The Challenge of the Threshold: Border Closures and Migration Movements in Africa - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0739165119 ISBN 13: 9780739165119

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2013

Synopsis

The containment policies aimed at regulating immigration flows towards Europe and emerging economies like South Africa have profoundly altered the dynamics of migration in Africa. Drawing on original empirical research, this volume explores the notion of threshold as an operative concept to envisage in turn: the discursive frameworks of containment policies, the challenges to local spaces and their equilibrium, and finally, the sense of liminality experienced by migrants caught in those situations.

About this title

About the Author

Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart is director of the Research Unit on Migrations and Society at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis/University Paris Denis Diderot and IRD, France.

Aurelia Segatti is a senior researcher for the African Center for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Review

How does one live when one is ‘stuck’ in a transit space and situation? European national policies to control and reject transient people have created these spaces and left people trapped in inbetweenness. By focusing on transit spaces and time, this collaborative research initiative speaks to liminality itself. The volume encourages readers to question the more and more ambiguous relationships between individuals and the Nation-State, and the socio- political arrangements taking shape on the margins of states. (Michel Agier, Centre d'Études Africaines)

How does the EU’s restrictive immigration policy affect the migration processes in Africa? In this volume, a group of scholars provide convincing answers to that pressing question based on thorough theoretical work and solid empirical research. A must-read for all interested in understanding contemporary human mobility. (Martiniello Marco, Université de Liège)

This is an unusual book, drawing scholars with divergent interests, perspectives, and geographical expertise to consider the nature of migration into and out of Africa. Every reader will find individual chapters that are provocative and empirically rich. Readers who spend time reviewing all the chapters will undoubtedly come away with new perspectives on human mobility. No longer will we speak about migration in Africa as a singular or insular process. Nor will we accept simple, mechanical or economistic explanations. If nothing else, this book tell us that mobility on the continent is at once highly localized, deeply personal and shaped by global political processes.
(Loren B. Landau, University of the Witwatersrand)

About this edition

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0739165119
• ISBN 13: 9780739165119
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Streiff-Fenart Jocelyne, Segatti Aurelia