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Borders are sites of mass injury. This article questions the necro-consensus that has emerged within migration studies, and explores the political role that less-than-deadly violence plays at contemporary borders. By withholding from outright killing, and thus avoiding the optics of public scrutiny, EU states are deploying a carefully calibrated politics of injury designed to control racialised groups through debilitation. The injuries produced through this border regime—typified by illegal ‘pushbacks’ and deplorable camp conditions—exist beneath a threshold of liberal acceptability. In short, EU states routinely deny the right to asylum by imposing the ‘right to maim’ (Puar 2017). This article draws upon long-term research along the ‘Balkan Route’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, including interviews with medics, activists, EU officials, and people on the move, as well as analysis of a large border violence database. We argue that mass injury has become a politically tolerated form of violence that perversely provides the EU with the illusory conceit of humanitarian “care”. In dialogue with postcolonial scholarship that has questioned the centrality of death within biopolitics, we assert the importance of interrogating not only the necropolitical logics of migration policy (i.e death), but also the politics of non-lethal violence: the strategic and attenuated delivery of injury, maiming, and incapacitation that shapes contemporary borders. Contributing to geographies of violence and critical border studies, we suggest that greater attention is needed towards less-than-deadly harms that underpin contemporary political geographies.

Borders are sites of epistemic struggle. Focusing on the illegal tactic of the “pushback,” which is routinely deployed by state authorities to forcefully expel asylum seekers from European Union territory without due process, this article explores the uneven politics of knowledge that helps to support or unsettle this clandestine border violence. Drawing on long-term qualitative research on the Croatia–Bosnia border, including interviews with pushback survivors and activists, as well as a database of border violence reports, we explore the competing truth claims and epistemologies that help to conceal, or counter, the pushback regime. Informed by postcolonial perspectives and contributing to political geographies of violence, we argue that “epistemic violence” (Spivak 1988) is a central feature of contemporary borders. We propose that epistemic borderwork is regularly used by state authorities to silence unwanted voices, undermine insurgent perspectives, and stifle the capacity of refugees to draw attention to their own mistreatment. In opposition to this injustice, activists are documenting, mapping, and archiving pushback survivor testimony to construct a counternarrative of refusal, which subverts the harmful knowledge claims of state authorities. In doing so, refugees and activists create epistemic friction, which helps to resist the ontological violence of borders, and “pushes back” against the pushback regime.

Since the discovery of radioactivity in 1895, ionising radiation has become an increasingly prominent part of modern life. Here, we explore the diverse modes of interaction that occur between bodies and nuclear technology and point towards the scope for further research on nuclear geographies. We bring together different strands of this nascent discipline and, by doing so, highlight how nuclear technology interacts across a spectrum of geographic scales, communities, and bodies. Although nuclear geographies can be sensational and exceptionalising, such as the experiences of nuclear accident survivors and the creation of “exclusion zones,” they can also be mundane, everyday and largely unrecognised, such as the production of nuclear energy and the life‐giving nature of radioactive medicine. To frame our discussion, we take three cuts at nuclear geography, highlighting the importance of zones, bodies, and communities. By discussing this gamut of spaces and societies created through ionising radiation, we open the way for more research into the cross section of benefits, challenges, and social phenomena that arise, as we coexist with nuclear technology.

