The Migration Apparatus: Security, Labor, and Policymaking in the European Union

Every year, millions of people from around the world grapple with the European Union's emerging migration management apparatus. Through border controls, biometric information technology, and circular migration programs, this amorphous system combines a whirlwind of disparate policies. The Migration Apparatus examines the daily practices of migration policy officials as they attempt to harmonize legal channels for labor migrants while simultaneously cracking down on illegal migration.

Working in the crosshairs of debates surrounding national security and labor, officials have limited individual influence, few ties to each other, and no serious contact with the people whose movements they regulate. As Feldman reveals, this complex construction creates a world of indirect human relations that enables the violence of social indifference as much as the targeted brutality of collective hatred. Employing an innovative nonlocal ethnographic methodology, Feldman illuminates the danger of allowing indifference to govern how we regulate population--and people's lives--in the world today.

Author: Gregory Feldman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 10/19/2011
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780804761079

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2012

About the Author
Gregory Feldman teaches at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University. He is a cofounder of both the Interest Group for the Anthropology of Public Policy and the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.