Border Abolition Now

“Outstanding ... A rich, hopeful, and indispensable guide [that] shows us how the world could be borderless, flourishing, free”—Luke de Noronha, co-author, Against Borders: The Case For Abolition

“Groundbreaking. This is learning at its most powerful, reframing thinking and activism with the aim of building justice”—Bridget Anderson, Professor, University of Bristol

Borders must be abolished. Borders produce and are produced by carceral, racist, classist, sexist, and xenophobic regimes. Border Abolition Now demands transformative politics to dismantle these systems of oppression.

Taking the key tenets of abolitionism and applying them to the debate around borders, the contributors bring a rich understanding of the history and context of carceral and policing systems. Heralding from different countries, disciplines, and activist struggles, they show how their theories are being realized through feminist decolonial praxis, and how personal experiences of borders and organizing against them inform abolition.

Expanding the debate to areas including asylum, detention camps, mobility, and climate change, Border Abolition Now offers new tools for anyone working to defend freedom of movement for all.

Sara Riva is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council and the University of Queensland. Simon Campbell is an activist-researcher focusing on border infrastructures, state violence and abolitionist struggles against the border regime. Brian Whitener is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo and author of Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil. Kathryn Medien is a Lecturer in Sociology at The Open University.

Sara Riva is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council and the University of Queensland. She is a feminist whose research looks at the intersections of neoliberalism, migration, humanitarianism and the border. Her work has been published in the Journal of Citizenship Studies, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Geopolitics and Journal of Refugee Studies.

Simon Campbell is an activist-researcher focusing on border infrastructures, state violence and abolitionist struggles against the border regime. In recent years, Simon has been part of a number of solidarity groups engaged in documenting pushbacks at European borders, including the Border Violence Monitoring Network. He is reading a joint MA in South Eastern European Studies at the University of Belgrade and University of Graz.

Brian Whitener is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo and author of Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil. His other projects include The 90s; De gente común: Prácticas estéticas y rebeldía social, co-edited with Lorena Méndez and Fernando Fuentes; and the translation of Grupo de Arte Callejero's Thoughts, Practices, and Actions with the Mareada Translation Collective.

Kathryn Medien is a Lecturer in Sociology at The Open University. Her research draws on feminist and anti-colonial social theory to explore the colonial and imperial politics of state violence and resistance to it. She has been published in the Sociological Review, Theory, Culture and Society, Current Sociology and the International Feminist Journal of Politics.