Border Abolition Now
Introduction to the theory and praxis of Border Abolition, drawing on the perspectives of migrants and those resisting in detention, camps and asylum regimes
Borders must be abolished. Borders produce and are produced by carceral, racist, classist, sexist and xenophobic regimes. Border Abolition Now offers a vision of a transformative politics that seeks to dismantle these intersecting systems of oppression.
The book's contributors argue that what the abolitionist tradition brings to border studies is a way to contextualise the spread of carceral and policing apparatuses across a long historical arc; an understanding that undoing police and carceral regimes requires the fundamental transformation of all existing social institutions; and a political commitment to building new worlds beyond police, prisons and the border regime.
The contributors draw from different locations, disciplines and struggles bringing a much-needed bottom-up and global perspective to border abolitionist praxis. Across three sections, the chapters address key issues such as how abolition theory is being envisioned through feminist decolonial and anticolonial praxis, as well as how lived experiences of borders and organising against them informs abolition.
The volume also examines the connections between carceral border regimes and other institutions of governance (asylum, reception, camps); how the political theory of abolition is being advanced and challenged by theoretical concerns emerging from border contexts (mobility); and specific conditions of border organising (detention, climate change).
Sara Riva is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council and the University of Queensland. She is a feminist whose research looks at the intersections of neoliberalism, migration, humanitarianism and the border. Her work has been published in the Journal of Citizenship Studies, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Geopolitics and Journal of Refugee Studies.
Simon Campbell is an activist-researcher focusing on border infrastructures, state violence and abolitionist struggles against the border regime. In recent years, Simon has been part of a number of solidarity groups engaged in documenting pushbacks at European borders, including the Border Violence Monitoring Network. He is reading a joint MA in South Eastern European Studies at the University of Belgrade and University of Graz.
Brian Whitener is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo and author of Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil. His other projects include The 90s; De gente común: Prácticas estéticas y rebeldía social, co-edited with Lorena Méndez and Fernando Fuentes; and the translation of Grupo de Arte Callejero's Thoughts, Practices, and Actions with the Mareada Translation Collective.
Kathryn Medien is a Lecturer in Sociology at The Open University. Her research draws on feminist and anti-colonial social theory to explore the colonial and imperial politics of state violence and resistance to it. She has been published in the Sociological Review, Theory, Culture and Society, Current Sociology and the International Feminist Journal of Politics.
'This groundbreaking collection shows us, analytically and in practice, how no borders and prison and police abolition are shared political projects. It is learning at its most powerful, reframing thinking and activism with the aim of building justice. A must read.'
- Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol'This outstanding collection of essays provides a rich, hopeful, and indispensable guide to border abolition. Written by and for thinkers, dreamers and organisers, this book shows us how the world could be otherwise: borderless, flourishing, free.'
- Luke de Noronha, co-author, Against Borders: The Case For Abolition'This is an urgent and necessary book to get us from the multiple crises we face to a world made for all. It documents the violence of immigration regimes and border controls while also shining a ray of light to guide us on our paths to a better way of living with one another.'
- Nandita Sharma, Professor of Sociology, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, co-founder of Eating in PublicIntroduction by Sara Riva, Simon Campbell, Brian Whitener, and Kathryn Medien
1. Women in Exile’s story by Elizabeth Ngari and Doris Dede
CONSTELLATION I: ABOLITIONIST THEORIES IN BORDER CONTEXTS
2. Unfolding and flourishing: strategies of border abolition feminism by Leah Cowan, Francesca Esposito, Sarah Hopwood, Aminata Kalokoh, Vânia Martins, and Elahe Zivardar
3. Surplus people of the world unite! On borders, policing, and abolition by Vanessa E. Thompson
4. #AbolishICE, #AbolishFrontex, abolish borders: toward an abolitionist border study and struggle by Josue David Cisneros
5. Interview with Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)
CONSTELLATION II: ABOLITIONISMS AGAINST THE BORDER COMPLEX
6. The place of asylum and empire in contemporary abolition by Jenna M. Loyd
7. Abolition, not relocation: moving from humanitarian containment toward camp abolition by Simon Campbell
8. “Alternatives to detention” and the carceral state in the UK by Lauren Cape-Davenhill
9. Golden Gulag in Italy? For the abolition of the receptionindustrial complex by Francesco Marchi
10. Abolish Frontex and end the EU Border regime by Mark Akkerman
CONSTELLATION III: POLITICAL HORIZONS OF BORDER ABOLITIONISM
11. “Shut them down”: non-reformist reforms in anti-detention organizing by Helen Brewer, Tom Kemp, Bobby Phe Amis, and Joel White
12. Abolitionist potential and ambivalences in daily struggles against the border regime by Watch the Med – Alarm Phone
13. Capitalism, mobility, and racialization: abolitionisms at the border by Brian Whitener
14. Rising waters from New York City to Pakistan: abolitionist organizing at the intersection of immigration justice and the climate crisis by Vignesh Ramachandran and Akash Singh
15. Interview with Contra Viento y Marea, El Comedor Comunitario
Afterword by Gracie Mae Bradley
eBook ISBN: 9780745348995
140mm x 216mm