Book cover for Migrating Borders and Citizenship in Law

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Copyright: © Devyani Prabhat 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.63674/nkvo5059

Number of pages: 288

Publication date: 19 March 2026

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Migrating Borders and Citizenship in Law

Scales, Locales, Themes and Practices

Devyani Prabhat (Author)

Series: Reimagining Law and Justice

Published in association with: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Open Access publication funded by Jisc Open Access Community Framework

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Borders not only demarcate nations and territories, but transform people into migrants. Hand-in-hand with law and law enforcement, borders create residents and foreigners. The law ascertains who crosses borders and who does not, and who remains foreign despite being within national borders.

Migrating Borders and Citizenship in Law argues that law has multiple roles and mechanisms for breathing life into borders, operating at different locales and scales (from worldwide to the nation; from the family to the workplace), and through different practices, for example, preventing entry or withholding access to resources. It examines case law, legislation and press accounts relating to several key events in recent times that have changed the legal landscape on migration control, such as the Immigration and Nationality Acts in the UK, the end of empire, the arrival of Empire Windrush, Brexit, Covid and the case of Shamima Begum. Focusing on race and ethnicity, gender and class, as well as crime and control, the book contextualises the legal debates around these historical and political developments, the question of who belongs, the consequences of behaviour for immigration status and citizenship, and the links with conduct and national security.

With its wide interdisciplinary framing of the law, drawing from sociology, politics, philosophy and history, this groundbreaking book will appeal to all readers with broad interests in migration studies.

Devyani Prabhat, inspired by her grandmother’s and mother’s migration experiences, brings together the many ways the law sorts people into those who belong and those who don’t, both across and within states. From its imperial origins to present-day immigration controls, she also shows how ‘bordering’, broadly understood, invades homes, workplaces and neighborhoods. A deeply impressive study.

— Steven Lukes, Professor Emeritus, New York University, USA

Introduction
Part I Scales and locales of migrating borders
1 Bordering empire
2 Empire into nation state: bringing home the colonial hostile environment
3 Bordering a continent and a country: EU and the UK
Part II Themes and practices of migrating borders
4 Bordering the workplace
5 Bordering families
6 Bordering globally: emergencies of health and security
Conclusion

PDF: 9781911507505

EPUB: 9781911507512

Read Online: 9781911507673

Hardback: 9781911507482 / 288 pages / 240mm x 160mm

Paperback: 9781911507499 / 288 pages / 234mm x 156mm

Devyani Prabhat (Author)

Devyani Prabhat is Professor of Law at University of Bristol Law School, UK, with legal practice experience in Constitutional law. She has a LLM and a PhD from New York University & is an enrolled Attorney at Law, NY. She researches and teaches Migration, Citizenship and Nationality from a socio-legal and comparative perspective. She is also an Associate Director of Border Criminologies, Oxford Law Faculty.

— Steven Lukes, Professor Emeritus, New York University, USA

Subject: History, Law, Social and Cultural History

BISAC codes: LAW032000, SOC007000, SOC066000

Thema codes: JBFG, JBFH, LBBJ, LNDA, LNDC

Keywords: Brexit, Covid, Immigration and Nationality Act, Shamima Begum, Windrush, asylum seekers, bordering, crime, empire, ethnicity, free movement, gender, migration studies, race

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