£119.50
Underground Europe
Along Migrant Routes
Introduction
This book is grounded in an extended analogy between the 19th century story of the Underground Railroad in North America, transporting fugitive slaves to safety in the North, and the 21st century routes and trails of migrant passages to and within Europe.
Historical Travelogue
It begins as a kind of historical travelogue tracing the remnants of the 19th-century Underground Railroad in the US and Canada, including its legacies and unfulfilled heritage.
Current Political Context
It then shifts to the political present by ethnographically sketching a series of different border instances and situations, both external and within the EU space (Ventimiglia, Athens, Paris, Calais, Ceuta and Melilla, Patras, Pozzallo).
Border Regimes and Solidarity
Focusing on the violent harshening of local border regimes, this book nonetheless suggests a different picture, one conceived as the dynamic effect of both migrants' autonomy and of the solidarity provided by local and international groups.
Reimagining Borders
Focusing on these specific and contested situations, it is possible to reverse the image of a main borderland into one of a space crisscrossed by many routes and passages.
Historical Analogy
Reading those experiences through the historical lens of the US antebellum Underground Railroad, the book suggests the idea of an analogous "Underground Europe".
