Deconstructing Migrant Crises in Europe

Abstract

This chapter traces the emergence of a ‘hostile environment’ and the rise of anti-immigrant populism, through the shifting immigration policies and categories employed by recent British governments. This is understood as an internalisation of border controls within Britain. The chapter then moves to a wider spatial scale, to consider the externalisation of Britain’s borders through the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ in Europe. The last part of the chapter considers the potential for social movements and campaigns to both reinforce and contest these bordering practices. The chapter concludes by considering the potential for such rearticulations to provide a basis to deconstruct hegemonic categories and form new subjectivities as a basis for resistance, and also the challenges of realising this potential.