Cosmopolitan Borders makes the case for processes of bordering being better understood through the lens of cosmopolitanism. Rather than 'world citizenship' an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism is offered, emerging from a critique of the idea of 'openness', and founded on a different understanding of the relationship between globalization and cosmopolitanism. The core argument is that borders are 'cosmopolitan workshops' where 'cultural encounters of a cosmopolitan kind' take place and where entrepreneurial cosmopolitans advance new forms of sociality in the face of 'global closure'. The book outlines four cosmopolitan dimensions of borders: vernacularization, multiperspectivalism, fixity/unfixity, and connectivity.
In April, a 66-foot boat carrying some 850 migrants across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy capsized, killing almost all those on board. The tragedy catapulted migration issues to the forefront of Brussels's political agenda, as ministers grappled with how to deal with Europe's influx of asylum-seekers and migrants without documentation. The European Union's proximity to protracted conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, as well as economically depressed areas in Eastern Europe, has made member countries -- particularly Germany, Hungary, France, Italy, and Sweden -- top destinations for asylum-seekers. In the first four months of 2015, EU member states received 242,075 first-time asylum applications, an 80% increase from the same period in 2014. No one can deny that migration is a fullblown regional crisis. The question now is whether the EU has the collective will and resources to solve it. Adapted from the source document.
This new reality -- the Latinization of the United States -- is driven by forces that reach well beyond U.S. borders. It asserts itself demographically, politically, in the workplace, and in daily life. The perception that Latinos are now positioned to help bring about change in the Americas from within the United States has taken hold, sparking renewed interest and specific initiatives by hemispheric governments to cultivate new forms of relationships with emigrant communities.Borderless Borders describes the structural processes and active interventions taking place inside and outside U.S. L
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In this article I discuss the themes of movement and restriction inherent in digital technologies in two very different artistic projects, both of which offer aesthetic material for debating the politics of data. I approach this discussion through the term gravity as used by philosopher Levi R. Bryant (The Gravity of Things; Onto-Cartography). Through an analogy to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, Bryant suggests the term gravity to denote how both semiotic and material entities influence the becoming and movement of subjects and collectives in time and space (Bryant, The Gravity of Things 10). I use this as a point of departure to investigate the shared space between physical and virtual borders, and the streams of data that are formed by, and also form, the space they traverse. The term gravity is used to elucidate the contours of the digital space that determines the paths between sender and receiver, as well as draws and erases borders, restricts and enables movement.
The latest expansion of the EU towards the East has again modified its borders, showing once again the intangibility and flexibility of the latter. The very definition of border acquires different meanings depending on which theme is being discussed: an impenetrable barrier against migratory flows and the introduction of goods, transforming itself into a strainer for the exporting of national products. The new Internal Affairs Commissioner for the EU, Rocco Buttiglione, affirms on the one hand that migratory flows cannot be blocked manu militari, although he also believes that Europe decides who can enter and who cannot. Even within Europe, and despite the Schengen Agreements, borders are taking shape in concrete situations, reminding us that their disappearance is not definitive. We should differentiate between natural borders and those erected by man; in reference to the latter we will focus on walls, such as the one no longer standing in Berlin or that illegally erected by Israel in the Occupied Territories, scoffing at the international bodies dedicated to the defense of human rights and freedoms. In reference to natural borders, in direct opposition to those made by man, and due to the dramatic events that are taking place, we will concentrate on the oceans, true black holes in which the dreams of immigrants come to a tragic end. The absence of man-made elements can be more powerful than the presence of the very same barriers. The interesting thing about the Berlin Wall, having certain similarities to the Great Wall of China, is its slow (but deliberate)transformation from Cold War symbol to souvenir and finally its disappearance altogether in favour of urbanistic exploitation. The best analysis of this condition, as R. Koolhaas states (encloses free space, leaving outside the enclosed city), resides in its mutable situation, sometimes improvised evolution, and others detailed planning. It seems unfathomable that after the disappearance of one wall someone could construct another, especially under ...
This paper seeks to address the problem of strangeness within the context of migration in Africa. I draw on historical realities that inform existing international and African discourses on migration. I hope to show that most African countries have unconsciously bought into international arguments that drive the legitimacy of building walls, visible and invisible, and the promotion of stringent migration policies that minimise the influx of African immigrants. I draw on political and philosophical positions of African thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, among others, in my theorisation of strangeness and the need to dispel the potential negative conception of strangeness within Africa's migration policies. I juxtapose these positions with Western political theories with the hope of emphasizing African humanism as a key conception worth considering when decolonising borders.
In this, the second instalment of her autobiography, the celebrated Guatemalan Indian leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner picks up the story where her first volume, I, Rigoberta Menohu, ended. In 1981 Rigoberta fled from Guatemala, deeply traumatised by the violence inflicted on her community including the murders of her brother, father and mother. Exiled in Mexico she began building a support movement with the Indians living as outlaws in Guatemala's mountains. In 1988 she returned to Guatemala City where she was immediately arrested and released only after considerable international pressure. Danielle Mitterrand and Desmond Tutu were amongst those who joined a worldwide campaign to secure the Nobel Peace Prize for Rigoberta. Here she describes the events leading up to winning the prize in 1992 and the joyous celebrations which followed in Guatemala. In her role as roving ambassador for indigenous peoples Rigoberta has traversed the globe and her chronicle of these journeys is a thread which winds through this book. But, like its predecessor, Crossing Borders is much more than a political diary. In these pages Rigoberta talks with deep affection about her family and especially her mother, a woman who combined the various roles of peasant leader, midwife and keeper of the community's secrets. She returns again to the traditions of her Mayan background, comparing her people's respect for the village and its environment with the selfish individualism of a modern consumer society she has come to know only as an adult
