paolo novak

Opinion | Don’t call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Call it a concentration camp. This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.

"The Nazis... imagined their targets would self-deport. Once the myth of self-deportation collapsed, they turned to more punitive measures. On Tuesday, Noem similarly noted the Everglades camp was meant to frighten immigrants into self-deporting. 'If you don’t,' she said, 'you may end up here.'"

In difesa del Leoncavallo - Effimera Il Leoncavallo è sotto sfratto. Dopo oltre trent’anni, uno degli spazi sociali più importanti d’Italia rischia di scomparire per sempre. Ti ricordi quanti ricordi abbiamo […]

Milano, hai bisogno del Leoncavallo

effimera.org/in-difesa-de...

That's precisely what border management does. Securing borders doesn't mean being 'anti-immigration.' It means anti-specific-forms-of-. It's about distinguishing between desirable and undesirable types of circulation

YouTube video by Bristol University Press Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure

Aggressive publishers-driven marketing
youtu.be/230--PLGo8o?...

We know that the border crisis isn’t about migration—it’s about the re-production of racialised exploitation, dispossession and hierarchy. The book investigates how this process is granularly produced and constructed in place, and why this is important. #worldmaking #placemaking

Ch 6 "The postcoloniality of asylum infrastructure," concludes that chronicling the border crisis demands embracing empirical unevenness, ontological instability, and conceptual ambiguity. It calls for a postcolonial gaze that provincializes, destabilizes, and places concepts.

Ch 5, "Placing autonomy" revisits the autonomy of migration debate from the standpoint of place, showing how the thrown-togetherness of migrants/non-migrants unevenly constructs asylum infrastructure. #AutonomyOfMigration #Migrants #Embodiment #Borders

Ch 4, "Destabilising coloniality" interrogates coloniality literature from the standpoint of place and illustrates the multiple "afterlives" haunting asylum seekers' reception facilities. The coloniality of asylum is a content-form #deco #PostcolonialStudies #Asylum #Place

Ch 3, "Provincializing logistics" interrogates critical logistics literature from the standpoint of place, and explains why logistical operations are lively, uneven, and unstable #Logistics #EUBorders #Place

Ch2 "The place of asylum infrastructure" formalizes the book's "standpoint of place" articulating Marxist and decolonial geographies via #GillianHart #MiltonSantos and #DoreenMassey. It proposes an ontologically unstable approach to studying borders and their crisis.

#SpacePlace

Ch 1 "Buildings as protagonists" argues that buildings aren't passive backdrops but places that "communicate" complex social and political relations. They serve as crucial analytical standpoints for mapping the border and its crisis. #Architecture #SocialGeography

Introduction: the book's main aim is to offer an understanding of the EU border machine centred on the deeply situated cartographies that explain its emergence, entrenchment and transformations, in and across “places”, and to foreground the unevenness of these processes

read the introduction @SOAS research repository soas-repository.worktribe.com/output/436575

buy the ebook for £18 @googlebooks or through @BrisUniPress if you subscribe to their newsletter

ask your library to buy the expensive hardback @SOASLibrary

wait for the paperback, out next year

This terrain isn’t about countermapping or transcendence—it's about contesting the worldmaking nature of borders from within -through embodied, situated, and relational struggles by migrants and non-migrants alike. This is the worldmaking force of placemaking practices.

the standpoint of place dis-entangles the place-transforming nature of worldmaking processes and the worldmaking nature of placemaking practices.

it delineates the terrain where border politics unfolds

The book conceptualises the EU border machine through a double dialectic—what it calls the "standpoint of place". Throughout its chapters, border crossing and border reinforcement processes are articulated with processes of production and construction of place. #borderstudies

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure; This book examines the buildings used as reception centres for asylum seekers in central Italy to reveal how they reflect the Euro...

0ut today!

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure is a carto-ethnography of the EU border machine told through the buildings that house it.

@SOASDevelopment @soasdevtrac @SOAS_CMDS

bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/buildings-of...

a thread🧵

Dont miss Gilbert achcar's new book

saqibooks.com/books/saqi/t...

Drone spotted above the Madleen is believed to be Israeli Heron drone, operated by Greek coast guard. EU / Frontex pioneered maritime surveillance for targeting migrants, with multi-billion dollar contracts going to Israeli manufacturers. Fortress Europe & Zionist genocide are reinforcing violences.

"The forum moves beyond documenting destruction to consider how infrastructure is both a tool of domination and a terrain of struggle. it highlights how Palestinians resist infrastructural warfare and how international solidarity movements can intervene in the systems that enable it."
👇👌

I have been #nicotine_sober for 44 days and approximately 8 hours and 40 minutes, after roughly 40 years of joyful and committed addiction.

Amongst many other contrasting feelings, I feel really sorry for those #academic colleagues whose contributions I have had to #peerreview in this period.

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure; This book examines the buildings used as reception centres for asylum seekers in central Italy to reveal how they reflect the Euro...

out in one month

ebook at £27.99 or 21quid if you subscribe to the @BrisUniPress mailing list.

info and marketing to follow

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/buildings-of...

🚨 Disturbing footage shows the brutal arrest of a terrified 16-year-old girl—sobbing, screaming as “ICE agents” abducted her mom without a warrant or ID. At least 4 grown men slammed her face into the pavement.
This is child abuse.
This is state terror.
Worcester police are complicit.

very much looking forward to this talk, which will allow me to set in conversation my book with the idea of 'refugee heritage' (anooradha iyer siddiqi, alessandro petti, emilio distretti, and others)

🇵🇸🇯🇵Thoton Akimoto on X: "“You have blood on your hands. Genocide is not welcome here" ― South Korean pro-Palestine activists confront the Israeli ambassador Rafael Harpaz while he was dining at a restaurant in Seoul. https://t.co/8lrI6kl2BO" / X “You have blood on your hands. Genocide is not welcome here" ― South Korean pro-Palestine activists confront the Israeli ambassador Rafael Harpaz while he was dining at a restaurant in Seoul. https://t.co/8lrI6kl2BO

x.com/AkimotoThn/s...

"emerging jurisprudence of resistance and poetry of liberation provide us with a basis for the kind of critical reflection and engagement we need, from below, in response to the onslaught that seeks to erode and nullify our rights, and the channels through which we express them"

👇

Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On (Gift Article) The U.N. has said Israel killed the workers. The video appears to contradict Israel’s version of the incident, which described the vehicles as “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency ...

Video obtained by my colleague Farnaz Fassihi shows how the IDF deliberately attacked, over several minutes, a convoy of ambulances and other emergency vehicles in #Gaza. #Israel wrongly claimed that the vehicles drove without emergency signals and headlights. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/w...

New insights for the #bordermanagement and conflict lecture

The image is a screenshot of a tweet from Brandon Bradford (@BrandonLBradfor ). The tweet reads: "Deporting Americans without due process then saying they no longer get due process because they aren’t in America means no one has rights, FYI. Nightmare scenario."

If you think this can’t happen, remember that of the 125,000 Japanese Americans who were interned during WWII for years without charge or trial, two-thirds were U.S. citizens. Including me.

Voluntary humanitarian refusal : a choice you cannot refuse – MIGREUROP The signatory organizations, including Migreurop, denounce the instrumental and distorted use of voluntary assisted returns from transit countries, such as Libya and Tunisia, where the fundamental…

The idea, the policies, and the practices associated with "return" are full of contradictions.

Perhaps this is why "return" is such a fertile terrain of struggle

migreurop.org/article3395....