Description
Book SynopsisThe history of migration is deeply entangled with colonialism. To this day, colonial logics continue to shape the dynamics of migration as well as the responses of states to those arriving at their borders. And yet migration studies has been surprisingly slow to engage with colonial histories in making sense of migratory phenomena today.
This book starts from the premise that colonial histories should be central to migration studies and explores what it would mean to really take that seriously. To engage with this task, Lucy Mayblin and Joe Turner argue that scholars need not forge new theories but must learn from and be inspired by the wealth of literature that already exists across the world. Providing a range of inspiring and challenging perspectives on migration, the authors’ aim is to demonstrate what paying attention to colonialism, through using the tools offered by postcolonial, decolonial and related scholarship, can offer those studying international migration today.
Offering a vital intervention in the field, this important book asks scholars and students of migration to explore the histories and continuities of colonialism in order to better understand the present.
Trade Review"In this book, Lucy Mayblin and Joe Turner offer a thoroughgoing critique of the analytical and political blind spots that plague migration studies when posited from the unexamined Eurocentric standpoint of formerly imperial nation-states. This book provides a synoptic overview of how postcolonial and decolonial critiques are utterly necessary to adequately comprehend cross-border, intercontinental human mobility in our global society, and it makes an impassioned appeal to situate the contemporary politics of migration, citizenship and race within the enduring legacies of colonialism."
Nicholas De Genova, University of Houston "This book is sorely needed. If your students ‒ or you yourself ‒ need to navigate the complex terrain of global violence, expropriation and the movement of people over a very long period, let them read this."
Gargi Bhattacharyya, University of East London
"The book is a sharp and salutary read."
Ethnic and Racial Studies
"A powerful case for rethinking migration under the lens of colonialism and its enduring legacies […A] much needed and long-awaited intervention, which renders readily available key literatures that migration scholars should engage with."
International Affairs
Table of ContentsForeword
1. Introduction
2. Time and Space: Migration and Modernity
3. ‘Race’ & Racism in International Migration
4. Putting sovereignty, citizenship and migration in dialogue with past and present colonialisms
5. Deconstructing Forced Migration, Rethinking Asylum
6. Towards a Colonial Account of Security and Borders
7. Gender, Sexuality, Colonialism… and Migration
9. Conclusion
References
