Deporting Europeans

Rigorously argued and elegantly written, Deporting Europeans: The Racialized Mobility of Europeans in France provides crucial insight to the inner functioning of the bilateral relationship between France and Romania with regard to mobility and citizenship. Ioana Vrabiescu’s examination of the role of policing under new parameters of global mobility weaves together historical depth, compelling personal reflection, and rich empirical data. The analysis deftly reveals how the re-articulation of borders in tandem with racialized policing practices towards ‘undesirable non-Europeans’ reinforces state sovereignty through the deportation regime. This field-enriching book forces us to question the enabling aspects of unequal power relations between EU member states and the consequences of these hierarchies for migrant people. -- Alpa Parmar, University of Oxford
Deporting Europeans offers a superbly original, sophisticated, and detailed analysis of the politics of migration and mobility within the European Union today. Drawing on multi-sited, holistic fieldwork in France and Romania, it explores the contradictory logics between macro-level freedom of movement and national and local bureaucratic practices of deportation. Ioana Vrabiescu reveals the enduring existence of a violently neo-colonial regime of graduated sovereignty within the EU that fundamentally shapes its migratory and border regimes in ways that go far beyond simplistic, mainstream ideas about 'Fortress Europe'. As such, this book is an extremely timely and hugely important intervention that will undoubtedly have a major influence on academic and policy debates for years to come. -- Dennis Rodgers, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland
This superb study shows how police collaboration between Romania and France has led to the normalization of widespread, illegitimate deportations of racialized EU citizens. Based on meticulous fieldwork, Vrabiescu explains how two EU states have managed to sideline international legal frameworks by conducting extra-legal practices of expulsion and exclusion. Deporting Europeans significantly renews our understanding of state sovereignty under bilateral conditions. -- Huub van Baar, University of Giessen and University of Amsterdam