Here are 100 books that Border Porosities fans have personally recommended if you like
Border Porosities.
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My stepfather lived in Latin America, and when he died, I spent time with migrants as a way of feeling closer to him. I was overwhelmed by the warmth and welcome offered to me. As I met more migrants who had uprooted their lives with hope and determination, I became disillusioned with typical narratives on the left and the right that portray migrants as helpless victims or dangerous invaders. I love books that tell more complex stories about the broad range of migrant experiences, and I am particularly drawn to books that capture the hope that many migrants feel and that they bring to their new homes.
I love the multigenerational stories that this book tells, tracing the children and grandchildren of the protagonists across generations.
I appreciate how the author does not flinch from describing challenges while also attending to the hope and persistence of the migrant women from Nicaragua. I also love how the story moves toward the possibilities that are open for future generations.
Andrea, Silvia, Ana, and Pamela were impoverished youth when the Sandinista revolution took hold in Nicaragua in 1979. Against the backdrop of a war and economic crisis, the revolution gave them hope of a better future - if not for themselves, then for their children. But, when it became clear that their hopes were in vain, they chose to emigrate. Children of the Revolution tells these four women's stories up to their adulthood in Italy. Laura J. Enriquez's compassionate account highlights the particularities of each woman's narrative, and shows how their lives were shaped by social factors such as their…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My stepfather lived in Latin America, and when he died, I spent time with migrants as a way of feeling closer to him. I was overwhelmed by the warmth and welcome offered to me. As I met more migrants who had uprooted their lives with hope and determination, I became disillusioned with typical narratives on the left and the right that portray migrants as helpless victims or dangerous invaders. I love books that tell more complex stories about the broad range of migrant experiences, and I am particularly drawn to books that capture the hope that many migrants feel and that they bring to their new homes.
We regularly hear in the media about migrants who risk their lives going north across the Mediterranean. I love how this book tells detailed stories about what happens to many of those migrants once they land in Sicily.
They face social and legal challenges, for sure, but the book shows how many Sicilians embrace migrants and try to help them find their way. I found the stories of solidarity between citizens and migrants moving and hopeful.
With thousands of migrants attempting the perilous maritime journey from North Africa to Europe each year, transnational migration is a defining feature of social life in the Mediterranean today. On the island of Sicily, where many migrants first arrive and ultimately remain, the contours of migrant reception and integration are frequently animated by broader concerns for human rights and social justice. Island of Hope sheds light on the emergence of social solidarity initiatives and networks forged between citizens and noncitizens who work together to improve local livelihoods and mobilize for radical political change. Basing her argument on years of ethnographic…
My stepfather lived in Latin America, and when he died, I spent time with migrants as a way of feeling closer to him. I was overwhelmed by the warmth and welcome offered to me. As I met more migrants who had uprooted their lives with hope and determination, I became disillusioned with typical narratives on the left and the right that portray migrants as helpless victims or dangerous invaders. I love books that tell more complex stories about the broad range of migrant experiences, and I am particularly drawn to books that capture the hope that many migrants feel and that they bring to their new homes.
I love how this book engages with the complexities of migration, describing a situation in which ethnically Turkish migrants from Bulgaria immigrate to Turkey. This complicates the typical story about migrants as outsiders who must adjust to hosts who are fundamentally different.
I found the stories compelling, as they trace the advantages and disadvantages that this hybrid status brings, and as they describe the heterogeneous experiences that different types of migrants confront.
There are more than 700,000 Bulgaristanli migrants residing in Turkey. Immigrants from Bulgaria who are ethnically Turkish, they assume certain privileges because of these ethnic ties, yet access to citizenship remains dependent on the whims of those in power. Through vivid accounts of encounters with the police and state bureaucracy, of nostalgic memories of home and aspirations for a more secure life in Turkey, Precarious Hope explores the tensions between ethnic privilege and economic vulnerability and rethinks the limits of migrant belonging among those for whom it is intimated and promised-but never guaranteed.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
My stepfather lived in Latin America, and when he died, I spent time with migrants as a way of feeling closer to him. I was overwhelmed by the warmth and welcome offered to me. As I met more migrants who had uprooted their lives with hope and determination, I became disillusioned with typical narratives on the left and the right that portray migrants as helpless victims or dangerous invaders. I love books that tell more complex stories about the broad range of migrant experiences, and I am particularly drawn to books that capture the hope that many migrants feel and that they bring to their new homes.
