This collection of essays explores historical and conceptual locations of Guyane, as a relational space characterised by dynamics of interaction and conflict. Does Guyane have, or has it had, its own place in the world, or is it a borderland which can only make sense in relation to elsewhere?

This volume focuses on Jewish, Arab, non-Latin European, Asian, and Latin American immigrants and their experiences in their “new” homes. Rejecting exceptionalist and homogenizing tendencies within immigration history, contributors advocate instead an approach that emphasizes the locally- and nationally-embedded nature of ethnic identification.

Interweaving rich ethnographic descriptions with an innovative theoretical approach, this book explores and unsettles conventional maps and understandings of Europe and the Americas. Through an examination of the recently inaugurated cross-border bridge between France’s overseas department of French Guiana and Brazil’s northern state of Amapá, which effectively acts as a one-way street and serves to perpetuate inequalities in a historically deeply entangled region, it foregrounds the ways in which borderland inhabitants such as indigenous women, illegalised migrants, and local politicians deal with these inequalities and the increasingly closed Amazonian border in everyday life. A study that challenges the coloniality of memory, this volume shows how the borderland along and across the Oyapock River, far from being the hinterland of France and Brazil, in fact illuminates entangled histories and their concomitant inequalities on a large scale. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and border studies with interests in postcolonialism, memory, and inequality.

Maroon Cosmopolitics: Personhood, Creativity and Incorporation sheds further light on the contemporary modes of Maroon circulation and presence in Suriname and in the French Guiana. The contributors assembled in the volume look to describe Maroon ways of inhabiting, transforming and circulating through different localities in the Guianas, as well as their modes of creating and incorporating knowledge and artefacts into their social relations and spaces. By bringing together authors with diverse perspectives on the situation of the Guianese Maroon at the twenty-first century, the volume contributes to the anthropological literature on Maroon societies, providing ethnographic, and historical depth and legitimacy to the contemporary lives of the descendants of those who fled from slavery in the Americas.

The case studies in this volume illustrate the global dimension of flight and migration movements with a special focus on South-South migration. Thirteen chapters shed light on transcontinental or regional migration processes, as well as on long-term processes of arrival and questions of belonging. Flight and migration are social phenomena. They are embedded in individual, familial and collective histories on the level of nation states, regions, cities or we-groups. They are also closely tied up with changing border regimes and migration policies. The explanatory power of case studies stems from analyzing these complex interrelations. Case studies allow us to look at both “common” and “rare” migration phenomena, and to make systematic comparisons. On the basis of in-depth fieldwork, the authors in this volume challenge dichotomous distinctions between flight and migration, look at changing perspectives during processes of migration, consider those who stay, and counter political and media discourses which assume that Europe, or the Global North in general, is the pivot of international migration.

Experiences, processes and constellations of exile, flight, and persecution have deeply shaped global history and are still widespread aspects of human existence today. People are persecuted, incarcerated, tortured or deported on the basis of their political beliefs, gender, ethnic or ethno-national belonging, religious affiliation, and other socio-political categories. People flee or are displaced in the context of collective violence such as wars, rebellions, coups, environmental disasters or armed conflicts. After migrating, but not exclusively in this context, people find themselves suddenly isolated, cut off from their networks of belonging, their biographical projects and their collective histories. The articles in this volume are concerned with the challenges of navigating through multiple paradoxes and contradictions when it comes to grasping these phenomena sociologically, on the levels of self-reflection, theorizing, and especially doing empirical research.

This international collection provides a comprehensive overview of twin cities in different circumstances – from the emergent to the recently amalgamated, on 'soft' and 'hard' borders, with post-colonial heritage, in post-conflict environments and under strain. With examples from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America, North America and the Caribbean, the volume sees twin cities as intense thermometers for developments in the wider urban world globally. It offers interdisciplinary perspectives that bridge history, politics, culture, economy, geography and other fields, applying these lenses to examples of twin cities in remote places. Providing a comparative approach and drawing on a range of methodologies, the book explores where and how twin cities arise; what twin cities can tell us about international borders; and the way in which some twin cities bear the spatial marks of their colonial past. The chapters explore the impact on twin-city relations of contemporary pressures, such as mass migration, the rise of populism, East-West tensions, international crime, surveillance, rebordering trends and epidemiological risks triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With case studies across the continents, this volume for the first time extends twin-city debates to fictional imaginings of twin cities. Twin Cities across Five Continents is a valuable resource for researchers in the fields of anthropology, history, geography, urban studies, border studies, international relations and global development as well as for students in these disciplines.

This book examines the representation of penal colonies both historically and in contemporary culture, across an array of media. Exploring a range of geographies and historical instances of the penal colony, it seeks to identify how the ‘penal colony’ as a widespread phenomenon is as much ‘imagined’ and creatively instrumentalized as it pertains to real sites and populations. It concentrates on the range of ‘media’ produced in and around penal colonies both during their operation and following their closures. This approach emphasizes the role of cross-disciplinary methods and approaches to examining the history and legacy of convict transportation, prison islands and other sites of exile. It develops a range of methodological tools for engaging with cultures and representations of incarceration, detention and transportation. The chapters draw on media discourse analysis, critical cartography, museum and heritage studies, ethnography, architectural history, visual culture including film and comics studies and gaming studies. It aims to disrupt the idea of adopting linear histories or isolated geographies in order to understand the impact and legacy of penal colonies. The overall claim made by the collection is that understanding the cultural production associated with this global phenomenon is a necessary part of a wider examination of carceral imaginaries or ‘penal spectatorship’ (Brown, 2009) past, present and future. It brings together historiography, criminology, media and cultural studies.

This book examines the prominent place a commitment to social justice and equity has occupied in the global history of literary journalism. With international case studies, it explores and theorizes the way literary journalists have addressed inequality and its consequences in their practice. In the process, this volume focuses on the critical attitude the writers of this genre bring to their stories, the immersive reporting they use to gain detailed and intimate knowledge of their subjects, and the array of innovative rhetorical strategies through which they represent those encounters. The contributors explain how these strategies encourage readers to respond to injustices of class, race, indigeneity, gender, mobility, and access to knowledge. Together, they make the case that, throughout its history, literary journalism has proven uniquely well adapted to fusing facts with feeling in a way which makes it a compelling force for social change.

The rapidity of postwar globalization and the structural changes it has brought to both social and spatial aspects of everyday life has meant, in France as elsewhere, the destabilizing of senses of place, identity, and belonging, as once familiar, local environments are increasingly de-localized and made porous to global trends and planetary preoccupations. Maps and Territories identifies such preoccupations as a fundamental underlying impetus for the contemporary French novel.