Visual Border Politics
Images and Migration Governance in Europe
1st Edition
Published on 30. March 2026
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-1-032-81889-4 (ISBN)
Description
The book highlights how images shape Europe's migration policies, using the pivotal 2015 'refugee crisis' as a lens to examine the complex intersection of visual media and border governance.
Understanding visual border politics as situated practices of meaning-making that operate against the background of a structured visual order, it presents a critical framework that combines analyses of policy discourse and visual media discourse. Drawing on a broad sample of policy documents, a large visual dataset, and media analysis, the book adds complexity to existing analyses of visual politics in the context of migration. It shows that visual border politics do not operate in straightforward ways but are instead contextually bound. Whether images can be mobilized to legitimate policies depends on a number of factors, such as current and previous policies, the discursive climate, domestic developments, collective visual memories, and constitutions of collective identities.
Drawing on insights from critical migration and border studies, critical security studies, visual international relations, visual culture studies, and memory studies, this volume will be of interest for multiple disciplines, including international relations, politics, sociology, anthropology, European studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies, history, geography, and international law.
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Understanding visual border politics as situated practices of meaning-making that operate against the background of a structured visual order, it presents a critical framework that combines analyses of policy discourse and visual media discourse. Drawing on a broad sample of policy documents, a large visual dataset, and media analysis, the book adds complexity to existing analyses of visual politics in the context of migration. It shows that visual border politics do not operate in straightforward ways but are instead contextually bound. Whether images can be mobilized to legitimate policies depends on a number of factors, such as current and previous policies, the discursive climate, domestic developments, collective visual memories, and constitutions of collective identities.
Drawing on insights from critical migration and border studies, critical security studies, visual international relations, visual culture studies, and memory studies, this volume will be of interest for multiple disciplines, including international relations, politics, sociology, anthropology, European studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies, history, geography, and international law.
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Reviews / Votes
Visual Border Politics: Images and Migration Governance in Europe provides a pathbreaking account of how migration is visualized in contemporary European media and the political implications thereof. Bringing together visual International Relations research and critical migration and border studies, Laura Holderied presents a powerful theoretical framework, thoughtful and hands-on methodological guidance and extremely rich case studies of the UK and Germany.- Lene Hansen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Focusing on the European 'refugee crisis,' Visual Border Politics offers a rich analysis of the complex and polysemic power of images. Holderied convincingly argues - and empirically demonstrates - that this power is not uniform, but emerges from and depends on the context within which images of migration gain meaning.
- Roland Bleiker, University of Queensland, Australia
From images of discarded life-jackets on Mediterranean beaches to queues of people crossing fences along the 'Balkan Route', the visualization of Europe's so-called 'migration crisis' features prominently in the contemporary political imagination. Conceptually sophisticated and empirically rich, Visual Border Politics moves beyond existing scholarly analyses to explore the political power of images and the social construction of Europe's borders. Meticulously researched and accessibly written, Holderied makes a landmark contribution to the interdisciplinary study of European border and migration governance.
- Nick Vaughan-Williams, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
3 s/w Tabellen, 13 s/w Abbildungen, 13 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
3 Tables, black and white; 13 Halftones, black and white; 13 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-81889-4 (9781032818894)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2026
Routledge
€60.49
Available for download
E-Book
05/2026
Routledge
€60.49
Available for download
Person
Laura Holderied is Senior Research Associate at Giessen University (Germany) in the Research Group "Human Rights Discourse in Migration Societies". Laura's research interests are in European migration and border politics, visual international politics, and conflicts about inclusion/exclusion, rights, and political community in migration societies. She has published on the role of visual discourses in migration and border governance, the so-called 'refugee crisis' 2015, the politics of images and rights in migration-related conflicts, and visual methodologies.
Content
Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Images, borders, and their politics 2 Analyzing visual border politics 3 Mobilizing 'Alan Kurdi' in pre-Brexit Britain 4 Mobilizing images of welcome culture and Holocaust postmemory in Germany 5 Images and doing border in the German media discourse Conclusion Index