I love how this book explores the role of faith in supporting migrants as they confront the challenges of crossing the border and beginning a life without legal status in America. While describing many of the challenges that migrants face in an unflinching way, the book nonetheless maintains focus on their faith in a larger purpose and their hope for a promising future for their families.
Their capacity for and approaches to remaining hopeful inspire me as I face similar doubts despite a much more stable life situation.
Since the arrival of the Puritans, various religious groups, including Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and Protestant sects, have migrated to the United States. The role of religion in motivating their migration and shaping their settlement experiences has been well documented. What has not been recorded is the contemporary story of how migrants from Mexico and Central America rely on religion-their clergy, faith, cultural expressions, and everyday religious practices-to endure the undocumented journey.
At a time when anti-immigrant feeling is rising among the American public and when immigration is often cast in economic or deviant terms, Migration Miracle humanizes the controversy by…
Beyond my fascination with borders as historical sites of conflict and shifting markers of control, I’ve spent an academic career studying the simultaneity of barrier and juncture. This research has led me to witness licit and illicit border crossings, refugee camps, commercial ports, smuggling, and conservation through cloistering. In my travels, I’ve perceived my vulnerability at certain borders and ease of passage at others. All of this afforded me insights into the human division and demarcation of space and resulted in books and articles on varied facets of bordering in the hope that I might contribute to inhibiting the bad and facilitating the good where territories meet.
While somewhat of a departure from my prior favorites in scope, I love this book because it is a deep dive into a specific stretch of border in 21st-century Central Asia. Though most may be unfamiliar with the myriad complexities at the juncture of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Nick Megoran’s ethnographic treatment offers a window into how borders in the 21st century are lived with and through.
This is because changing a border’s porosity alters the routes, businesses, educational opportunities, and relationships of people on both sides and beyond. Megoran’s book puts you on that border and compels you to think about how the decisions made in capital cities radically affect the citizens at the margins of state territories.
Nick Megoran explores the process of building independent nation-states in post-Soviet Central Asia through the lens of the disputed border territory between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In his rich "biography" of the boundary, he employs a combination of political, cultural, historical, ethnographic, and geographic frames to shed new light on nation-building process in this volatile and geopolitically significant region. Megoran draws on twenty years of extensive research in the borderlands via interviews, observations, participation, and newspaper analysis. He considers the problems of nationalist discourse versus local vernacular, elite struggles versus borderland solidarities, boundary delimitation versus everyday experience, border control versus resistance,…
I am a journalist who spent 15 years reporting from all over the world – Kabul, Baghdad, New Delhi, Beijing, Washington D.C. – returning to London in 2015 to report on the UK’s relations with Europe. Then Brexit happened. As a reporter, I’d chronicled the rise of China and India after 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, but I’d failed to understand how far Britain had been consumed by the forces of populism that have roiled all Western democracies. I’ve spent the last eight years reporting on the fallout, from both sides of the English Channel; trying to unpack what went wrong, and see what we can do about it.
As a young reporter in the mid-1990s, I cut my teeth reporting the end of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ and the eventual signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement peace deal. That deal was based around a constitutional ambiguity that was rocked by the Brexit vote.
This pithy volume by Queen's University Belfast politics professor Katy Hayward manages to blend absolute concision and with ambition, tracing the history of the Irish border that found itself at the heart of the UK’s often bitter Brexit negotiations with Europe.
Amid so much rhetoric, Hayward trades only in the facts while carefully framing the future choices that Brexit might bring to Northern Ireland.
The Irish border is a manifestation of the relationship between Britain and Ireland. When that relationship has been tense, we have seen the worst effects at the Irish border in the form of violence, controls and barriers. When the relationship has been good, the Irish border has become - to all intents and purposes - open, invisible and criss-crossed with connections. Throughout its short existence, the symbolism of the border has remained just as important as its practical impact.
With the UK's exit from the European Union, the challenge of managing the Irish border as a source and a symbol…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
The past fascinates me because it is strange and different to the world we live in today. That is why I prefer looking at earlier centuries than contemporary times because the distant past requires an extra effort on our part to unlock how people back then made sense of their world. When I read an old chronicle on how Indigenous people spent days traveling to meet acquaintances and even strangers, it piqued my interest. Did they really need to meet face-to-face? What did traveling mean to them? The books on the list below are attempts by historians to understand the travelers of the past.
I like Borders and Freedom because Scholz shows a different way of interpreting political borders and territories.
Most people would think that toll stations would be located at the boundary between states. But Scholz illustrates how they were actually located well within the borders of political territories because channeling movement was far more important than maintaining fixed boundaries.
