Finding Ways Through Eurospace - (Worlds in Motion) by Joris Schapendonk (Paperback)

About the Book

Studying the im/mobility trajectories of West Africans in the EU, this book presents a new approach to West African migrants in Europe. Based on a trajectory ethnography, this book discusses how African migrants are confronted with rigid mobility regimes, but also how they manage to transgress and circumvent them.

Book Synopsis

Studying the im/mobility trajectories of West Africans in the EU, this book presents a new approach to West African migrants in Europe. It argues that a migration lens is not necessarily the best starting point to understand these dynamic im/mobility processes. Rather than seeing migrancy as the primary marker of their lives, this book positions these trajectories in a wider social script of mobility and discusses how African migrants are confronted with rigid mobility regimes, but also how they manage to transgress and circumvent them.

Review Quotes

"... a beautifully written, thought-provoking book [that] will be of interest to migration and mobilities scholars across the humanities and social sciences. The author's ability to turn ethnographic findings into compelling stories also makes the book accessible to nonacademic readerships. Despite--or perhaps because of--its efforts to set itself off from conventional migration studies, it is a crucial contribution to migration and mobilities research." - Migration and Society

"The deep empirical focus and reflections valuably document people's lives as they recount complex, sometimes contradictory stories in ways that resist easy generalization... It suggests valuable ways of applying theory from urban studies, ethnography, sociology, and international relations. It illustrates concretely the value of applying concepts drawn from elsewhere to better understand migration and insert studies of human mobility into the disciplinary canon." - The AAG (American Association of Geographers) Review of Books

"...a valuable, important work which should be read by scholars working in the fields of migration/mobility, European integration or African diasporas. It will also be of interest to scholars interested in biopower and governmentally, given the level of control exercised by the state on movers across their lives." - Irish Journal of Anthropology

"Schapendonk's remarkable book shows how movers are made into and unmake themselves as migrants. It openly defies any attempt at reducing West African trajectories through Europe to received categories and classifications in migration studies." - Paolo Gaibazzi, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient

"The book... is an absolutely unique and thought-provoking contribution to current discussions about "migration" - especially from Africa - in Europe." - Matthieu Bolay, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva