Border As Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor: (A Social Text Book)

Far from creating a borderless world, contemporary globalization has generated a proliferation of borders. In Border as Method, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson chart this proliferation, investigating its implications for migratory movements, capitalist transformations, and political life. They explore the atmospheric violence that surrounds borderlands and border struggles across various geographical scales, illustrating their theoretical arguments with illuminating case studies drawn from Europe, Asia, the Pacific, the Americas, and elsewhere. Mezzadra and Neilson approach the border not only as a research object but also as an epistemic framework. Their use of the border as method enables new perspectives on the crisis and transformations of the nation-state, as well as powerful reassessments of political concepts such as citizenship and sovereignty.

Table of Contents:
Preface vii Acknowledgments xiii 1. The Proliferation of Borders 1 2. Fabrica Mundi 27 3. Frontiers of Capital 61 4. Figures of Labor 95 5. In the Space of Temporal Borders 131 6. The Sovereign Machine of Governmentality 167 7. Zones, Corridors, and Postdevelopmental Geographies 205 8. Producing Subjects 243 9. Translating the Common 277 References 313 Index 349

About the Author :
Sandro Mezzadra is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bologna. Brett Neilson is Professor of Culture and Society at Western Sydney University.

Review :
"Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson illustrate the fecundity of the unity of opposites. Arriving from two extremities of the global world, using the border as a 'method,' they analyze how the antithetical patterns of 'border crossing' and 'border reinforcement' generate 'border struggles,' hence subjectivities, intelligibilities, commonalities. The threshold to justice is shifted, as are the articulations of violence and language that build a new humankind. The book asks not who we are, but who we become."-Étienne Balibar, author of Equaliberty: Political Essays "Their sights set on global movements of labor-skilled or unskilled, legal or illegal-Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson mount the most ambitious attempt yet to leverage the idea of the border into a major theoretical tool for the study of global capital. They add a rich and powerful voice to contemporary debates on globalization."-Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference "This is an agenda-setting book that brings together issues of migration, labor, sovereignty, and the common into a coherent and powerful theoretical and political vision. By treating the border not as a site but as a method, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson demonstrate both that borders are not isolated at the margins of social space but instead run through it, and that borders have become the privileged lens through which to view contemporary politics."-Michael Hardt, coauthor of the books Declaration, Commonwealth, Multitude, and Empire  “Against liberalism’s duplicitous dream of a universal political language, Border as Method explodes on the scene voraciously combining, re-inventing, pulling apart, putting together, layering, sifting and dissecting contemporary theories and knowledge of what our capitalist world is becoming and how we might change it.”  - Rogier van Reekum (Krisis) “This is a rich, conceptually rewarding work. It will be required reading for those making sense of the modern redefinition of borders, the forms of subjectivity that they create, and the diverse, innovative ways in which that subjectivity is resisted and redefined. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.”  - R. W. Glover (Choice) "An ambitious work of politically engaged social theory that attempts to reconceptualize issues of labor, migration, sovereignty, and governmentality." - Jeffrey Kahn (PoLAR) “For scholars and activists alike, this is a great book that offers a social theory of the border drawing from rich empirical, historical and theoretical work.” - Henrik Lebuhn (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research)