In the Holy Roman Empire 'no prince... can forbid men passage in the common road', wrote the English jurist John Selden. In practice, moving through one the most fractured landscapes in human history was rarely as straightforward as suggested by Selden's account of the German 'liberty of passage'.
Across the Old Reich, mobile populations-from emperors to peasants-defied attempts to channel their mobility with actions ranging from mockery to bloodshed. In this study, Luca Scholz charts this contentious ordering of movement through the lens of safe conduct, an institution that was common throughout the early modern world but became a key…
Beyond my fascination with borders as historical sites of conflict and shifting markers of control, I’ve spent an academic career studying the simultaneity of barrier and juncture. This research has led me to witness licit and illicit border crossings, refugee camps, commercial ports, smuggling, and conservation through cloistering. In my travels, I’ve perceived my vulnerability at certain borders and ease of passage at others. All of this afforded me insights into the human division and demarcation of space and resulted in books and articles on varied facets of bordering in the hope that I might contribute to inhibiting the bad and facilitating the good where territories meet.
I was drawn to this book for its depth of thought and critical perspective on bordering as a process. Paulina Ochoa Espejo covers the rich ground of political geography, mixing philosophical considerations of human place-making and how borders are integral to that process.
I returned to various chapters of this book whilst writing about other topics and regions. The book pulls readers from their comfortable perspectives and compels both fruitful and necessary reconsiderations of borders.
When are borders justified? Who has a right to control them? Where should they be drawn?
Today people think of borders as an island's shores. Just as beaches delimit a castaway's realm, so borders define the edges of a territory, occupied by a unified people, to whom the land legitimately belongs. Hence a territory is legitimate only if it belongs to a people unified by a civic identity. Sadly, this Desert Island Model of territorial politics forces us to choose. If we want territories, then we can either have democratic legitimacy, or inclusion of different civic identities--but not both. The…
Beyond my fascination with borders as historical sites of conflict and shifting markers of control, I’ve spent an academic career studying the simultaneity of barrier and juncture. This research has led me to witness licit and illicit border crossings, refugee camps, commercial ports, smuggling, and conservation through cloistering. In my travels, I’ve perceived my vulnerability at certain borders and ease of passage at others. All of this afforded me insights into the human division and demarcation of space and resulted in books and articles on varied facets of bordering in the hope that I might contribute to inhibiting the bad and facilitating the good where territories meet.
I found this book eminently readable. It’s like a story about borders, offering vivid portrayals of real conflictual political geographies. Dodds makes clear that borders play political, social, economic, and environmental roles that must be considered for any prospect of peace in the future.
This is the sort of book that educated readers, from college students to international jet setters, would find enlightening as to borders’ breadth of relevance in the 21st Century.
A thrilling insight into international geopolitics by one of the world’s leading experts, examining the past, future, and present meaning of borders from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, Palestine to Pakistan, North Korea to Trump’s Wall, and beyond
What do the world’s best-known, most dangerous, and most unexpected border conflicts mean for our changing international relationships?
In The New Border Wars, border expert Klaus Dodds journeys into the geopolitical clashes of tomorrow in an eye-opening tour of border walls―literal and figurative―from the Gaza Strip to the space race. In the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere, the tension…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’ve been fascinated by maps all my life. The map of India has always held special interest. As I’ve lived in different parts of India, I’ve seen firsthand how India is one country, but its stories are multiple. I chronicled India’s varied stories through the origins of each of its states. Similarly, I’ve curated a diverse and inclusive reading list. It covers different parts of the country and contains different types of books—graphic novel, travelog, memoir, and short story collections. The authors also cut across religion, gender, and social strata. I hope you discover a whole new India!
India’s birth as an independent nation threw its borders into sharp focus due to Partition. Lines were hurriedly scribbled across a map to create multiple new nations and throw most of South Asia into ceaseless turmoil. What I appreciate about the author’s approach is that she travels the length of India’s land borders and captures oral stories of individuals living daily lives in these tense spaces that are highly contested but also largely forgotten. This book is a travelog unlike any other across a part of India that is nearly impossible to visit.
The first true people's history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders
Sharing borders with six countries and spanning a geography that extends from Pakistan to Myanmar, India is the world's largest democracy and second most populous country. It is also the site of the world's biggest crisis of statelessness, as it strips citizenship from hundreds of thousands of its people--especially those living in disputed border regions.
Suchitra Vijayan traveled India's vast land border to explore how these populations live, and document how even places…
