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This paper examines the history of crossing the Sino-ChosÅn borders in various contexts. The evolution of border crossing can be traced from its origins as a political mission that was part of the diplomatic ritual to its later development as an economic circuit where individuals vied for profits, and finally to its status as a public program that carried significant weight in high-level politics. Throughout its history, border crossing was characterized by its dual nature, encompassing both ritual and mundane, exotic and domestic, national and international elements. It was emblematic of the ongoing interactions between China/Chinese and Korea/Koreans, and the flows of people and goods between them. These individuals and items were re-identified and re-categorized following their crossing of the borders, and the processes of identification and categorization shed light on the political dynamics of both countries.

Copyright of Croatian Journal of Ethnology & Folklore Research / Narodna Umjetnost is the property of Institute of Ethnology & Folklore Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract This paper analyzes the role of border fortifications for migration control and access to asylum based on two case studies: the Hungarian–Serbian and U.S. American–Mexican borders. The research is based on qualitative interviews on both sides of the borders. It shows that despite other options for border control, fortifications still play an important role, especially for asylum seekers. Fences fulfill a material, a symbolic and a filtering function here. The three functions contribute in different ways to preventing asylum seekers from crossing the border, thus depriving refugees of the opportunity to apply for asylum. The paper shoes that fences fulfill functions that other forms of border control (such as shifting or smart borders) cannot accomplish in the same way and it thereby contributes to understanding the ‘puzzle’ of contemporary border fencing.

This paper analyzes the role of border fortifications for migration control and access to asylum based on two case studies: the Hungarian–Serbian and U.S. American–Mexican borders. The research is based on qualitative interviews on both sides of the borders. It shows that despite other options for border control, fortifications still play an important role, especially for asylum seekers. Fences fulfill a material, a symbolic and a filtering function here. The three functions contribute in different ways to preventing asylum seekers from crossing the border, thus depriving refugees of the opportunity to apply for asylum. The paper shoes that fences fulfill functions that other forms of border control (such as shifting or smart borders) cannot accomplish in the same way and it thereby contributes to understanding the 'puzzle' of contemporary border fencing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the idea of (“immigrant”) “integration” from its roots in classical political philosophy and the birth of the modern nation-state, to its current relevance in the European political agenda and, relatedly, its centrality in the newly consolidated field of Migration Studies. I examine the ontological (i.e., philosophical and sociological) and political rationales behind the idea that migrants need to “integrate into society”, and the different varieties of political solutions that are offered in this sense. The paper asks: How did the migrant come at the center of the idea of an integrated society? And how did integrationism become consolidated as the hegemonic idea of governing diverse societies in post-migration contexts in Europe? Employing an extensive list of secondary literature, documentary data, policy analysis of the EU-level Framework on migrant integration, and discourse analysis of integration-related research publications, I attempt a genealogy of the idea of “integration” as it traveled across the North Atlantic West and between academia and government. The paper shows how the production of the subject of integration—the misfit “immigrant” figure—is historically marked by a consensus across the learned and the governing elites that identifies the preservation of a homogenous national social order as a societal goal. I argue that the scientification of integration governance via the “evidence-based policy” paradigm (most notably promoted by EU institutions) normalizes, naturalizes and aims to depoliticize the otherwise highly normative and contested question of migrant integration.

Based on the exemplary case of the borders in the central Sahara that separate the Sahel states from the Maghreb states, this analysis shows the reinforcement of a security conception of the border that is now being generalized to these peripheral regions, which are often considered as ‘grey zones’ with porous borders. By shedding light on a phenomenon that has been little or not at all documented and is now revealed by satellite imagery – the construction of sand walls at the borders – we will show that the largest desert in the world is not or is no longer the smooth and boundless space of the Western imagination. More broadly, based on a long-term geohistorical approach, the interweaving and evolution of three successive border regimes are highlighted: a pre-colonial regime under the domination of Tuareg caravan nomadism and structured on the basis of border wells; a colonial and post-colonial regime imposing a Westphalian conception of the border; and the contemporary security regime which participates in the partitioning of the Sahara by sand walls.

