Intimacy and Mobility in an Era of Hardening Borders : Gender, Reproduction, Regulation

Based on vivid and illuminating ethnographic research from both east and west Europe, this book investigates the relationship between geopolitical and physical borders and ideological, classificatory boundaries, highlighting bordering process, and showing how the two often operate in tandem in the regulation of reproduction, care and intimacy. -- .

This book is a collection of articles by anthropologists and social scientists concerned with gendered labour, care, intimacy and sexuality, in relation to mobility and the hardening of borders in Europe. Interrogating the relation between physical, geopolitical borders and ideological, conceptual boundaries, it offers a range of vivid and original ethnographic case studies that will capture the imagination of anyone interested in gendered migration, policies of inclusion and exclusion, and regulation of reproduction and intimacy. The book presents ethnographic and phenomenological discussions of people’s changing lives as they cross borders, how people transgress and reshape moral boundaries of proper gender and kinship behaviour, and moral economies of intimacy and sexuality. It also focuses on migrants’ navigation of social and financial services in their destination countries, putting questions about rights and limitations on citizenship at the core. -- .