Crossing Borders

by Mimi Sheller (Editor), Kevin Hannam (Editor)

Crossing Borders examines how translocal, transnational, and internal borders of various kinds distribute uneven capabilities for moving, dwelling, and circulating. The contributors offer nuanced understandings of the politics of mobility across various kinds of borders and forms of cultural circulation, showing how people experience and practice crossing many different borders. Several chapters draw on interviews and ethnographic methods to analyze transnational migration, while others focus on material relations and cultural practices. Rather than the usual narrative of mobility as a kind of freedom, border crossing emerges here as an instrumental practice for building translocal livelihoods, a tactic for simply getting by, and a material practice potentially generating new forms of future sociality. Ultimately these diverse perspectives on crossing borders offer new ways to think about the mobility of political relations and the politics of mobile relations in a world of growing circulation across borders, but also flexible forms of (re)bordering. This book was originally published as a special issue of Mobilities .

160 pages, Paperback

Published February 14, 2019

About the author

Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University. She is the author of Democracy after Slavery, Consuming the Caribbean, Citizenship from Below, and Aluminum Dreams.