Journal of Contemporary European Studies

ISSN: 1478-2804 (Print) 1478-2790 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjea20

Borders, Migration and Class in an Age of Crisis:

Producing Workers and Immigrants - At Europe’s
Edge: Migration and Crisis in the Mediterranean

Derek Hawes

To cite this article: Derek Hawes (2019) Borders, Migration and Class in an Age of Crisis:
Producing Workers and Immigrants - At Europe’s Edge: Migration and Crisis in the Mediterranean,
Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 27:4, 548-549, DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2019.1672026

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2019.1672026

Published online: 25 Sep 2019.

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548 BOOK REVIEWS

correlation of the politically engaged spheres of the contemporary arts with Austria’s current
political landscape in a wider European context, however, will have to look elsewhere.

Heide Kunzelmann
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
H.M.A.Kunzelmann@kent.ac.uk http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1353-6950
© 2019 Heide Kunzelmann
https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2019.1662663

Borders, migration and class in an age of crisis: producing workers and immigrants, by
Tom Vickers, Bristol, Bristol University Press, 2019, 238 pp., £75.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-1-5292-0181-9
At Europe’s edge: migration and crisis in the mediterranean, by Cetta Mainwaring,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019, 219 pp., £60.00 hbk, ISBN: 978-0-19-884251-4

These two volumes, distinctively different in approach, set out to offer some solutions to the
fraught political role played by national borders and the tensions which are, inevitably, central to
the wider European Union (EU) crisis caused by the mass migratory flows of refugees from middle-
eastern conflicts into Europe.
We are warned at the outset that Tom Vickers' book is not short on fruitful provocation! Full of
epigraphic insights, part of it reads like Marxist scriptural exegesis rather than argument from first
principles. Its purpose is to respond to increasingly restrictive border controls and populist move-
ments targeting migrants for violence and exclusion. There are moments of glibness about
‘liberation’ from capitalism that abstain from offering a feasible alternative. And, as the series
editor comments: ‘The rise of populist nationalism globally has been one of the most obvious
outcomes of similar calls to revolution for years’ (pp.ix) – and reflecting on the way migration is
depicted in political rhetoric today, this suggests it pays to be careful what you wish for.
Ruefully, the author admits that to argue for an active struggle to destroy capitalism is presently
unfashionable, nor would it solve everything overnight. However, he disputes the idea that borders
are a natural part of the human world; rather, they are ‘the expression of a complex socio-political
regime that manifests and engenders dominant notions of sovereignty, citizenship, public health,
national identity, cultural homogeneity, racial purity and class privilege’ (p.4). In this context, the
UK’s decision to leave the EU is, in Vickers’ view, an overt turn backwards towards the nation, part
of a wider international turn towards protectionism and unilateralism. So, it appears the Marxist
revolution is still some way off!
There is something quite surreal about the naivety inherent in over 230 pages of repetitive,
confused ‘narratives of othering’ (p.182) which produces a sense of wonderment that, for this reviewer
at least, can best be described as like watching the last Unicorn disappearing into the forest.
The second volume, by Cetta Mainwaring, is altogether more coherent and clear-headed but in
its way just as radical. One is reminded that in his 2015 seminal work Europe Entrapped, 1 Claus
Offe, writing of an earlier EU crisis, commented ‘crisis has largely paralyzed or silenced the forces
and sources of constructive agency, that are capable of implementing strategies and changes by
which crisis might be overcome’. Five years later, Mainwaring finds little has changed. In a searing
and heart-rending account of the migrant flows taking to the seas in utterly unsuitable craft,
seeking safety in European countries and exploited at every turn, her book asks, essentially, three
key questions: why has the EU prioritized the fortification of its external borders; why, in spite of
 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES 549

that, do people still attempt the Mediterranean crossing – dying in their thousands in the process –
and how have the smaller EU states on its southern periphery responded to responsibility for
border controls? Using Malta as a case study, she is clear that it uses its relatively small status to
cast migrants as villains, burdens or threats. And it looks in vain to the collective might of the
Union, for genuine solutions. The current response – increased border controls – the author argues,
only fuels the crisis rather than deterring migration.
Regrettably, the author’s attempt to provide genuine solutions – idealistic and sensible as they
are – is unlikely to melt any EU hearts, shift the policy debate or produce results. She pleads that
we should choose more progressive policies and create a genuine area of protection which does
not reduce the migrant to simply a symbol of social ills. ‘We must recognise migrants as equals
who contribute to our societies in many different ways . . . we must all resist easy depictions that
reinforce the migrant as “the other“‘ (p.165). Another proposal is the creation of more legal
channels and an emphasis on the need for migrant labour; and why is it, Mainwaring asks, that
other forms of migration, for the world’s affluent classes – the wealthy businessman, the ex-pat, the
exchange student and other elites ‘move relatively seamlessly between countries’ (p.166).
There is, perhaps, a certain naivety in blaming the arms trade for sustaining conflict and
claiming ‘rights’ for the refugees, which do not exist in international law and which seems to
consider that if only peace and harmony could break out across the globe, all these problems
would be resolved. It is a pity too that nowhere in this book is there reference to the role of middle-
eastern religious conflict which perpetuates much of the murder and mayhem from which
thousands flee.
It is true though that the incompetent, undemocratic construction of the EU in its current form,
protects it from pressure from its distant electorates who might actually be a source of the
compassion the author seeks to bring to bear.

Note
1. Europe Entrapped. Claus Offe. Polity Press (2015).

Derek Hawes
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
d.hawes188@btinternet.com
© 2019 Derek Hawes
https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2019.1672026