Vernacular Border Security

Citizens' Narratives of Europe's 'Migration Crisis'

Bibliographic Data

ID20005908
AuthorsNick Vaughan-Williams (0000-0002-1689-5932, Professor of International Security, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2021
Publication date2021-06-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueVernacular Border Security (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198855538.001.0001
OpenAlexW4230096627
Open LibraryOL34701309M
ISBN9780198855538
LanguageEN
Citations received27
References cited133

Since the peak of Europe’s so-called 2015 ‘migration crisis’, the dominant governmental response has been to turn to deterrent border security across the Mediterranean and construct border walls throughout the EU. During the same timeframe, EU citizens are widely represented—by politicians, by media sources, and by opinion polls—as fearing a loss of control over national and EU borders. Despite the intensification of EU border security with visibly violent effects, EU citizens are nevertheless said to be ‘threatened majorities’. These dynamics beg the question: Why is it that tougher deterrent border security and walling appear to have heightened rather than diminished border anxieties among EU citizens? While the populist mantra of ‘taking back control’ purports to speak on behalf of EU citizens, little is known about how diverse EU citizens conceptualize, understand, and talk about the so-called ‘crisis’. Yet, if social and cultural meanings of ‘migration’ and ‘border security’ are constructed intersubjectively and contested politically, then EU citizens—as well as governmental elites and people on the move—are significant in shaping dominant framings of and responses to the ‘crisis’. This book argues that, in order to address the overarching puzzle, a conceptual and methodological shift is required in the way that border security is understood: a new approach is urgently required that complements ‘top-down’ analyses of elite governmental practices with ‘bottom-up’ vernacular studies of how those practices are both reproduced and contested in everyday life

Art · Business · Literature · Vernacular · Global Security and Public Health · History · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Sex work and related issues · emigration and immigration

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