The Politics of Borders
Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11
Problems of International Politics Series

Borders sit at the center of global politics. Yet they are too often understood as thin lines, as they appear on maps, rather than as political institutions in their own right. This book takes a detailed look at the evolution of border security in the United States after 9/11. Far from the walls and fences that dominate the news, it reveals borders to be thick, multi-faceted and binational institutions that have evolved greatly in recent decades. The book contributes to debates within political science on sovereignty, citizenship, cosmopolitanism, human rights and global justice. In particular, the new politics of borders reveal a sovereignty that is not waning, but changing, expanding beyond the state carapace and engaging certain logics of empire.

Introduction; 1. Borders: thick and thin; Part I. The Perimeter: 2. The wall and its shadow: security in the borderlands; 3. Co-bordering: one border, two sovereigns?; 4. A global question: co-bordering, cosmopolitanism, and the spectre of empire; Part II. The Ports of Entry: 5. The tiniest constable: big data, security, and the politics of identification; 6. Sovereignty, security, and the politics of trust; 7. Into the digital dark: data, the global firewall, and the future of security.

Matthew Longo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. Previously, he was the Clayman Junior Research Fellow in Politics and Political Ideas at St Anne's College, Oxford. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University, Connecticut in 2014 and was awarded the American Political Science Association's Leo Strauss Award for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Political Philosophy. His work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science and Democratization, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and has been featured in the Washington Post and National Public Radio.