Jeremy Harding writes from the front lines of the western world's war against mass migration, the heavily patrolled borders, shorelines, refugee camps and processing centres, where he speaks to economic migrants, asylum seekers, people traffickers and those charged with stopping them. He explores the theories, legislation and contradictions underpinning the rich world's immigration policies. And he repeatedly returns to the sad stories of desperate souls who have suffered and died, in cargo containers, rafts and the undercarriages of aircraft, trying to get in. Harding insists that Europe 's tight immigration policy "brings its humanitarian pretensions into question: the holding camps, the charter flights with deportees in restraint positions, the virtual frontier creeping inexorably beyond the geographical borders". Border Vigils is a devastating critique of a form of globalisation that favours the movement of goods and services over the movement of people (at least, poor people), and that claims to be fair but is, ultimately, rigged.
