Mexico–US, Serbia–EU Border Lives and Works is an interdisciplinary, accessible, and comprehensive study of Mexico–US and Serbia-EU border practices and policies. Our interdisciplinary, collaborative team of scholars, artists, and migration practitioners tackle crucial questions about how these borders impact people on the move, host communities, and the nations that grapple with the borders they enforce, politicize, celebrate, and mourn. Through chapters rooted in the growing fields of critical forced displacement studies and critical border studies, this edited volume considers the spaces inhabited by migrants in Mexico and Serbia, the manifestations of various forms of violence (structural and physical), the models of care implemented at these sites, the protests and activism they inspire, and forms of creativity that emerge and survive under the US and the EU border regimes.

Across the Mexico–US border, asylum seekers live in informal refugee settlements that fall outside the jurisdiction of either states or the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Separated from their families, awaiting appointments through a new app, unable to return home or move forward, these migrants often experience and witness grave human rights violations. Similarly, the borders between the Western Balkan states and the EU have become the sites of human rights violations through practices such as violent border pushbacks, forced movements along the borders, forced immobility, and indefinite detention of people on the move. Mexico and Serbia, once considered the “transit countries,” are now sites of confinement and enforced movement as the result of the United States and European Union policies. These policies and practices lead to humanitarian disasters and have a broader global impact as they contribute to the rise of far-right extremism and bigoted nationalisms. However, these same policies have resulted in new models of care, activism, and creativity. There is much to learn from a comparative study that acknowledges both the exceptional character of the United States and European Union’s influence and the similarities in their border policies.

Marina Lazetic is the director of programs at the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University and a PhD candidate at the Fletcher School, whose research focuses on civil society response to migration and securitization of borders.

Carrie J. Preston is a professor of English and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and associate director of the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University. Her current writing advocates for the field of critical forced displacement studies as a rubric for understanding art and activism in an age of global mobilities.

Muhammad H. Zaman is an HHMI professor of Biomedical Engineering and Global Health and the director of the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University. His current research focuses on health systems, barriers, and access to healthcare among forcibly displaced communities.