Deporting Europeans: The Racialized Mobility of Romanians in France

(Hardback)

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In Deporting Europeans, Ioana Vrbiescu examines how states within the European Union (EU) collaborate in the policing and deportation of EU citizens within EU territory. Vrbiescu argues that the deportation of EU citizens reifies existing inequalities between central states, like France, and peripheral states, like Romania. By highlighting the massive deportation of Romanians from France, Vrbiescu showcases these inequalities and the intricacies of EU geopolitics.

Reviews

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 Vrbiescu 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

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 Vrbiescu'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

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, Vrbiescu 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

Author Bio

Ioana Vrbiescu is postdoctoral researcher at University of Amsterdam.