6533b825fe1ef96bd1281cd3

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Introduction: Border Memories

subject

description

This chapter introduces the context of the book. It first argues that the public debate about refugees and border crossing in Europe tends to be ahistorical, treating the situation as a sudden emergency appearing from nowhere. Thinking in terms of bordering, as a verb, underlines that borders require continuous symbolic and material construction and that borders have consequences. The perspective of bordering calls for attention to temporality. This volume adds the analytical lenses of memory and temporality to the critical and political project to think beyond the oppressive bordering taking place in Europe. By doing so, the book broadens the scope of border studies, which tend to focus on issues of spatiality.