Copyright of Political Science Review / Przegląd Politologiczny is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article scrutinizes the trajectories of African men whose cross-border movements intersect two types of mobility routes: mining and migration routes. Drawing on field research in Mali and Guinea, as well as phone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, this article provides a case to empirically question some of the premises in the approach to migration decision-making by giving a voice to African men moving across borders who do not necessarily identify as (prospective) ‘migrants.’ Building upon International Organization for Migration data and secondary sources, this article starts by sketching where migration and mining routes overlap. It then examines, in detail, the mobility trajectories of men who were sometimes considered migrants and other times miners in order to identify how these different routes relate to one another. While overseas migration is certainly not a common project for itinerant miners, the gold mines constitute a transnational space that fosters the expansion of movements across the continent, including outside the field of mining. Rather than encouraging overseas migration, gold mines appear to be more of a safety net, not only for seasonal farmers or young people in search of money and adventure, but also, increasingly, for people who are confronted with Europe’s intra-African deportation regime.

The time of the Covid-19 pandemic was particularly hard for the communities living in border areas, who are used to cross the border on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day. When borders were closed due to the pandemic, their lives changed dramatically. One of the communities particularly affected by the pandemic was the Slovene community in Croatia, namely its members living along the Slovene-Croatian border. The article aims to present the situation of this community during the pandemic, with a particular emphasis on the measures related to border crossing and the feeling of (dis)connectedness with the kin state. The data is drawn from a survey conducted in 2021 through 15 semi-structured interviews with active female members of the Slovene community in Croatia. The responses show that, instead of receiving assistance from the Republic of Slovenia, in a time of uncertainty and fear members of the Slovene minority experienced a closed border and numerous challenges. Due to the rapidly changing border crossing measures, they were unable to organise their lives properly and faced frustration and fear. The inability to cross the border, be it for medical and professional reasons (visiting doctors, regular employment) or private reasons (which are less relevant for survival, but still extremely important for private life: e.g. visiting parents and grandparents), made them feel insecure, frustrated and in doubt about their relationship with the Republic of Slovenia. All that brought them further away from their kin state, making them feel as second-class citiz ens in either one or the other country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the violent consequences of the post-2015 EU border regime for people from the Global South lingering through the Balkans. I intend to show that securing EU’s external borders through asylum and border management in Balkans is based on coercion and force, despite the efforts of the people on the move to transgress these borders and achieve decent lives. The efforts of people on the move to cross borders - which are officially closed for them - could be understood as force as well. Regardless of the legal status and ‘motives’ of displacement, people waiting and moving on the ‘Balkan route’ experience situations characterized by structural, direct, and cultural violence and respond to these situations in different ways. Pointing out to more or less hidden patterns of violence occurring at the EU’s external borders in the Balkans may challenge popular categorizations that at the same time oppress and protect people on the move. These patterns of violence are justified - but not justifiable - by the securitization of EU and national borders. By displacing violence as the so-called “push” factor from the countries of initial displacement (i.e. countries of the Global South), I aim to acknowledge that it continues to be perpetrated en route. Patterns of violence in the Balkans further produce forced mobilities and forced immobilities. People on the move cope with these forced (im)mobilities in different ways.

Contemporary Saxon immigration statistics noted a vast “floating population” in the multilocal and transregional border society of Upper Lusatia but did not consider them immigrants. Indeed, agricultural and factory workers – the majority of them women – showed a high level of mobility, some of them even on a daily basis. On the one hand, national authorities on both sides of the border struggled to categorize and control these short-distance and temporary, but widespread mobilities. Customs checks, on the other hand, gave rise to a personalised border control. These checks not only targeted the small-scale mobility that was highly common in the border region, but also promoted the establishment of sedentariness and border regulations as the normal scenario in local society. But it was not until the late 19th century that there was migration control with cultural and racist undertones.

This article analyses practices of transnational care and the lives of male asylum seekers and refugee families in the context of increasingly restrictive border and migration regimes. Research on transnationalism, transnational families, and care among forced migrants has emphasised the importance of the institutional context in transnational care and family relations across borders. This article contributes to the extant literature by examining how bureaucratic bordering – within nation states and beyond – restricts the possibilities of refugees in providing care to their family members and reuniting. The article also examines the struggles experienced by male refugees at bureaucratic borders. These struggles reveal a central dimension to transnational care that relates to the bureaucracy of visas and residence permits. The article highlights the importance of temporality and examines how the lives of refugee families are affected by extended and bureaucratically induced waiting. The article is based on ethnographic research conducted on Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers in Finland in 2017–2019 and focuses on three asylum seekers in particular – namely, Amal, Sajed, and Yasin.

