Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier(Transnational Crime, Crime Control and Security)

Controlling border crossing has become an urgent concern under conditions of globalization, leading Western governments to introduce increasingly coercive control measures. Far from eradicating spontaneous border crossing, this defensive geography has fuelled illicit people-smuggling markets, and forced asylum seekers and illegalized travellers into increasingly hazardous journeys. Drawing on data from official sources, media reports and lists of deaths collated by non-governmental organizations in Europe, Australia and North America, this book draws direct parallels between the border control policies adopted across the Global North, and a mounting death toll of illegalized border crossers. It analyses the political and material conditions driving contemporary border control policies and discusses the processes that mediate popular and official understandings of border-related fatalities. In seeking to account for, rather than merely count, border-related deaths the book is intended to shift the debate about contemporary border controls towards the acceptance of a more mobility-tolerant future.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables, Figures and Images Acknowledgements List of Acronyms Introduction: Globalization and Borders PART I: Border Autopsy: Examining Contemporary Borders Charting the Global Frontier Counting and Discounting Border Deaths Accounting for Deaths at the Border PART II: Border Inquest: Misadventure or Death by Policy? Structural Violence Suspicious Deaths Suicide and Self-harm PART III: From Finding Truth to Preventing Border Harm The Ambiguous Architecture of Risk Conclusion: Preventing Death by Sovereignty Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
LEANNE WEBER Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, Australia. She is co-editor of Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control and has published extensively on the detention of asylum seekers, the policing of migration and the nature of contemporary borders. SHARON PICKERING Professor of Criminology and Head of the Criminology program at Monash University, Australia. She is the Editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology and the author of Women, Policing and Resistance in Northern Ireland, Refugees and State Crime, Critical Chatter: Women and Human Rights in South East Asia and Borders and Violence.

Review :
'Migration and borders are deeply contested and political issues. Pickering and Weber are two of the most passionate and well informed academic voices in the debate. Drawing from a remarkable range of sources and brilliantly written, their 'border autopsy' is a must-read for any policy maker, student and academic with interest in migration. In fact, it should be read by anyone. The extraordinary human tragedies unfolding at the Western borders, which are masterfully documented and analysed in this book, should not be left to the especially interested.' - Katja Franko Aas, Professor of Criminology, University of Oslo, Norway 'The authors are two of the foremost researchers in the criminology of migration control - a specialist area that they have done much to create and set the agenda for. This book promises to become a standard work on this topic which will provide new and important insights.' - Ben Bowling, Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice and Director of Criminological Studies in the School of Law, King's College, London, UK 'So much of our work here at the Institute is about collecting information on deaths - racist murders, deaths in police custody, in prisons, deaths at the border, deaths in detention centres, asylum seekers who give up hope, hang themselves, jump off balconies. So this book makes me think why do we do it? ! It's as though, those of us who have been in the business of counting and accounting have without our knowing it provided a counter-balance to the processes of neutralisation, dehumanisation and distanciation that this book describes.' -Liz Fekete, Institute of Race Relations London, UK 'Deaths at the migratory fault lines where rich and poor nations intersect are an almost taken-for-granted reality of our increasingly unequal times. Powerful nations 'illegalize' desperate migrants and subject them to ever more arduous journeys to prevent entry, but they prefer to keep the consequences of these actions out of public view. This thoughtful book, written in the style of an inquest, lays bare the violence that underlies contemporary border control and provides groundwork for a much-needed reconceptualization of national responsibilities.' - Doris Marie Provine, Professor of Justice Studies, Arizona State University, USA