Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives
Winner of the 2023 International Political Sociology Book Award

The seamy underside of humanitarianism


What does it mean when humanitarianism is the response to death, injury and suffering at the border? This book interrogates the politics of humanitarian responses to border violence and unequal mobility, arguing that such responses mask underlying injustices, depoliticise violent borders and bolster liberal and paternalist approaches to suffering.
 
Focusing on the diversity of actors involved in humanitarian assistance alongside the times and spaces of action, the book draws a direct line between privileges of movement and global inequalities of race, class, gender and disability rooted in colonial histories and white supremacy and humanitarian efforts that save lives while entrenching such inequalities.
 
Based on eight years of research with border police, European Union officials, professional humanitarians, and grassroots activists in Europe’s borderlands, including Italy and Greece, the book argues that this kind of saving lives builds, expands and deepens already restrictive borders and exclusive and exceptional identities through what the book calls humanitarian borderwork.
1140372363
Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives
Winner of the 2023 International Political Sociology Book Award

The seamy underside of humanitarianism


What does it mean when humanitarianism is the response to death, injury and suffering at the border? This book interrogates the politics of humanitarian responses to border violence and unequal mobility, arguing that such responses mask underlying injustices, depoliticise violent borders and bolster liberal and paternalist approaches to suffering.
 
Focusing on the diversity of actors involved in humanitarian assistance alongside the times and spaces of action, the book draws a direct line between privileges of movement and global inequalities of race, class, gender and disability rooted in colonial histories and white supremacy and humanitarian efforts that save lives while entrenching such inequalities.
 
Based on eight years of research with border police, European Union officials, professional humanitarians, and grassroots activists in Europe’s borderlands, including Italy and Greece, the book argues that this kind of saving lives builds, expands and deepens already restrictive borders and exclusive and exceptional identities through what the book calls humanitarian borderwork.
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Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives

Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives

by Polly Pallister-Wilkins
Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives

Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives

by Polly Pallister-Wilkins

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Overview

Winner of the 2023 International Political Sociology Book Award

The seamy underside of humanitarianism


What does it mean when humanitarianism is the response to death, injury and suffering at the border? This book interrogates the politics of humanitarian responses to border violence and unequal mobility, arguing that such responses mask underlying injustices, depoliticise violent borders and bolster liberal and paternalist approaches to suffering.
 
Focusing on the diversity of actors involved in humanitarian assistance alongside the times and spaces of action, the book draws a direct line between privileges of movement and global inequalities of race, class, gender and disability rooted in colonial histories and white supremacy and humanitarian efforts that save lives while entrenching such inequalities.
 
Based on eight years of research with border police, European Union officials, professional humanitarians, and grassroots activists in Europe’s borderlands, including Italy and Greece, the book argues that this kind of saving lives builds, expands and deepens already restrictive borders and exclusive and exceptional identities through what the book calls humanitarian borderwork.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781839765995
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 06/14/2022
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 6.01(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Polly Pallister-Wilkins is a political geographer and an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, where she researches and teaches on the spatialities of injustice with a specific focus on borders and mobility alongside the geographies and politics of humanitarianism. She has been researching humanitarian responses to border violence since 2012, undertaking extensive fieldwork with border police and humanitarian organisations across Europe and with a concentrated focus on Greece.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 Introduction 1

2 Unequal Mobility and Humanitarian Borderwork 19

The Global Colour Line 21

The Tools of the Global Colour Line: Passports, Visas and Border Controls 26

The Politics of Saving Lives: from Colonial Amelioration to Structuring Violence 38

Humanitarian Borderwork 48

3 Care and (Border) Control 53

The Good, the Bad and the Invisible 54

Extending the Line 62

Deepening the Line 70

Blurring the Line 76

Pre-emptive Rescue 84

4 Médecins Avec Frontières 91

Mobile Humanitarians 92

Pop-Up Humanitarianism 95

Humanitarianism on the Move 102

Viscose Velocity in Humanitarian Medical Care 107

Search and Rescue, Visibility, and the Making of Publics 114

Feasibility, and the Political Possibilities of Humanitarian Intervention 122

Humanitarian Solutions to Political Problems? 127

5 Grassroots™ Humanitarianism 133

The Privileges of the Ordinary 136

The Entrepreneurial Lightness of Being 141

The Frontiers of Fame 148

A Bag of Chocolate Milk and a Shoe … 154

No White Saviour Bullshit Here 158

Mapping Border Spaces, Making Mobility 163

Criminalising Humanitarianism 166

No Borders? 171

6 Decolonising Mobility and Humanitarianism? 179

Humanitarian Borderwork and the Debilitation of Movement 181

Developmental Borderwork 184

Autonomy of Migration and Mobility Justice 187

Decolonising Mobility 190

Post-humanist Possibilities 193

Decolonising Humanitarianism 197

Humanitarian Futures 200

Index 205

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