Ours is an era marked by extraordinary human migrations, with some 200 million people alive today having moved from their country of origin. The political reaction in Europe and the United States has been to raise the drawbridge: immigrant workers are needed, but no longer welcome. So migrants die in trucks or drown en route; they are murdered in smuggling operations or ruthlessly exploited in illegal businesses that make it impossible for the abused to seek police help. More than 15,000 people have died in the last twenty years trying to circumvent European entry restrictions. In this beautifully written book, Jeremy Harding draws haunting portraits of the migrants – and anti-immigrant zealots – he encountered in his investigations in Europe and on the US–Mexico border. Harding’s painstaking research and global perspective identify the common characteristics of immigration policy across the rich world and raise pressing questions about the future of national boundaries and universal values.

This engaging analysis of the refugee crisis explores how borders are formed, policed—and used to inflict violence on the poor. “In an era of terrorism, global inequality, and rising political tension over migration, Jones argues that tight border controls make the world worse, not better.” —Boston Globe Forty thousand people have died trying to cross between countries in the past decade, and yet international borders only continue to harden. The United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union; the United States elected a president who campaigned on building a wall; while elsewhere, the popularity of right-wing antimigrant nationalist political parties is surging. Reece Jones argues that the West has helped bring about the deaths of countless migrants, as states attempt to contain populations and limit access to resources and opportunities. “We may live in an era of globalization,” he writes, “but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.” In Violent Borders, Jones crosses the migrant trails of the world, documenting the billions of dollars spent on border security projects and the dire consequences for countless millions. While the poor are restricted by the lottery of birth to slum dwellings in the ailing decolonized world, the wealthy travel without constraint, exploiting pools of cheap labor and lax environmental regulations. With the growth of borders and resource enclosures, the deaths of migrants in search of a better life are intimately connected to climate change, environmental degradation, and the growth of global wealth inequality.

Stephen Philip Cohen can rightly be called the doyen of South Asian security analysis, especially traditional security concerns in the region and advocacy on US foreign policy. The contributors to the volume have all, at different at different points in time, been Cohen’s students, and are now well-known scholars in their own right. Broadly dividing Cohen’s work into categories, the contributors deal with the following issues: how security is understood and how important strategic relationships are framed approaches to and choices made in the areas of military structure, arms production, and investment in science and technology how and why civil society groups are mobilized towards political ends—specifically looking at ethnic mobilization in diaspora communities, non-official initiatives for peace in South Asia, and the role of state and non-state actors in disaster management the role of the army. The essays reflect a view of security as something people choose to make for themselves through an exercise of agency that is rooted in the realm of ideas.

Borders / Debordering: Topologies, Praxes, Hospitableness engages from interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives some of the most important issues of the present, which lay at the intersection of physical, epistemological, spiritual, and existential borders. The book addresses a variety of topics connected with the role of the body at the threshold between subjective identities and intersubjective spaces that are drawn in ontology, epistemology and ethics, as well as with borders inscribed in intersubjective, social, and political spaces (such as gender/sexuality/race, human/animal/nature/technology divisions). The book is divided in three sections, covering various phenomena of borders and their possible debordering. The first section offers insights into bordering topologies, from reflections on the U.S. border to the development of the concept of the “border” in ancient China. The second section is dedicated to practices as well as intellectual ontologies with practical implications bound up with borders in different cultural and social spheres – from Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar to contemporary photography with its implications for political systems and reflections on human/animal border. The third section covers reflections on hospitality that relate to migration issues, emerging material ethics, and aerial hospitableness.

This collection explores the post-2000 film Western. With examples ranging from major American films, through acclaimed international productions, to works such as experimental films and television commercials, the contributors seek to account for the appeal and currency of the film Western today.

Beyond the romanticized image of newcomers arriving as a “huddled mass” at Halifax’s Pier 21, understanding the reality and complexity of immigration today requires an expert guide. In the hands of scholar Augie Fleras, this intricate and ever-changing subject gets the attention it deserves with analysis of all aspects, including admission policies, the refugee processing system, the temporary foreign worker program, and the emergence of transnational identities. Given the unprecedented number of federal policy reforms of the past decade, such a roadmap is essential. Immigration Canada describes, analyzes, and reassesses immigration in a Canada that is rapidly changing, increasingly diverse, more uncertain, and globally connected. Drawing on the best Canadian and international scholarship, Fleras investigates related topics such as integration, identity, and multiculturalism, to consider immigration in a wider context. By thoroughly capturing the politics, patterns, and paradoxes of contemporary migration, this book rethinks the thorny issues and reframes the key debates.

The Research Handbook on Law and Utilitarianism sheds light on contemporary legal culture, and the ways in which it interacts with theories of justice. Guillaume Tusseau brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to analyse the utilitarian standpoint on legal disciplines and legal governance, as well as the contribution of utilitarian arguments to current legal debates.