Overview
- Explores the meanings and qualities of contemporary borders, using the UK as its key case study
- Reflects upon contemporary developments in the “EU migration crisis,” including its impacts on politics and public discourse
- Presents empirical analysis based upon long-term, extensive research using quantitative corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis and in-depth interviews
Part of the book series: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship (MDC)
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
The nature and configuration of borders, and the relationship between state borders and societies, have changed. In the 21st century, internationalism, transnationalism, and super-diversity have further provoked complexities and anxieties. It seems that as border and migration regimes undergo dramatic transformations, their public profile increases.
This book revisits borders, bordering practices, and meanings, with a particular focus on the United Kingdom as a case study. Bastian A. Vollmer examines not only the theoretical and historical dimensions of borders but also various empirical data, including extensive text corpora and dozens of in-depth interviews. Expanding on the concept of vernacular security—that is, an everyday understanding of security—he argues that the existential value of borders is not merely physical, but extends into the order and future construction of states and societies.
This book demonstrates decisively that the concept of theborder has not left the centre stage of philosophy, political theory, and political sociology, but has instead emerged as a focal point for multidisciplinary engagements. It further demonstrates how attention to a vernacular perspective can inform those engagements, yielding vital insights. As such, it should appeal to students and scholars across disciplines interested in the contemporary development and relevance of borders and their discursive cultures.
Reviews
"Border research has become one of the most widespread interdisciplinary research areas in social sciences and humanities. Bastian A. Vollmer has written a concise and original contribution to the ongoing debates on what borders are and do, demonstrating convincingly that borders, migration, fear, and othering have to bereflected critically together. The author’s people-centric approach, his focus on the public sphere and on vernacular security, and his rich and extensive empirical materials, are relevant not only to the UK and Brexit, but also to other contexts. Vollmer combines these materials with a sophisticated and jargon-free historical analysis and conceptual discussion that provide the reader with a very thought-provoking and insightful read on borders, security, and identity. I recommend this book highly not only to border and migration scholars but also to politicians and administrators dealing with ever more violent borders."
— Anssi Paasi, Professor of Human Geography, University of Oulu, Finland
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bastian A. Vollmer is Professor of Social Sciences at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany. Previously, he was a Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is author and co-editor of several books and special issues, and he has published in journals such as Political Geography, Mobilities, Geopolitics and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. He is co-editor of the journal Migration Studies and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Borders Revisited
Book Subtitle: Discourses on the UK Border
Authors: Bastian A. Vollmer
Series Title: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78331-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-78330-3Published: 14 August 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-78331-0Published: 12 August 2021
Series ISSN: 2662-2602
Series E-ISSN: 2662-2610
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 130
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Migration, Political Sociology, Social Sciences, general, International Security Studies, Sociolinguistics