Society and space

Society and Space author Darshan Vigneswaran’s book Territory, Migration and the Evolution of the International System was recently published. The book will be reviewed for the journal later this year. Darshan’s paper “The contours of disorder: crime maps and territorial policing in South Africa” was published earlier this year (requires subscription).

Contemporary international migratiåon makes border controls, bounded citizenship, and sovereign jurisdictions appear increasingly outdated. These policy tools are poor responses to a world characterized by cross-border mobility, transnational interconnections and global diaspora. Are there viable alternatives to this system of territorial and exclusive states?

This book takes a historical trajectory, exploring governments’ use of different territorial strategies to manage migration at specific moments during the evolution of the international system, from centralization in Renaissance Italy and expansion under the British Empire to the integration of the European Union. Vigneswaran shows how under each of these regimes, political thinkers and rulers draw upon a ‘mental map’ – a specific way of imagining political space – to devise their systems of jurisdiction, belonging and immigration control. Using evidence of territorial variation and reform, this book looks to the future of migration regimes beyond the territorially exclusive state.