Unbounding Europe

At a time of global border fortification and rising nationalisms, Unbounding Europe analyzes the potential of Mediterranean borderlands to offer alternative models of belonging. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, Ilaria Giglioli writes about relations between Sicilians and Tunisians and how they negotiate relationships of proximity and difference in multiple arenas of life. She argues that histories of marginalization within the nation-state do not automatically make borderlands inclusive for migrants. Understanding the interplay of different degrees of marginality is key to identify how solidarity movements can emerge and be effective.

Giglioli argues that depoliticized celebrations of cross-Mediterranean coexistence ignore longstanding inequalities and reinforce symbolic hierarchies between Sicilians and Tunisians. She stresses that recognizing and addressing these inequalities is key to developing a transformative politics of solidarity. Rather than idealize intermediate border spaces or subjects, Unbounding Europe asserts that it is more effective to reconstruct histories of material and symbolic boundary drawing to demonstrate the contingency and mutability of borders.

Ilaria Giglioli is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of San Francisco. A human geographer by training, she studies the creation, legitimization and contestation of borders, with particular focus on the relationship between border fortification, uneven development, and the production of social difference.

At a time of violent border fortification, rampant xenophobia, and resurgent neofascism, Unbounding Europe could not be more urgent. Giglioli does not look for answers to our global political impasse in naive spatial metaphors of hybridity but rather in the powerful, everyday solidarities that emerge from shared histories of racial capitalism to challenge the taken-for-grantedness of borders.

Lorenzo Rinelli, Temple University Rome:

In Unbounding Europe, Ilaria Giglioli powerfully argues against the idea of the Mediterranean as a natural border in a fresh and mature manner within a large tradition of decolonial studies.