My edited journal issue with ACME – the e-journal for critical geographies – is out now!
click here to reach the link of the totally free issue.
Beneath you find a more detailed description.
The Mediterranean Migration Frontier
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Category Archives: borders
Post-war Conflict and the Market for Protection
Today the journal International Peacekeeping published my article on post-war conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. You may find a free link to the e-print version here (up to 50 clicks). Here’s a few excerpts…
For a European Right to Asylum
On 3 October 2013 the world witnessed the most dramatic human disaster in the Mediterranean Sea since the Second World War. Of a fishing boat that left Libyan waters with 518 Somali and Eritrean refugees, only 155 made it to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Rescue workers recuperated over 300 corpses from the swelling waters, while others remained stuck in the wreck. Survivors stated that a few passengers, including, apparently, the ship’s captain, set fire to a sheet to attract attention from passing vessels.
Violence on the Margins: book release
On 28 August my co-edited volume with Benedikt Korf about ‘Violence on the Margins: States, Conflict, and Borderlands’ came out with Palgrave MacMillan Press (preview).
This boldly multidisciplinary volume surveys African and Asian conflicts through individuals’ lived experiences of territorial borders, as well as the ways these experiences affect political configurations. The contributions gathered here depict borderlands not just as the objects of globalized or state-driven processes, but as actual political units that generate their own actions and outcomes. In particular, these studies demonstrate the explicit transboundary character of conflict and peace. In this way, they explore alternatives to the still-dominant model of contemporary state formation as a centrally guided, top-down process – a model that has led to a deep misunderstanding of borderlands as marginal spaces that either are fraught with savagery and rebellion or linger in dark oblivion (cover picture on this page courtesy Elien Spillebeen).
You may order the book here
Liberalism in the midst of Anarchy?
The Democratic Republic of Congo is often represented as an isolated “Heart of Darkness”. Its booming cross-border trade nonetheless represents a powerful answer to state collapse and armed conflict and introduces new, surprisingly liberal, forms of government.