Simon Turner of Aalborg University reviews Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement, by Alexander Betts. This book reviews the phenomenon of what the author terms “survival migration” — people fleeing basic rights deprivations rather than just persecution — which is vast in scale and has enormous consequences for the millions of individuals who are unfortunate enough to fall outside legal categories. The main concern for the author is why African states treat survival migrants so differently, arguing that when international law has been imprecise or ambiguous, national politics determines what international law actually means in practice.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1111/imre.12240.