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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