Winner of the Gold Award, 2011 Past Presidents' Book Competition, Association of Borderlands Studies. This book, newly available in paperback, presents a distinctive theoretical approach to the problem of borders in the study of global politics. It turns from current debates about the presence or absence of borders between states to consider the possibility that the concept of the border of the state is being reconfigured in contemporary political life.The author uses critical resources found in poststructuralist thought to think in new ways about the relationship between borders, security and sovereign power, drawing on a range of thinkers including Agamben, Derrida and Foucault. He highlights the necessity of a more pluralized and radicalised view of what borders are and where they might be found and uses the problem of borders to critically explore the innovations and limits of poststructuralist scholarship.

The question of how the American state defines its powernot what it is but what it "does"has become central to a range of historical discourses, from the founding of the Republic and the role of the educational system, to the functions of agencies and America s place in the world. Here, James Sparrow, William J. Novak, and Stephen Sawyer assemble some definitional work in this area, showing that the state is an integral actor in physical, spatial, and economic exercises of power. They further imply that traditional conceptions of the state cannot grasp the subtleties of power and its articulation. Contributors include C.J. Alvarez, Elisabeth Clemens, Richard John, Robert Lieberman, Omar McRoberts, Gautham Rao, Gabriel Rosenberg, Jason Scott Smith, Tracy Steffes, and the editors."

Winner, 2023 Southwest Book Awards, Border Regional Library Association In 2010 Arizona enacted Senate Bill 1070, the notorious “show-me-your-papers” law. At the time, it was widely portrayed as a draconian outlier; today, it is clear that events in Arizona foreshadowed the rise of Donald Trump and underscored the worldwide trend toward the securitization of migration—treating immigrants as a security threat. Offering a comprehensive account of the SB 1070 era in Arizona and its fallout, this book provides new perspective on why policy makers adopt hard-line views on immigration and how this trend can be turned back. Tracing how the issue of unauthorized migration consumed Arizona state politics from 2003 to 2010, Mike Slaven analyzes how previously extreme arguments can gain momentum among politicians across the political spectrum. He presents an insider account based on illuminating interviews with political actors as well as historical research, weaving a compelling narrative of power struggles and political battles. Slaven details how politicians strategize about border politics in the context of competitive partisan conflicts and how securitization spreads across parties and factions. He examines right-wing figures who pushed an increasingly extreme agenda; the lukewarm center-right, which faced escalating far-right pressure; and the nervous center-left, which feared losing the center to border-security appeals—and he explains why the escalation of securitization broke down, yielding new political configurations. A comprehensive chronicle of a key episode in recent American history, this book also draws out lessons that Arizona’s experience holds for immigration politics across the world.

On The Borders of State Power explores the changing nature, meaning and significance of international borders over time in the area referred to today as the Greater Mekong Sub-region, incorporating Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and China’s Yunnan province. An international line up of contributors examine the changing nature of borders over time, using examples from the 15th to 21st centuries and engage with contemporary literature on globalisation, particularly as it applies to borders and the nature of state power. What the book finds is that there is far greater diversity in terms of the importance of borders across time than is commonly thought. Thus, borders commonly thought to be closed are often more open, open borders are found to be more restricted, while pre-colonial frontiers, which are usually viewed as relatively unimportant compared with the colonial era, are in fact found to have been more closely governed. Looking at the contemporary period, the book shows how economic liberalisation – or so-called cooperation between the Mekong states in the post-Cold War period – has been accompanied not by the retreat of the state but rather by its expansion, including in ways which frequently impose greatest restrictions on the poor and marginalised. Incorporating work by both historians and social scientists this book is a valuable read for those interested in the politics, development and geography of Southeast Asia.

Policing the Borders Within offers an in-depth, comprehensive exploration of the everyday working of inland border controls in Britain, informed by extensive empirical material viewed through the lens of wide-ranging interdisciplinary debates. In particular, this book examines afresh the relationship between policing, borders, and social order, in terms of migration policing. By charting this new landscape of everyday contemporary policing, this book's main goal is to advance understanding of novel forms of law enforcement in a global age. These new forms of collaboration direct attention to the way in which frontline enforcement agents, through their everyday work, not only enforce the border, but recreate it. As the book argues, the emphasis on borders and migration controls and the growing importance of it within inland policing is a symptom of the new demands and challenges facing the state in exercising authority in a fast-moving, interconnected world, and its attempt to offer a semblance of order. Such challenges result in practice of random, capricious, informal, and arbitrary operation of power, which relies on non-rational elements to solve policing problems. Through an ethnography of the worlds of police and immigration officers, this book dissects the ethical, political, legal, and social dilemmas, and explores the tensions and contradictions of maintaining order in a deeply unequal globalized world. The new impetus to police migration is an insightful entry point to understand law enforcement in a global age.

Compelling and accessible, this Very Short Introduction challenges the perception of borders as passive lines on a map, revealing them instead to be integral forces in the economic, social, political, and environmental processes that shape our lives. Highlighting the historical development and continued relevance of borders, Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen offer a powerful counterpoint to the idea of an imminent borderless world, underscoring the impact borders have on a range of issues, such as economic development, inter- and intra-state conflict, global terrorism, migration, nationalism, international law, environmental sustainability, and natural resource management. Diener and Hagen demonstrate how and why borders have been, are currently, and will undoubtedly remain hot topics across the social sciences and in the global headlines for years to come. This compact volume will appeal to a broad, interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students, including geographers, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, international relations and law experts, as well as lay readers interested in understanding current events.

Borders are changing in response to terrorism and immigration. This book shows why this matters, especially for sovereignty, individual liberty, and citizenship.