R Andersson
Biographic Data
| ID | 33757 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Andersson |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Andersson |
| SIGNATURE | ANDERSSON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3337-6437 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 135 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Against security: Protectionism and what's left of politics
The specter of security is haunting politics. In “north” and “south,” on left and right, security is replacing neoliberalism as a dominant political logic. Despite a wealth of securitization studies, we have not yet fully grasped this shift and its political ramifications. Here we consider security's rise to dominance in three contexts: first, the “postsocialist transition” in Latvia and the demise of Soviet socialism, which facilitated the wider…
The security-safety nexus: A response to comments
Setha Low, Mark Maguire, and Zoltán Glück have given us plenty to think about, but taken together, their commentaries also demonstrate why our intervention is needed. To put it briefly, Glück's insistence on fighting security through safety is an exemplary case of the type of thinking that we challenge by focusing on shared political logics across divergent contexts. In turn, Low and Maguire's argument for more ethnographic grounding would be wel…
Security and Subversion in a Time of Monsters
A border wall. An aid bunker. An Oxford garden. Amid wars and pandemics, the global security landscape is proliferating from the militarised red zones at capitalism's margins right into its beating heart. What kind of human future awaits once security becomes the default solution to perennial crisis? I suggest that both demand for security and supply of security capabilities are escalating-and that the resulting 'securitisation of everything' is …
"The Bioeconomy and the Birth of a "New Anthropology
This concluding reflection of the Colloquy considers how the bioeconomy, as an analytical lens, may cast light on processes of colonization beyond the territorial frame of spatial domination, settlement, and exploitation. Examining the power to colonize with special reference to the politics and policing of migration, it shows how certain migrants have come to serve as a laboratory in the quest to extract value from life itself-which itself links…
Illegality, Inc: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe
In this groundbreaking ethnography, Ruben Andersson, a gifted anthropologist and journalist, travels along the clandestine migration trail from Senegal and Mali to the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Through the voices of his informants, Andersson explores, viscerally and emphatically, how Europe’s increasingly powerful border regime meets and interacts with its target–the clandestine migrant. This vivid, rich work examines t…
The Timbuktu syndrome
The Malian town of Timbuktu, long considered the epitome of remoteness in the Western imagination, has undergone a dramatic transformation from tourist outpost to terrorism‐haunted site of a UN peacekeeping intervention, in a shift accompanying conflict‐hit Mali's wider relabelling as a ‘danger zone’. Casting an eye on this distressing turn, this article considers the ‘cartopolitics’ of distance and danger from a historical perspective while anal…
The return of remoteness: Insecurity, isolation and connectivity in the new world disorder
Remoteness has returned to world politics. Instead of the flat world’ once proclaimed by leading liberal voices, the world map today looks more rugged and uneven than it has in a long time. While some areas are smoothly connected to global capital and cultural flows, others are becoming more marginalised and ‘distant’, at least from the viewpoint of global centres of power. In this introduction, we build an analytical approach to remoteness as a …
Institutionalized Intervention: The ‘Bunker Politics’ of International Aid in Afghanistan
Afghanistan has come to be seen as emblematic of the security threats besetting peace and security operations, and in this article we consider the response to such threats via the ‘bunkering’ of international staff. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative survey with aid and peacebuilding officials in Kabul, we illustrate how seemingly mundane risk management procedures have negative consequences for intervening institutions; for the relation between …
Profits and Predation in the Human Bioeconomy
This article starts with an observation made by many migrants and refugees stuck at Europe’s borders: that reception and detention facilities have become a money spinner and a racket. In conversation with the extensive literature on the biopolitics of borders, the article approaches this business as a “bioeconomy” to highlight how migration controls (sometimes framed in the idiom of care) facilitate profiteering and predation. Rather than focusin…
Double games: Success, failure and the relocation of risk in fighting terror, drugs and migration
This paper compares the security paradigms for combating terrorism, drugs and irregular migration and argues that while these have largely failed on their own terms, they have also proven rather successful for the actors shaping them. Through a spatial political economy analysis of systems of intervention, the paper shows how vested interests have helped perpetuate counterproductive approaches, while risks (including that of human suffering) have…
