Abstract

This chapter examines the development and scholarly literature concerning the politics of migration in Europe by paying special attention to the dynamics, practices and actors characterizing European borders and movement across them. Providing a brief overview of scholarly work on issues like the securitization, militarization, externalization and commercialization of migration, it identifies some exceptional dynamics underpinning both the study of European borders and their specific and heterogeneous characteristics of their politics. This highlights the need for displacing traditional European assumptions, since these reveal that Europe’s self-understanding is still unresolved with respect to certain racist, colonial, gendered and imperial continuities.