[D66] Empire of Borders

[A.OUT]

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2908-empire-of-borders
Empire of Borders
The Expansion of the US Border around the World
by Todd Miller


Hardback with free ebook
£16.99£8.5050% off
304 pages / July 2019 / 9781784785116

The United States is outsourcing its border patrol abroad—and
essentially expanding its borders in the process

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rapid hardening of
international borders. Security, surveillance, and militarization are
widening the chasm between those who travel where they please and those
whose movements are restricted. But that is only part of the story. As
journalist Todd Miller reveals in Empire of Borders, the nature of US
borders has changed. These boundaries have effectively expanded
thousands of miles outside of US territory to encircle not simply
American land but Washington’s interests. Resources, training, and
agents from the United States infiltrate the Caribbean and Central
America; they reach across the Canadian border; and they go even farther
afield, enforcing the division between Global South and North.

The highly publicized focus on a wall between the United States and
Mexico misses the bigger picture of strengthening border enforcement
around the world.

Empire of Borders is a tremendous work of narrative investigative
journalism that traces the rise of this border regime. It delves into
the practices of “extreme vetting,” which raise the possibility of
“ideological” tests and cyber-policing for migrants and visitors, a
level of scrutiny that threatens fundamental freedoms and allows, once
again, for America’s security concerns to infringe upon the sovereign
rights of other nations.

In Syria, Guatemala, Kenya, Palestine, Mexico, the Philippines, and
elsewhere, Miller finds that borders aren’t making the world safe—they
are the frontline in a global war against the poor.
Reviews

“An indispensable guide to our bunkered, barb-wired world. For more than
a decade, well before Donald Trump landed in the White House, Miller’s
reporting has revealed the conceits of globalization, documenting the
slow, steady garrisoning of US politics behind ever more brutal border
policies. Now, with Empire of Borders, he looks outward, to a world
overrun with so many border walls it looks more like a maze than a
shared planet. If there’s a way out, Miller will find it.”

– Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the
Border Wall in the Mind of America

“Empire of Borders reveals how the United States has effectively
extended its borders throughout the globe, giving rise to a worldwide
enforcement network that is highly militarized and profoundly
dehumanizing. At a time when more people than ever before find their
lives thrust against violent lines of separation, Todd Miller helps us
understand the omnipresence of borders as an imminent threat to our
shared humanity—a collective sickness that must be reckoned with before
it forever reshapes our world.”

– Fransisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from
the Border

“Joining meticulous documentation and vivid on-the-ground research in
multiple border hot spots around the planet, Todd Miller pulls the veil
off the layers of borders and their policing that shape our world,
revealing a stunning and terrifying reality. The artificiality of
borders, and the commitment of the world’s wealthy and powerful to
preserve their wealth and power through them, have never been so clearly
laid out.”

– Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“Todd Miller takes the reader on a global journey following the ever
expanding and violent border enforcement regime. Empire of Borders is an
erudite and engaging exposé of the global war against the poor that is
increasingly carried out through restrictions on the right to move.
Highly recommended.”

– Reece Jones, author of Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move

“In an excellent combination of reporting and analysis, Miller describes
a system of borders that are mutable, invasive, and multidimensional.”

– CounterPunch

“Todd Miller has transformed the way journalists should cover the border
imperial apparatus designed to contain the worst form of violence
against the global south—unrestrained and unregulated capitalism.”

– José Luis Benavides, professor, Department of Journalism at California
State University Northridge

“I highly recommend this excellent, engaging expose of the global reach
of U.S. bordering practices and its harmful consequences. Featuring
detailed on-the-ground research and highly readable and often poignant
prose, Miller makes powerful links between fences, walls, surveillance
strategies, and other barriers to inclusion and rights that the U.S. is
constructing across the globe. This is a must-read book that will
forever change how you think about contemporary borders.”

– Nancy A. Wonders, professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice,
Northern Arizona University

“Empire of Borders is about how dramatically and completely this easy
simplicity [a line on the map that gives a country its shape that
"needs" to be fortified] can mislead us about what the border really is,
where it is, and where it is going...The US border is a massive global
apparatus, an interconnected network of partnerships, funding,
multinational industries, and international agreements, stretching
across every continent and saturating the world.”

– Aaron Bady, The Nation

“An exceptional work of journalism, full of revelations about global
multi-layered border system the U.S. has built.”

– Unauthorized Disclosure podcast