Border Abolition Now

Sara Riva is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council and the University of Queensland. She is a feminist whose research looks at the intersections of neoliberalism, migration, humanitarianism and the border. Her work has been published in the Journal of Citizenship Studies, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Geopolitics and Journal of Refugee Studies. Simon Campbell is an activist-researcher focusing on border infrastructures, state violence and abolitionist struggles against the border regime. In recent years, Simon has been part of a number of solidarity groups engaged in documenting pushbacks at European borders, including the Border Violence Monitoring Network. He is reading a joint MA in South Eastern European Studies at the University of Belgrade and University of Graz. Brian Whitener is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo and author of Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil. His other projects include The 90s; De gente común: Prácticas estéticas y rebeldía social, co-edited with Lorena Méndez and Fernando Fuentes; and the translation of Grupo de Arte Callejero's Thoughts, Practices, and Actions with the Mareada Translation Collective. Kathryn Medien is a Lecturer in Sociology at The Open University. Her research draws on feminist and anti-colonial social theory to explore the colonial and imperial politics of state violence and resistance to it. She has been published in the Sociological Review, Theory, Culture and Society, Current Sociology and the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Introduction by Sara Riva, Simon Campbell, Brian Whitener, and Kathryn Medien



1. Women in Exile’s story by Elizabeth Ngari and Doris Dede



CONSTELLATION I: ABOLITIONIST THEORIES IN BORDER CONTEXTS

2. Unfolding and flourishing: strategies of border abolition feminism by Leah Cowan, Francesca Esposito, Sarah Hopwood, Aminata Kalokoh, Vânia Martins, and Elahe Zivardar

3. Surplus people of the world unite! On borders, policing, and abolition by Vanessa E. Thompson

4. #AbolishICE, #AbolishFrontex, abolish borders: toward an abolitionist border study and struggle by Josue David Cisneros

5. Interview with Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)



CONSTELLATION II: ABOLITIONISMS AGAINST THE BORDER COMPLEX

6. The place of asylum and empire in contemporary abolition by Jenna M. Loyd

7. Abolition, not relocation: moving from humanitarian containment toward camp abolition by Simon Campbell

8. “Alternatives to detention” and the carceral state in the UK by Lauren Cape-Davenhill

9. Golden Gulag in Italy? For the abolition of the receptionindustrial complex by Francesco Marchi

10. Abolish Frontex and end the EU Border regime by Mark Akkerman



CONSTELLATION III: POLITICAL HORIZONS OF BORDER ABOLITIONISM

11. “Shut them down”: non-reformist reforms in anti-detention organizing by Helen Brewer, Tom Kemp, Bobby Phe Amis, and Joel White

12. Abolitionist potential and ambivalences in daily struggles against the border regime by Watch the Med – Alarm Phone

13. Capitalism, mobility, and racialization: abolitionisms at the border by Brian Whitener

14. Rising waters from New York City to Pakistan: abolitionist organizing at the intersection of immigration justice and the climate crisis by Vignesh Ramachandran and Akash Singh

15. Interview with Contra Viento y Marea, El Comedor Comunitario 

Afterword by Gracie Mae Bradley