Border abolitionism: Migrants' containment and the genealogies of struggles and rescue

by Martina Tazzioli

Overview

Building on an abolitionist perspective, this book offers an essential critique of migration and border policies, unsettling the distinction between migrants and citizens. This is the only book that brings together carceral abolitionist debates and critical migration literature. It explores the multiplication of modes of migration confinement and detention in Europe, examining how these are justified in the name of migrants’ protection. It argues that the collective memory of past struggles has partly informed current solidarity movements in support of migrants. A grounded critique of migration policies involves challenging the idea that migrants’ rights go to the detriment of citizens. An abolitionist approach to borders entails situating the right to mobility as part of struggle for the commons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526160935
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	07/11/2023
Series:	Rethinking Borders
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Martina Tazzioli is Reader in Politics and Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London

Table of Contents

Introduction
1 The zero-sum rights game: border abolitionism as an analytical gaze
2 ‘Confine to protect’: hybrid spaces of migration containment
3 Participatory confinement: extractive humanitarianism and asylum seekers’ unpaid labour
4 Towards a genealogy of migrant struggles and border violence
5 A history of mountain runaways and rescue: migrants at the Alpine border
Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

CHOICE: Recommended

'Martina Tazzioli’s book challenges us to connect struggles for the freedom of movement to commoning practices and abolitionist worlding projects, to decompartmentalise migration, border and refugee studies. To build these transversal alliances, Tazzioli grounds border abolitionism in migrants’ escapes, autonomous mobilities and spaces, and “free spots,” beginning not from state enclosure projects, but from actually existing abolitionist practices. Border abolitionism calls on us to do more than document the needless drownings, wasted times and choked lives or the injustices of contemporary migration control regimes. To practices border abolition, we must learn from migrants how to live and build institutions otherwise.'
Lauren Martin, Associate Professor of Political Geography, Durham University

Border abolitionism is an intellectually ambitious, creative, and original book, linking critical border, migration, and refugee studies to the contemporary insights of carceral abolitionism. Tazzioli starts not from normative abstractions but instead from the material and practical facts of migration and the confinement continuum that chokes migrants’ and refugees’ projects both to move across borders and then to stay and re-make their lives. This book’s refreshingly innovative intervention thus advances an idea of abolition that extends far beyond the border, in order to understand the struggles of migrants and citizens together. It will have a lasting impact on scholarship and activism.
Nicholas De Genova, editor of The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering

'The book covers formidable ground, and while each chapter is individually enriching, the analytics of border abolitionism effortlessly weave together their different topics into a coherent, incisive account. Not only does the border abolitionist approach facilitate original scrutiny of the European border regime, but Tazzioli does not lose sight of the migrant lives caught up in this regime. This combinations helps us better appreciate the transformative potential of the abolitionist horizon.'
Adam Fastholm, International Affairs 100: 3, 2024

From the Publisher