Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Humans have always moved, but across the world 'migration' has become a major policy, political and media concern. How can we understand human movement without positioning 'the migrant' as a problem?

This interdisciplinary collection rethinks migration and movement. It explores mobility beyond the human and across time, from the movement of soil in the Middle Ages to contemporary cow passports. It also examines the histories of contemporary international borders and how they are intertwined with the politics of race and nation. The book illustrates that conceptually based, critical and creative thinking is as important for practice as it is for theory and can help us understand and respond to migration as a force that connects rather than divides.

1. Introduction: Rethinking Migration – Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race - Bridget Anderson

Part 1 Multiple Mobilities

Introduction - Lucy Donkin, María Paula Escobar Tello and Laurence Publicover

2. Mobile People and Places in Premodern Europe - Lucy Donkin

3. The Early Voyages of the East India Company, 1601–17: A Non-Human and Unheroic History - Laurence Publicover

4. Cows on the Move: The (Im)Material Politics of Animal Passports and the Risk of Antimicrobial Resistance - María Paula Escobar Tello

Part 2 Productive Borders

Introduction - Manoj Dias- Abey, Angelo Martins Junior and Brendan Smith

5. Migrants and Borders in the Medieval English World - Brendan Smith

6. The Aliens Order 1920, the ‘Work Permit’ and the Making of the National Labour Market - Manoj Dias-Abey

7. The Production and Negotiation of the ‘Good’ and the ‘Bad’ Migrant - Angelo Martins Junior

Part 3 Transformative Representations

Introduction - Nariman Massoumi, Florian Scheding and Juan Zhang

8. Why Can’t Chinese Citizens Go Home? Spoiled Citizenship and Stigmatized Returns in Pandemic Times - Juan Zhang

9. The Family Idyll, Exclusion and Ideology in Persepolis - Nariman Massoumi

10. Sounds across Borders and the Ukraine War - Florian Scheding

Part 4 Beyond Migrants and Migration

Introduction - Natasha Carver, Brid Brennan and Holly Rooke

11. Constructing Illegality: Epistemic Borderwork in the Speeches of UK Political Elites - Holly Rooke and Natasha Carver

12. Communities of Resistance: Migrant Organizing and Transnational Campaigning Past and Future - Brid Brennan, interviewed by Bridget Anderson