Rescued and Caught: The Humanitarian-Security Nexus at Europe’s Frontiers
From Radar Systems to Rickety Boats: Borderline Ethnography in Europe’s ‘Illegality Industry’
The price of impact: Reflections on academic outreach amid the ‘refugee crisis’
Ever since the ‘refugee crisis’ hit European shores, policymakers, journalists and politicians have sought out knowledge on ‘unwanted’ migration and ‘what to do about it’. As influential people knock on academic doors – at times seeking out anthropologists, such as this author – how should we engage, and under what conditions? The seemingly endless rounds of panel debates, conferences and other policy‐focused outreach pull academics towards ‘high…
Brexit Referendum: First reactions from anthropology
Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropologyMy immediate reaction to the results of the British Referendum on leaving or remaining in the EU was to remember Alexei Yurchak's book, Everything was forever, until it was no more (Yurchak 2006).In the book, Yurchak describes the feeling of many people in Russia when the Soviet Union broke up: it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened, it w…
Hardwiring the frontier? The politics of security technology in Europe’s ‘fight against illegal migration
Migration controls at the external EU borders have become a large field of political and financial investment in recent years – indeed, an ‘industry’ of sorts – yet conflicts between states and border agencies still mar attempts at cooperation. This article takes a close look at one way in which officials try to overcome such conflicts: through technology. In West Africa, the secure ‘Seahorse’ network hardwires border cooperation into a satellite…
The health-promotion perspective in public-health plans in a Swedish region over three decades
The trend away from a health and medical care-based policy to a healthy public policy has taken place in Sweden rather later than in other West European countries. One of the first county councils to establish health-promotion plans was Västernorrland. The aims of this study are to describe the contents of and analyze the changes over time in the five public-health plans in the county. The object of study for the policy analysis consists in these…
A game of risk: Boat migration and the business of bordering Europe (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
Largely in response to irregular migration flows, a Euro‐African border is under construction at the southern edges of Europe. The latest phase in this ‘borderwork’ is a system known as Eurosur, underpinned by a vision of a streamlined surveillance cover of Europe's southern maritime border and the African ‘pre‐frontier’ beyond it. Eurosur and other policing initiatives pull in a range of sectors – from border guards to aid workers – that make th…
The new frontiers of America
Through a mixture of oral testimony, analysis and personal encounter, the harsh and deadly penalties meted out to those attempting to travel across the Mexican border into the United States are evoked. Many have already suffered extensively at the hands of corrupt police and marauding paramilitary gangs as they travel into Mexico, even before risking their lives to go further north. Devastated economies, in hock to 'trade' agreements dictated by …
Hardwiring the frontier? The politics of security technology in Europe’s ‘fight against illegal migration
Migration controls at the external EU borders have become a large field of political and financial investment in recent years – indeed, an ‘industry’ of sorts – yet conflicts between states and border agencies still mar attempts at cooperation. This article takes a close look at one way in which officials try to overcome such conflicts: through technology. In West Africa, the secure ‘Seahorse’ network hardwires border cooperation into a satellite…
Brexit Referendum: First reactions from anthropology
Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropologyMy immediate reaction to the results of the British Referendum on leaving or remaining in the EU was to remember Alexei Yurchak's book, Everything was forever, until it was no more (Yurchak 2006).In the book, Yurchak describes the feeling of many people in Russia when the Soviet Union broke up: it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened, it w…
A game of risk: Boat migration and the business of bordering Europe (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
Largely in response to irregular migration flows, a Euro‐African border is under construction at the southern edges of Europe. The latest phase in this ‘borderwork’ is a system known as Eurosur, underpinned by a vision of a streamlined surveillance cover of Europe's southern maritime border and the African ‘pre‐frontier’ beyond it. Eurosur and other policing initiatives pull in a range of sectors – from border guards to aid workers – that make th…
"The Bioeconomy and the Birth of a "New Anthropology
