Europe's Border Crisis Biopolitical Security and Beyond

Europe's Border Crisis explores current dynamics in EU border security and migration management. It argues that a crisis point has emerged because 'irregular' migrants are seen as both a security threat to the EU and also as a life threatened and in need of protection. This leads to paradoxical situations whereby humanitarian policies and practices expose 'irregular' migrants to often dehumanizing and sometimes lethal border security mechanisms. The dominant way of understanding these dynamics -- one that blames a gap between policy and practice -- fails to address the deeper issues at stake and ends up perpetuating the terms of the crisis. Drawing on conceptual resources in biopolitical theory the book offers an alternative diagnosis and sets out a new research agenda for the interdisciplinary field of critical border and migration studies.

Nick Vaughan-Williams, Professor of International Security, University of Warwick

Nick Vaughan-Williams is Reader in International Security at the University of Warwick, UK. His research, supported by the British Academy and ESRC, focuses on the relationship between sovereignty, subjectivity, and the spatial dimensions of security - particularly the changing nature and location of borders in global politics. His first monograph, Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power (2009, 2012) was Gold Winner of the Association for Borderlands Studies Book Award. He is co-author of Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (2010, 2014), co-editor of five books including Critical Theorists and International Relations (2009), and founding co-editor of the Routledge 'Interventions' book series.

Part 1 Borders, crises, critique
1. Europes border crisis
2. European border security and the crisis of humanitarian critique
3. Conceptual crises in critical border and migration studies
4. Key themes and a map of the study
Part 2. Biopolitical borders
5. Introduction
6. European border security and migration management: from Schengen to the Arab Spring
7. Foucault and the biopolitical paradigm
8. Biopolitical border security in Europe
Part 3. Thanatopolitical borders
9. Introduction
10. The sovereign ban and thanatopolitical spaces
11. Reassessing Agamben in critical border and migration studies
12. Push-backs and abandonment in the European borderscape
Part 4. Zoopolitical borders
13. Introduction
14. Borderwork and contemporary spaces of detention in Europe
15. Critical infrastructure, dehumanization, animalization
16. Derridas zoopolitics and the bestial potential of border security
Part 5. Immunitary borders
17. Introduction
18. Life, politics, and immunity in Esposito
19. The immunitary paradigm
20. Reconceptualizing the border as an immune system
Part 6. Affirmative borders
21. Introduction
22. Affirmative biopolitics
23. Towards an affirmative biopolitical border imaginary
24. Affirmative headings for European border security and migration management