Us and Them?

This book troubles the distinction between Us and Them, migrant and citizen. It explores how borders create social, political and economic relations and argues that these are not solely the concern of migrants. The exclusion of migrants helps define the privileges and limitations of citizenship, and close attention to the border (physical and metaphorical) reveals much about how we make sense of ourselves. The book explores how the migrant is a normative as well as a legal construct which is deeply problematic for technocratic policies. Immigration status is not only about legal technicalities, but it is about status in the sense of value, worth and honour, that is, membership of the community of value. Seen…