Against the background of our recent ethnographic research project on the European border regime in South-East Europe in 2016, the article calls for a re-visiting of established paradigms and approaches in border studies. The article assesses established theoretical conceptualisations of border studies, such as securitisation, externalisation, digitalisation, but also internal mobility regimes and humanitarian rationales. Focussing especially on the vast encampment within Europe, the inner-European buffer zoning, shifting legal foundations as well as new infrastructures of migration control, the authors argue for an extension of theoretical and methodological perspectives of border studies by drawing on insights from legal anthropology and camp and infrastructural studies.

In this article, I trace struggles regarding EU internal mobility and migrant labour as they emerge in the mobilization of South European migrants in Berlin. The effects of the 2007–2008 financial crisis and European austerity politics have reoriented migration flows within the EU, increasing South-to-North migration with Germany as a prime destination. German public discourse on the matter reveals a view on (EU) migration that focuses on its economic ‘usefulness’ and tries to regulate it accordingly. EU citizenship turns out to be a key instrument of such EU internal ‘migration management’. The emergence of migrant activist groups, however, hints at another force at play. In their fight for social rights and better working conditions, migrant activists show they will not allow themselves to be easily ‘managed’ into precarious ‘productivity’. Against this background, I argue that EU internal mobility is a field of struggle where attempts to control migrant labour clash with moments of autonomy and resistance. My aim is to explore this field from a migration perspective, analysing rationales of EU ‘migration management’ and their impact on migrants’ lives as well as investigating the strategies that migrants develop in response. Based on an analysis of EU legislation and interviews with Italian activists in Berlin, I trace conflicts around EU internal mobility and migrant labour. Against the background of critical migration studies, I analyse EU internal ‘migration management’, especially regarding the role of EU citizenship. Then, I look at EU migrant struggles in Berlin through the lens of autonomy of migration, drawing on the example of the Italian activist group Berlin Migrant Strikers.

Copyright of Journal of Family Research (JFR) is the property of University of Bamberg Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Contemporary Saxon immigration statistics noted a vast "floating population" in the multilocal and transregional border society of Upper Lusatia but did not consider them immigrants. Indeed, agricultural and factory workers - the majority of them women - showed a high level of mobility, some of them even on a daily basis. On the one hand, national authorities on both sides of the border struggled to categorize and control these short-distance and temporary, but widespread mobilities. Customs checks, on the other hand, gave rise to a personalised border control. These checks not only targeted the small-scale mobility that was highly common in the border region, but also promoted the establishment of sedentariness and border regulations as the normal scenario in local society. But it was not until the late 19th century that there was migration control with cultural and racist undertones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the theoretical and political potentials of Édouard Glissant’s philosophy of relation and its approach to the issues of borders, migration, and the setup of political communities as proposed by his pensée nouvelle de la frontière (new border thought), against the background of the German migration crisis of 2015. The main argument of this article is that Glissant’s work offers an alternative epistemological and normative framework through which the contemporary political issues arising around the phenomenon of repressive border regimes can be studied. To demonstrate this point, this article works with Glissant’s border thought as an analytical lens and proposes a pathway for studying the contemporary German border regime. Particular emphasis is placed on the identification of potential areas where a Glissantian politics of relation could intervene with the goal of transforming borders from impermeable walls into points of passage. By exploring the political implications of his border thought, as well as the larger philosophical context from which it emerges, while using a transdisciplinary approach that borrows from literary and political studies, this work contributes to ongoing debates in postcolonial studies on borders and borderlessness, as well as Glissant’s political legacy in the twenty-first century.

