Territory, Migration and the Evolution of the International System

Darshan Vigneswaran is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society, WITS University, South Africa. He has held fellowships at Oxford University, UK and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany. He is the co-editor of Slavery, Migration and Contemporary Bondage in Africa (2012) and currently studies migration control, state development and policing in India and South Africa.

"With globalisation established as a process that shrinks the space-time continuum and increases social density, the task before us is to normalise the sometimes bewildering outcomes by means of historical work. Vigneswaran does that for migration." - Iver Neumann, Montague Burton Professor of IR, London School of Economics, UK "Vigneswaran demonstrates adroitly how imagined cartographies produce territorial control of mobility. He delivers on the radical opening premise that while human migration transforms political space, political systems remain inept in responding to migration. He contextualizes contemporary border enforcement with alternative historical narratives of state territoriality. The book offers thoughtful and far-reaching analysis of European history to posit mental maps as 'radical simplifications' of space designed to control. Vigneswaran moves daringly beyond critique to ask how future systems of governance might actually work. This is an essential, lively, and illuminating read for anyone interested in political geography, mobility and territoriality." - Alison Mountz, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Canada

• Preface: The Queue Jumping Analogy 1. Introduction 2. Migration and Mental Maps 3. Centralization in the Italian City-State 4. Expansion of the British Empire 5. Integrating Europe 6. Projecting Territorial Change Epilogue: Theory From the South