The confrontation between asylum seeking and sovereignty has mainly focused on ways in which the movement and possibilities of refugees and migrants are limited. In this volume, instead of departing from the practices of governance and surveillance, Puumala begins with the moving body, its engagements and relations and examines different ways of seeing and sensing the struggle between asylum seekers and sovereign practices. Puumala asserts that our political imagination is being challenged in its ways of ordering, practicing and thinking about the international and those relations we call international. The issues relating to asylum seekers are one example of the deficiencies in the spatiotemporal logic upon which these relations were originally built; words such as 'nation', 'people', 'sovereignty' and 'community' are challenged. Conventional methods of governing, regulating and administering increased forms of mobility are in trouble, which gives rise to the invention of new technologies at borders and introduces regulations and spaces of exception. Based on extensive fieldwork that sheds light on a range of Europe-wide practices in the field of asylum and migration policies, this book will be of interest to scholars of IR theory, biopolitics and migration, as well as critical security more broadly.

Choreographies of Resistance examines bodies and their capacity for obstructive and resistant action in places and spaces where we do not expect to see it. Drawing on empirical research that considers cases on asylum seekers, beggars, undocumented migrants and migrant nurses, the book attests to the scope and diversity of corporeal resistance in the realm of politics. It is shown that bodies that are not assumed to have political agency can obstruct and resist the smooth functioning of disciplinary practices that nowadays form the core of migration policies. It is argued that the body is more than a mere target of politics. In so doing, the book contributes to the study of the political significance of movement, mobility and the nonverbal. The body opens up a space of political resistance and action. The resistant body poses a challenge that is both praxical and philosophical: it ultimately invites us to reconsider the meanings and content of political space, community and belonging..

Choreographies of Resistance examines bodies and their capacity for obstructive and resistant action in places and spaces where we do not expect to see it. Drawing on empirical research that considers cases on asylum seekers, beggars, undocumented migrants and migrant nurses, the book attests to the scope and diversity of corporeal resistance in the realm of politics. It is shown that bodies that are not assumed to have political agency can obstruct and resist the smooth functioning of disciplinary practices that nowadays form the core of migration policies. It is argued that the body is more than a mere target of politics. In so doing, the book contributes to the study of the political significance of movement, mobility and the nonverbal. The body opens up a space of political resistance and action. The resistant body poses a challenge that is both praxical and philosophical: it ultimately invites us to reconsider the meanings and content of political space, community and belonging..