Recent informality debates have started exploring, in addition to monetary and pure economic transactions, non-monetary ones, often embedded in long term and established social relations. In spite of this, the role informality plays in various aspects of people's lives has been studied only partly. In our work we explore the case of a retiring state that stops providing benefits and social services to a given area of a country. We concentrate our analysis on the practices and mechanisms that emerge from this de jure and de facto abandonment by both the state and the private sector. By so doing, we concentrate a large variety of transactions and actors that emerge to replace the state and shed the basis for a large and comprehensive informal welfare mechanism. The geographical area studied here is the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. We maintain that these areas have seen the establishment and consolidation of mechanisms of social security completely independent from, but yet complementing, the state welfare provider. We will show that informality, and informal practices, are vital to survival in a marginalised and risky environment., Recientemente, el debate sobre el fenómeno de las actividades económicas informales se ha ido alejando, por lo menos parcialmente, de aquellas lógicas estrictamente monetarias, desplazándose hacia esquemas más complejos donde, dentro de perspectivas a largo plazo, se asumen paradigmas no materialistas. Sin embargo, el papel de la informalidad en numerosos aspectos de la existencia individual sigue sin ser verdadero objeto de estudio. Este artículo desvela qué ocurre cuando el Estado se retira (véase el fin de la garantía de prestaciones y servicios sociales) de una determinada área geográfica y qué tipo de mecanismos, prácticas e instituciones surgen en su lugar. Sugerimos que en el contexto de la desaparición de un Estado de bienestar y en ausencia de alternativas por parte del sector privado una miríada de transacciones y de actores logran colmar el vacío y ofrecer así una cobertura de carácter informal. Nuestro caso de estudio se centra en la Zona de Exclusión de Chernóbil en el noreste de Ucrania, afectada por el accidente nuclear homónimo, revelando con ello cómo todos aquellos que han quedado excluidos y abandonados, y a quienes identificamos como inmersos en la "nuda vida" post-nuclear (Agamben, 1998), han logrado crear mecanismos de seguridad social independientemente de los esquemas estatales, ofreciendo un papel complementario, y ello hasta hoy en día. Arreglos informales, locales y no oficiales en un espacio nuclear resultan cruciales para la supervivencia en un entorno marginal y peligroso como es este.

Waste has become a pivotal public health and environmental problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this interdisciplinary review, we move beyond the ‘coronalitter’ and ‘coronawaste’ discourses, which have come to dominate public imaginaries of waste, to consider less-visible dimensions of waste infrastructures and systems . We demonstrate how waste is coming to matter in new ways that offer opportunities for reconfiguring health research. By examining the literature addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on the geographies of waste, we shed light on how waste is being problematised and researched through logics of public, environmental, and occupational health. We argue that these logics structure understandings and practice, whilst drawing attention to the overlaps and limits that allow links across disciplinary silos and problem domains to be forged. Developing a multi-logics approach, the paper outlines a research agenda for approaching waste as a critical public health problem at a time of intersecting health crises.

Although geography has long associated itself with photography, the rapid advancement of technology has created a clear divide between the visual practices regularly used in wider society and the way photography is utilized by critical geographers in their teaching. We suggest the door is ajar for new modes of (geo)photographic thinking, and one visual tool at our disposal is social media applications that allow images to be instantly shared, analysed, and discussed. This article critically reflects on the use of Instagram to enhance student participation, engagement, and learning on a geography field course in Berlin. Based on interviews with students, their field journals, and our own critical reflections, this paper looks at some advantages of using Instagram in teaching geography, but also promotes caution and presents drawbacks to relying on instant visual digital methods.

Although geography has long associated itself with photography, the rapid advancement of technology has created a clear divide between the visual practices regularly used in wider society and the way photography is utilized by critical geographers in their teaching. We suggest the door is ajar for new modes of (geo)photographic thinking, and one visual tool at our disposal is social media applications that allow images to be instantly shared, analysed, and discussed. This article critically reflects on the use of Instagram to enhance student participation, engagement, and learning on a geography field course in Berlin. Based on interviews with students, their field journals, and our own critical reflections, this paper looks at some advantages of using Instagram in teaching geography, but also promotes caution and presents drawbacks to relying on instant visual digital methods.

Waste has become a pivotal public health and environmental problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this interdisciplinary review, we move beyond the ‘coronalitter’ and ‘coronawaste’ discourses, which have come to dominate public imaginaries of waste, to consider less-visible dimensions of waste infrastructures and systems . We demonstrate how waste is coming to matter in new ways that offer opportunities for reconfiguring health research. By examining the literature addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on the geographies of waste, we shed light on how waste is being problematised and researched through logics of public, environmental, and occupational health. We argue that these logics structure understandings and practice, whilst drawing attention to the overlaps and limits that allow links across disciplinary silos and problem domains to be forged. Developing a multi-logics approach, the paper outlines a research agenda for approaching waste as a critical public health problem at a time of intersecting health crises.