This concluding reflection of the Colloquy considers how the bioeconomy, as an analytical lens, may cast light on processes of colonization beyond the territorial frame of spatial domination, settlement, and exploitation. Examining the power to colonize with special reference to the politics and policing of migration, it shows how certain migrants have come to serve as a laboratory in the quest to extract value from life itself-which itself links…
Institutionalized Intervention: The ‘Bunker Politics’ of International Aid in Afghanistan
Afghanistan has come to be seen as emblematic of the security threats besetting peace and security operations, and in this article we consider the response to such threats via the ‘bunkering’ of international staff. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative survey with aid and peacebuilding officials in Kabul, we illustrate how seemingly mundane risk management procedures have negative consequences for intervening institutions; for the relation between …
Double games: Success, failure and the relocation of risk in fighting terror, drugs and migration
This paper compares the security paradigms for combating terrorism, drugs and irregular migration and argues that while these have largely failed on their own terms, they have also proven rather successful for the actors shaping them. Through a spatial political economy analysis of systems of intervention, the paper shows how vested interests have helped perpetuate counterproductive approaches, while risks (including that of human suffering) have…
The new frontiers of America
Through a mixture of oral testimony, analysis and personal encounter, the harsh and deadly penalties meted out to those attempting to travel across the Mexican border into the United States are evoked. Many have already suffered extensively at the hands of corrupt police and marauding paramilitary gangs as they travel into Mexico, even before risking their lives to go further north. Devastated economies, in hock to 'trade' agreements dictated by …
The new frontiers of America
Through a mixture of oral testimony, analysis and personal encounter, the harsh and deadly penalties meted out to those attempting to travel across the Mexican border into the United States are evoked. Many have already suffered extensively at the hands of corrupt police and marauding paramilitary gangs as they travel into Mexico, even before risking their lives to go further north. Devastated economies, in hock to 'trade' agreements dictated by …
A game of risk: Boat migration and the business of bordering Europe (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
Largely in response to irregular migration flows, a Euro‐African border is under construction at the southern edges of Europe. The latest phase in this ‘borderwork’ is a system known as Eurosur, underpinned by a vision of a streamlined surveillance cover of Europe's southern maritime border and the African ‘pre‐frontier’ beyond it. Eurosur and other policing initiatives pull in a range of sectors – from border guards to aid workers – that make th…
The health-promotion perspective in public-health plans in a Swedish region over three decades
The trend away from a health and medical care-based policy to a healthy public policy has taken place in Sweden rather later than in other West European countries. One of the first county councils to establish health-promotion plans was Västernorrland. The aims of this study are to describe the contents of and analyze the changes over time in the five public-health plans in the county. The object of study for the policy analysis consists in these…
Hardwiring the frontier? The politics of security technology in Europe’s ‘fight against illegal migration
Migration controls at the external EU borders have become a large field of political and financial investment in recent years – indeed, an ‘industry’ of sorts – yet conflicts between states and border agencies still mar attempts at cooperation. This article takes a close look at one way in which officials try to overcome such conflicts: through technology. In West Africa, the secure ‘Seahorse’ network hardwires border cooperation into a satellite…
Brexit Referendum: First reactions from anthropology
Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropologyMy immediate reaction to the results of the British Referendum on leaving or remaining in the EU was to remember Alexei Yurchak's book, Everything was forever, until it was no more (Yurchak 2006).In the book, Yurchak describes the feeling of many people in Russia when the Soviet Union broke up: it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened, it w…
Rescued and Caught: The Humanitarian-Security Nexus at Europe’s Frontiers
From Radar Systems to Rickety Boats: Borderline Ethnography in Europe’s ‘Illegality Industry’
The price of impact: Reflections on academic outreach amid the ‘refugee crisis’
Ever since the ‘refugee crisis’ hit European shores, policymakers, journalists and politicians have sought out knowledge on ‘unwanted’ migration and ‘what to do about it’. As influential people knock on academic doors – at times seeking out anthropologists, such as this author – how should we engage, and under what conditions? The seemingly endless rounds of panel debates, conferences and other policy‐focused outreach pull academics towards ‘high…
Profits and Predation in the Human Bioeconomy
