This interdisciplinary volume written by experienced scholars in border studies explores the political role of images and narratives addressing borders, borderscapes and migration. The volume offers new methodologies to approach the political aesthetics of the border and related issues such as borderland identities and border-crossings.

Introduction: images and narratives on the border – Jopi Nyman and Johan SchimanskiPart I: The Border (Forms)1 Phenomenology of the liminal – Wolfgang Müller-Funk2 Horizontal vertigo and psychasthenia: border figures of the fantastic – Patricia GarcíaPart II: Living with the Border (Zones)3 Capturing clouds: imagin(in)g the materiality of digital networks – Holger Pötzsch4 In/visibilities beyond the spectacularisation: young people, subjectivity, and revolutionary border Imaginations in the Mediterranean borderscape – Chiara Brambilla5 From heroism to grotesque: the invisibility of border-related trauma narratives in the Finnish–Russian borderlands – Tuulikki Kurki6 Expanded border imaginaries and aligned border narratives: ethnic minorities and localities in China’s border encounters with Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam – Victor Konrad and Zhiding HuPart III: Crossing the Border (Migrations)7 Borders: tshe topos of/for a post-politics of images? – Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary8 Some cunning passages in border-crossing narratives: seen and unseen migrants – Stephen F. Wolfe9 Borderscapes of Calais: images of ‘The Jungle’ in Breach by Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes – Jopi Nyman10 Seasons of migration to the North: borders and images in migration narratives published in Norwegian – Johan Schimanski11 Performance of memory: testimonies of survival and rescue at Europe’s border – Karina Horsti and Ilaria TucciEpilogue: border images and narratives: paradoxes, spheres, aesthetics – Johan Schimanski and Jopi NymanIndex

This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of images and narratives in different borderscapes. Written by experienced scholars in the field, Border images, border narratives provides fresh insight into how borders, borderscapes, and migration are imagined and narrated in public and private spheres. Offering new ways to approach the political aesthetics of the border and its ambiguities, this volume makes a valuable contribution to the methodological renewal of border studies and presents ways of discussing cultural representations of borders and related processes. Influenced by the thinking of philosopher Jacques Rancière, this timely volume argues that narrated and mediated images of borders and borderscapes are central to the political process, as they contribute to the public negotiation of borders and address issues such as the in/visiblity of migrants and the formation of alternative borderscapes. The contributions analyse narratives and images in literary texts, political and popular imagery, surveillance data, border art, and documentaries, as well as problems related to borderland identities, migration, and trauma. The case studies provide a highly comparative range of geographical contexts ranging from Northern Europe and Britain, via Mediterranean and Mexican-USA borderlands, to Chinese borderlands from the perspectives of critical theory, literary studies, social anthropology, media studies, and political geography.