‘From Transnational Borders to No Borders? Commoning, Abolition and Imagining Otherwise’

Professor Miriam Ticktin

Migration is a lightning rod in political debates globally; from Tunisia and South Africa to the US, Australia and many countries in Europe. And in most of these places, managing migration is synonymous with closing the borders. This talk will discuss the transnational politics of border walls, before it turns to the transnational political movements that work to counter enclosures and forms of containment. These struggles sometimes use the language of ‘no-borders’, and they involve a similar set of transnational circuits as do the technologies and designs of border walls, but with the opposite goal.

While taking seriously these powerful politics and counterpolitics, ultimately Ticktin is interested in how people are imagining different ways of being, alongside or in the interstices of these visions. She ends by discussing these forms of alterpolitics, grounded in collective living, and abolitionist forms of world-making.

This event is co-hosted by Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

Speaker: Miriam Ticktin is Professor in Anthropology and Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York. She publishes widely on topics such as migration, borders, humanitarianism, and racial and gendered inequalities. She is the author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France and co-editor of In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care. Her most recent book, Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World, is forthcoming with University of Chicago Press (2025). MMB and the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology are hosting Miriam as the Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor in May-June 2025.

Chair: Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, and Director of MMB, University of Bristol.

Discussant: Juan Zhang, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol.

Access: The lecture will take place in Lecture Theatre G.09 in the Fry Building. This is on the ground floor with full wheelchair access. Read more about accessibility to and within this building here.

US border image above by Rey Perezoso on Flickr.

Below: Miriam Ticktin

MMB/Anthropology and Archaeology Public Lecture 2025 - Miriam Ticktin