This article starts with an observation made by many migrants and refugees stuck at Europe’s borders: that reception and detention facilities have become a money spinner and a racket. In conversation with the extensive literature on the biopolitics of borders, the article approaches this business as a “bioeconomy” to highlight how migration controls (sometimes framed in the idiom of care) facilitate profiteering and predation. Rather than focusin…
Double games: Success, failure and the relocation of risk in fighting terror, drugs and migration
This paper compares the security paradigms for combating terrorism, drugs and irregular migration and argues that while these have largely failed on their own terms, they have also proven rather successful for the actors shaping them. Through a spatial political economy analysis of systems of intervention, the paper shows how vested interests have helped perpetuate counterproductive approaches, while risks (including that of human suffering) have…
Illegality, Inc: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe
In this groundbreaking ethnography, Ruben Andersson, a gifted anthropologist and journalist, travels along the clandestine migration trail from Senegal and Mali to the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Through the voices of his informants, Andersson explores, viscerally and emphatically, how Europe’s increasingly powerful border regime meets and interacts with its target–the clandestine migrant. This vivid, rich work examines t…
The Timbuktu syndrome
The Malian town of Timbuktu, long considered the epitome of remoteness in the Western imagination, has undergone a dramatic transformation from tourist outpost to terrorism‐haunted site of a UN peacekeeping intervention, in a shift accompanying conflict‐hit Mali's wider relabelling as a ‘danger zone’. Casting an eye on this distressing turn, this article considers the ‘cartopolitics’ of distance and danger from a historical perspective while anal…
The return of remoteness: Insecurity, isolation and connectivity in the new world disorder
Remoteness has returned to world politics. Instead of the flat world’ once proclaimed by leading liberal voices, the world map today looks more rugged and uneven than it has in a long time. While some areas are smoothly connected to global capital and cultural flows, others are becoming more marginalised and ‘distant’, at least from the viewpoint of global centres of power. In this introduction, we build an analytical approach to remoteness as a …
Institutionalized Intervention: The ‘Bunker Politics’ of International Aid in Afghanistan
Afghanistan has come to be seen as emblematic of the security threats besetting peace and security operations, and in this article we consider the response to such threats via the ‘bunkering’ of international staff. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative survey with aid and peacebuilding officials in Kabul, we illustrate how seemingly mundane risk management procedures have negative consequences for intervening institutions; for the relation between …
"The Bioeconomy and the Birth of a "New Anthropology
This concluding reflection of the Colloquy considers how the bioeconomy, as an analytical lens, may cast light on processes of colonization beyond the territorial frame of spatial domination, settlement, and exploitation. Examining the power to colonize with special reference to the politics and policing of migration, it shows how certain migrants have come to serve as a laboratory in the quest to extract value from life itself-which itself links…
Security and Subversion in a Time of Monsters
A border wall. An aid bunker. An Oxford garden. Amid wars and pandemics, the global security landscape is proliferating from the militarised red zones at capitalism's margins right into its beating heart. What kind of human future awaits once security becomes the default solution to perennial crisis? I suggest that both demand for security and supply of security capabilities are escalating-and that the resulting 'securitisation of everything' is …
Against security: Protectionism and what's left of politics
The specter of security is haunting politics. In “north” and “south,” on left and right, security is replacing neoliberalism as a dominant political logic. Despite a wealth of securitization studies, we have not yet fully grasped this shift and its political ramifications. Here we consider security's rise to dominance in three contexts: first, the “postsocialist transition” in Latvia and the demise of Soviet socialism, which facilitated the wider…
The security-safety nexus: A response to comments
Setha Low, Mark Maguire, and Zoltán Glück have given us plenty to think about, but taken together, their commentaries also demonstrate why our intervention is needed. To put it briefly, Glück's insistence on fighting security through safety is an exemplary case of the type of thinking that we challenge by focusing on shared political logics across divergent contexts. In turn, Low and Maguire's argument for more ethnographic grounding would be wel…
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Global Security and Public Health (6 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (6 works) · Political economy (6 works) · Economy (4 works) · Law (4 works)