us all.

This book examines the relevance of artistic practices in the current debate about the integration of de facto refugees in Europe, and also in the actual integration of refugee artists into the social fabric and the artistic scene. It looks at the role of arts (music, theatre, literature, etc.) in the solidarity movements in favor of refugees occurring in a number of European cities. It also examines the trajectory of refugee artists and their strategies to claim a position in their new society and artistic scene. The included chapters represent different disciplines and different theoretical perspectives (social movement theories, social mobilization theories, and cultural participation theories).

Terrorism and Asylum, edited by James C. Simeon, thoroughly analyses terrorism’s use in forced displacement, to limit access to asylum, and to exclude persons from refugee protection, while offering practical alternative solutions for advancing human rights and dignity for everyone.

Since 2015, the ‘refugee crisis’ is possibly the most photographed humanitarian crises in history. Photographs taken, for instance, in Lesvos, Greece, and Bodrum, Turkey, were instrumental in generating waves of public support for, and populist opposition to “welcoming refugees” in Europe. But photographs do not circulate in a vacuum; this book explores the visual economy of the ‘refugee crisis,’ showing how the reproduction of images is structured by, and secures hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and ‘race,’ essential to the functioning of bordered nation-states. Taking photography not only as the object of research, but innovating the method of photographìa— the material trace of writing/grafì with light/phos— this book urges us to view images and their reproduction critically. Part theoretical text, part visual essay, Reproducing Refugees vividly shows how institutional violence underpins both the spectacularity and the banality of ‘crisis.’ This book goes about synthesising visual studies with queer, feminist, postcolonial, post-structuralist, and post-Marxist theories. Carastathis and Tsilimpounidi offer theoretical frameworks and methodological tools to critically analyse representations, both those circulated through hegemonic institutions, and those generated from ‘below’. They carve a space between logos and praxis, ways of knowing and ways of doing, by offering a new visual language that problematises reified categories such as that of the ‘refugee’ and makes possible disruptive, alternative, resistant perceptions. The book contributes to the fields of migration and border studies, critically engaging visual narratives drawn from migration movements to question dominant categories and frameworks, from a decolonial, no-borders, queer feminist perspective.