Drawing on the concept of the 'politics of compassion', this Handbook interrogates the political, geopolitical, social and anthropological processes which produce and govern borders and give rise to contemporary border violence. Chapters map different aspects of structural violence and mobilities in some of the world's most contentious border zones, highlighting the forms and practices that connect with labour exploitation, legal exclusion and a severe absence of human rights. International interdisciplinary contributors, including renowned sociologist Saskia Sassen, draw attention to the forms and spaces of resistance available to migrants and activists, contemplating how advocates attempt to provide protection and human security to those subjected to border violence. Offering empirical analyses of critical border spaces, the book covers extensively the US-Mexico border region and border zones around the Mediterranean. Border issues in South, Central and North America, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, the Middle East, Central Africa and East and Central Asia are also discussed. The Handbook thus provides a truly transnational approach to borders and migration, demonstrating the dynamic but asymmetric relationship between the social structure of border enforcement and the human agency of migrants and global activists. Combining theoretical insights into structural violence and human rights with key case studies of border zones, this comprehensive Handbook is crucial reading for scholars and researchers of social and political science investigating human migration, the humanitarian, border control and human rights. Its practical insights will also benefit policy-makers involved in borders and migration, as well as advocates and NGOs working with migrants and refugees to create secure environments.

To understand border enforcement and the shape it has taken, it is imperative to examine a groundbreaking Border Patrol operation begun in 1993 in El Paso, Texas, "Operation Blockade." The El Paso Border Patrol designed and implemented this radical new strategy, posting 400 agents directly on the banks of the Rio Grande in highly visible positions to deter unauthorized border crossings into the urban areas of El Paso from neighboring Ciudad Juarez-a marked departure from the traditional strategy of apprehending unauthorized crossers after entry. This approach, of "prevention through deterrence," became the foundation of the 1994 and 2004 National Border Patrol Strategies for the Southern Border. Politically popular overall, it has rendered unauthorized border crossing far less visible in many key urban areas. However, the real effectiveness of the strategy is debatable, at best. Its implementation has also led to a sharp rise in the number of deaths of unauthorized border crossers. Here, Dunn examines the paradigm-changing Operation Blockade and related border enforcement efforts in the El Paso region in great detail, as well as the local social and political situation that spawned the approach and has shaped it since. Dunn particularly spotlights the human rights abuses and enforcement excesses inflicted on local Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants as well as the challenges to those abuses. Throughout the book, Dunn filters his research and fieldwork through two competing lenses, human rights versus the rights of national sovereignty and citizenship.