In this article, I ask how to interpret the border regime of South America. I reflect on the possible relation between international migration, states and borders in the field of migration studies in order to build analytically situated categories. In order to do so, I use a qualitative methodology based on a set of documents such as final declarations and technical reports of the South American Conference on Migration (sacm), and resolutions of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and the Andean Community (can). In order to interpret the border regime, I construct three categories: (i) the border externalization, associated with the regionalization process of migration control policies in South America, (ii) the crossing from one national territory to another, linked to the control at the border points, and (iii) the borders of permanence, associated with the state mechanisms that stipulate the ways of residence. South America, through its regional organizations, constitutes a sub-region of the global border regime, which favors and stimulates organized, planned and integrated migration control policies. At "the borders", such controls identify migrants belonging to a member state of the can, the Mercosur, or an out-of-region migrant. Thereby, the subjects are subordinated under the political stratum of the state to which they belong. The states set a differential mode to enter and stay in a territory according to the national origin of the subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the theoretical and political potentials of Édouard Glissant's philosophy of relation and its approach to the issues of borders, migration, and the setup of political communities as proposed by his pensée nouvelle de la frontière (new border thought), against the background of the German migration crisis of 2015. The main argument of this article is that Glissant's work offers an alternative epistemological and normative framework through which the contemporary political issues arising around the phenomenon of repressive border regimes can be studied. To demonstrate this point, this article works with Glissant's border thought as an analytical lens and proposes a pathway for studying the contemporary German border regime. Particular emphasis is placed on the identification of potential areas where a Glissantian politics of relation could intervene with the goal of transforming borders from impermeable walls into points of passage. By exploring the political implications of his border thought, as well as the larger philosophical context from which it emerges, while using a transdisciplinary approach that borrows from literary and political studies, this work contributes to ongoing debates in postcolonial studies on borders and borderlessness, as well as Glissant's political legacy in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the autumn of 2015, 5500 migrants traveling through Russia along the “Arctic route” applied for political asylum in Norway. Some observers claimed that Russia deliberately channeled migrants towards the north with the purpose of destabilizing Norway and that Russia had changed procedures in their border zone to facilitate the wave of migrants. In this article we briefly discuss the hybrid warfare theory and assess alternative explanations that might account for the sudden increase in migrants. Detailing formal and informal practices in the Norwegian-Russian border regime we argue that Russian practices were not altered in any significant way in 2015, but that the Norwegian side had an incorrect impression of the Russian border regime being more restrictive than it really was. Finland was in a similar situation. The most convincing explanation for the wave of asylum-seekers is the self-interest of migrants who found a cheaper and less risky route. Both in Norway and Finland the border regimes were tightened as a consequence of the increased migration, however. As a result, their policies became more aligned with Russian priorities.

Research on post-Soviet borders emphasizes the need to combine traditional and relatively new approaches to border studies. For Russia, of special importance are the European Union (EU) borders accounting for almost half of the country’s international trade. The border districts of Russia and the neighboring EU countries have become natural drivers of regional integration processes. The post-Soviet history of the Russia-EU borderlands has shown dynamism and large dependence on the geopolitical situation, asynchronous changes in the border functions and regimes on different segments, dissimilar economic development rates, asymmetry in interactions between the parties, and a combination of debordering and rebordering processes. Over the past years, the deteriorating geopolitical situation and the economic crisis in Russia increased the risks of a stricter border regime and a significant reduction in border traffic. It is worth examining the correlation of stability and dynamism factors in the border situation. An important factor ensuring the persistence of current differences and problems is the inertia of the settlement system and territorial economic structure at all levels. These factors determine the fluctuations in demographic and socioeconomic indicators and thus contribute to the “difference of potential” ensuring border traffic. The authors analyze the impact of gaps in demographic and socioeconomic indicators on different segments of the Russia-EU border, as well as the asymmetry in transboundary interaction, on their stability in the period of increasing political tensions in 2014-2015. Special attention is paid to the effect of these interactions on the social development and everyday life in the Russian borderlands. It is stressed that, even in the conditions of a serious political crisis and reciprocal sanctions, the barrier functions of the Russia-EU border increased insignificantly. The driving force behind border interactions is pragmatism, which makes it possible for border districts to attract additional resources to solve local problems.

Copyright of ÖZP - Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft is the property of Oesterreichische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Given extensive media coverage, the island of Lampedusa became a prominent symbol of undocumented mobility in the Mediterranean. The intensification of border controls, the Schengen treaty and the externalisation of borders to the European ex-colonies in North Africa fostered informal economic activities. Moreover, mobile actors invented new strategies to adapt or to circumvent impediments to free movement. Whereas new forms of Foucaults concept of gouvernementalité have been critically scrutinised, the interplay between the informal and the formal, institutionalised border economies has escaped attention so far. Based on long-term and multi-sited anthropological fieldwork on Lampedusa and Tunisia, this addresses the border regime and the nascent migration industry that involves various local, national and supra-national actors such as the Italian Civil Defence Department, the (private-public) detention system and NGOs (such as the International Organisation for Migration, Save the Children, and the Italian Red Cross). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]