Borderlands: Towards an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition

Luciano Baracco of Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus reviews Borderlands: Towards an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition, by Michel Agier.  Anthropologist Michel Agier’s book examines the character of the borderlands that emerge on the margins of nation-states. Drawing on his ethnographic fieldwork, he shows that borders, far from disappearing, have acquired a new kind of centrality in our societies, becoming reference points for the growing numbers of people who do not find a place in the countries they wish to reach. The lives of migrants, even in the uncertainties or dangers of the borderlands, tell us something about the condition in which everyone is increasingly living today, a ‘cosmopolitan condition’ in which the experience of the unfamiliar is more common and the relation between self and other is in constant renewal.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1111/imre.12328