This book traces the practices of migration control and its contestation in the European migration regime in times of intense politicization. The collaboratively written work brings together the perspectives of state agents, NGOs, migrants with precarious legal status, and their support networks, collected through multi-sited fieldwork in eight European states: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Switzerland. The book provides knowledge of how European migration law is implemented, used, and challenged by different actors, and of how it lends and constrains power over migrants' journeys and prospects. An ethnography of law in action, the book contributes to socio-legal scholarship on migration control at the margins of the state.

Lisa Marie Borrelli is Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Bern, Switzerland.

Annika Lindberg is Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Bern, Switzerland.

Anna Wyss is Researcher at Maison d'Analyse Processus Sociaux, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

Lisa Marie Borrelli is Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Bern, Switzerland.

Annika Lindberg is Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Bern, Switzerland.

Anna Wyss is Researcher at Maison d'Analyse Processus Sociaux, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. 

Chapter 2: Inside the Migration Regime

Chapter 3: Decision-Making and the Role of Law

Chapter 4: Illegibility in the Migration Regime

Chapter 5: Time as Waste and Tactic

Chapter 6: Responsibility in a Migration Regime of Many Hands

Chapter 7: Conclusion: The Production of Order Before the Law