The encounter of Europe, Asia and Africa in the Mediterranean basin has given rise to a culturally rich world - a world created by two millennia of warfare and conquest, trading and cultural diffusion, confrontation and accommodation. Combining a historical with a social-anthropological approach, this study of Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Eastern Morocco, offers a remarkable insight into these processes on the local, microscopic level, and shows Melilla's transformation into a trading post and base for colonial penetration and, finally, into a multi-ethnic enclave.

This book offers fresh insights into the complex and various ways in which international frontiers influence cultural identities. Ten anthropological case studies describe specific international borders in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, and bring out the importance of boundary politics, and the diverse forms that it may take. As a contribution to the wider theoretical debates about nationalism, transnationalism, and globalization, it will interest to students and scholars in anthropology, political science, international studies and modern history.

"In Muslims in Spain, 1492-1814: Living and Negotiating in the Land of the Infidel, Eloy Martín-Corrales surveys Hispano-Muslim relations from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, a period of chronic hostilities. Nonetheless there were thousands of Muslims in Spain during this time: ambassadors, exiles, merchants, converts, and travelers. Their negotiating strategies and the necessary support they found on both shores of the Mediterranean prove that relations between Spaniards and Muslims were based on reasons of state and a pragmatism that generated intense ties, both political and economic. These increased enormously after the peace treaties that Spain signed with Muslim countries between 1767 and 1791"--

Within the general framework of Cultural Psychology, this book provides different perspectives on the relationship between border and identity by experts from several disciplines (i.e. history, psychology, geography etc.). The book offers an “in- depth” comprehension of the intricacy of the border making process and how this affect the identity formation from a psychological, social and cultural point of views. The book takes a close look to some European countries as specimens to investigate the complex link between creation of national/ethnic identity and bordering process that evoke the more general question of the I-OTHER relation. This book provides an integrated insight into the complex phenomenon of borders and identity. The process of making and negotiating border and the identity formation on the border is analyzed as psychological, social, historical, and cultural phenomena. This Brief will be of interest to researchers and students as well as diplomats and administrative policy makers within the fields of political science, psychology, cultural psychology, and sociology.

In this groundbreaking ethnography, Ruben Andersson, a gifted anthropologist and journalist, travels along the clandestine migration trail from Senegal and Mali to the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Through the voices of his informants, Andersson explores, viscerally and emphatically, how Europe’s increasingly powerful border regime meets and interacts with its target–the clandestine migrant. This vivid, rich work examines the subterranean migration flow from Africa to Europe, and shifts the focus from the "illegal immigrants" themselves to the vast industry built around their movements. This fascinating and accessible book is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of international migration and the changing texture of global culture.

This comprehensive and authoritative book is about the last colonies, those remaining territories formally dependent on metropolitan powers. It discusses the surprisingly large number of these territories, mainly small isolated islands with limited resources. Yet these places are not as obscure as might be expected. They may be major tourist destinations, military bases, satellite tracking stations, tax havens or desolate, underpopulated spots that can become international flashpoints, such as the Falklands. The authors find that at a time of escalating nationalism and globalization, these remnants of empire provide insights into the meanings of political, economic, legal and cultural independence, as well as sovereignty and nationhood. This book provides a broad-based and provocative discussion of colonialism and interdependence in the modern world, from a unique perspective.