This book defines and discusses the term “hidden geographies” in two ways: systematically and by presenting a variety of examples of the research fields and topics concerning hidden geographies, with the aim of stimulating further basic and applied research in this area. While the term is quite rarely used in the scientific literature (more often as a figure of speech than to illustrate or problematize its deeper meaning), we argue that hidden geographies are everywhere and many of them have significant impacts on (other) natural and social phenomena and processes, subsequently triggering changes, for example in landscape, economy, culture, health or quality of life. The introductory section of the book conceptualises hidden geographies and discusses cognitive geography, symbolization of space, and the hidden geographies in mystical literature. Case studies of hidden environmental geographies address soils, air pollution, coastal pollution and the allocation of an astronomical tourism site. Revealing hidden historical and sacred places is illustrated through examples of the visualisation of the subterranean mining landscape, the analysis of the historical road network and trade, border stones and historical spatial boundaries, and the monastic Carthusian space. Hidden urban geographies are discussed in terms of the urban development of an entire city, presenting the role of geography in rescuing architecture, revealing illegal urbanisation, and the quality of habitation in Roma neighbourhoods. Case studies of hidden population geographies shed light on the ageing of rural populations and the impact of spatial-demographic disparities on fertility variations. Discussions of hidden social and economic geographies problematize recent social changes and conflicts in a country, present the implementation of the fourth industrial revolution and borders as hidden obstacles in the organisation of public transport. Hidden geographies are explicitly linked to perceptions and explanations in case studies that address local responses to perceived marginalisation in a city, the solo women travellers’ perceived risk and safety, and hidden geographical contexts of visible post-war landscapes. The book brings such a diversity of views, ideas and examples related to hidden geographies that can serve both to deepen their understanding and their various impacts on our lives and environment, and to attract further cross-disciplinary interest in considering hidden geographies – in research and in our every-day lives.

Over the last decade or so, academic and non-academic observers have focussed mainly, if not exclusively on the institutions and places of formal power in the Greater Middle East, depicting politics in the region as a small area limited to local authoritarian rulers. In contrast, this book aims to explore the ‘hidden geographies’ of power, i.e. the political dynamics developing inside, in parallel to, and beyond institutional forums; arguing that these hidden geographies play a crucial role, both in support of and in opposition to official power. By observing less frequented spaces of power, co-option, and negotiation, and particularly by focusing on the interplay between formal and informal power, this interdisciplinary collection provides new insights in the study of the intersection between policy-making and practical political dynamics in the Greater Middle East. Contributing a fresh perspective to a much-discussed topic, Informal Power in the Greater Middle East will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars and those interested in the politics of the region.

Investigating the global system of detention centers that imprison asylum seekers and conceal persistent human rights violations Remote detention centers confine tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants around the world, operating in a legal gray area that hides terrible human rights abuses from the international community. Built to temporarily house eight hundred migrants in transit, the immigrant “reception center” on the Italian island of Lampedusa has held thousands of North African refugees under inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia’s use of Christmas Island as a detention center for asylum seekers has enabled successive governments to imprison migrants from Asia and Africa, including the Sudanese human rights activist Abdul Aziz Muhamat, held there for five years. In The Death of Asylum, Alison Mountz traces the global chain of remote sites used by states of the Global North to confine migrants fleeing violence and poverty, using cruel measures that, if unchecked, will lead to the death of asylum as an ethical ideal. Through unprecedented access to offshore detention centers and immigrant-processing facilities, Mountz illustrates how authorities in the United States, the European Union, and Australia have created a new and shadowy geopolitical formation allowing them to externalize their borders to distant islands where harsh treatment and deadly force deprive migrants of basic human rights. Mountz details how states use the geographic inaccessibility of places like Christmas Island, almost a thousand miles off the Australian mainland, to isolate asylum seekers far from the scrutiny of humanitarian NGOs, human rights groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on borderlands and spaces of transit between regions, The Death of Asylum shows how remote detention centers effectively curtail the basic human right to seek asylum, forcing refugees to take more dangerous risks to escape war, famine, and oppression.

Connecting critical issues of state sovereignty with empirical concerns, Borderscapes interrogates the limits of political space. The essays in this volume analyze everyday procedures, such as the classifying of migrants and refugees, security in European and American detention centers, and the DNA sampling of migrants in Thailand, showing the border as a moral construct rich with panic, danger, and patriotism. Conceptualizing such places as immigration detention camps and refugee camps as areas of political contestation, this work forcefully argues that borders and migration are, ultimately, inextricable from questions of justice and its limits. Contributors: Didier Bigo, Institut d’Études Politiques, Paris; Karin Dean; Elspeth Guild, U of Nijmegen; Emma Haddad; Alexander Horstmann, U of Münster; Alice M. Nah, National U of Singapore; Suvendrini Perera, Curtin U of Technology, Australia; James D. Sidaway, U of Plymouth, UK; Nevzat Soguk, U of Hawai‘i; Decha Tangseefa, Thammasat U, Bangkok; Mika Toyota, National U of Singapore. Prem Kumar Rajaram is assistant professor of sociology and social anthropology at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Carl Grundy-Warr is senior lecturer of geography at the National University of Singapore.

Alastair Bonnett explores extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places including micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands. Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed.

One of the consequences of the post-socialist transformation of Eastern and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union is the emergence of energy poverty, a condition where households are living in inadequately heated homes. This book provides the first full-length examination of the causes, consequences and patterns of energy poverty in former Communist countries.

Welcome to a top-level clearance world that doesn't exist...Now with updated material for the paperback edition. This is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a road trip through a shadow nation of state secrets, clandestine military bases, black sites, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies that make up what insiders call the "black world." Here, geographer and provocateur Trevor Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out a covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar "black" budget, and interviews those who live on the edges of these blank spots. Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, a secret prison in Kabul, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless-and delivers eye-opening details.