The Border Policy and Politics in Europe and the United States

In our globalized world, borders are back with a vengeance. New data shows a massive increase of walls and barriers between countries after 2001. However, at the same time, the flow of people and the growth of trade have continued at impressive rates, and arguments for more open borders remain relevant. In The Border, Martin Schain compares how and why border policy has become increasingly important, politicized, and divisive in both Europe and the United States. Drawing from an intensive analysis of documents and interviews, he argues that border control is a growing international movement. In Europe, the European Union is under scrutiny, and many countries seek to block the entry of asylum-seekers from wars in the Near East. In the US, Donald Trump pledged to build a wall along the Mexico border, restricted the entry of Syrian asylum-seekers, and more generally tried to ban Muslim immigration. Moreover, on both sides of the Atlantic, trade barriers appear in the political agendas of major parties. Schain delves into these interlinked phenomena, showing that migration, identity, and trade have been packaged and transformed into hotly contested issues of border governance and control.

Martin A. Schain is Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at New York University. He is the founder and former director of the Center for European Studies at New York University, former chair of the European Union Studies Association, and co-editor of Comparative European Politics. He has authored or edited multiple books, including The Politics of Immigration in France, Britain and the United States and Comparative Federalism: The European Union and the United States in Comparative Perspective, co-edited with Anand Menon (Oxford).