Book Launch: Social Harm at the Border: The Case of Lampedusa

Social Harm at the Border: The Case of Lampedusa by Dr Francesca Soliman, Edinburgh Napier University

Discussant: Dr Milena Tripkovic, Edinburgh University

Abstract:

This book offers a zemiological approach for understanding border control practices, state power, and their social impact. Drawing on an ethnographic study on the borderisation of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, it explores border harms from the perspective of the non-migrant community.

Social Harm at the Border examines a range of social harms associated with border control, and draws on themes of security, racialised humanitarianism, economic harms, environment, and culture. It explores the ways in which borderisation exercises control over both migrants and non-migrants, ensuring that border communities remain subordinated to the power of institutional actors, and it offers a novel framework with which to illuminate and explain border harms and their generative mechanisms.

An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, zemiology, sociology, criminal justice, politics, geography, and those interested in the harms caused by border control practices.

Bio:

Dr Francesca Soliman is a lecturer in criminology at Edinburgh Napier University. Francesca’s research examines the social and environmental harms caused by borderisation, with a particular focus on its impact on border communities at the external margins of the EU. Francesca’s work seeks to further develop the emerging discipline of zemiology as a tool to analyse the wider impact of border policies and other forms of social control.

*This is a hybrid event which you can join via Microsoft Teams - the link will be emailed to you. If you can make it in person please do. Directions to ENU Merchiston campus can be found here.