paolo novak

Entangled and Uneven Landscapes of Digitised Migration

International Migration, 2026

We are yet to fully grasp the social implications of this new regime of automated truth records. ... more We are yet to fully grasp the social implications of this new regime of automated truth records. Does it create new inequalities and/or reinforce old ones? Is it only a tool of oppression, appropriation and exclusion, or does it offer novel opportunities for resistance and solidarity? How can we critically engage with governance, while also reflecting on agency and solidarity in a digital world?

The Double Pincer of Migration: Revisiting the Migration and Development Nexus through a Spatial Lens

Colombia Internacional, 2016

The paper examines contemporary conceptualisations of the migration and development nexus, using ... more The paper examines contemporary conceptualisations of the migration and development nexus, using a spatial lens. It challenges mainstream conceptualisations based on static and bounded understandings of space and place; it incorporates Marxist and postcolonial understandings of migration and development; and it politicises the way in which this nexus can be conceptualised. The "double pincer of migration" is a metaphor that captures the "freedom" to follow capital, the "selection" performed by regulatory mechanisms that prevent such freedom from fully realising itself, and the agency of migrants treading the pincer, who, while being caught up by the structural forces shaping the double pincer, render it fluid and selectively enabling. KEYWORDS: space (Thesaurus) • migration and development nexus • geographies of development • agency (author's keywords) PALAVRAS-CHAVE: espaço (Thesaurus) • nexo entre migração e desenvolvimento geografias de desenvolvimento • agencia (palabras-chave autor) 1 Nota do tradutor: optou-se por uma tradução literal para concervar a intenção do autor com a metáfora.

Border rhythms

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Nov 24, 2017

Social Networks and Migration in Wartime Afghanistan. By Kristian Berg Harpviken

Journal of Refugee Studies, Nov 27, 2009

The main thrust of the book is the application of SNA to the study of Afghan migration over the l... more

La doble tenaza de la migración. Reconsideración del nexo entre la migración y el desarrollo a través de un lente espacial

Colombia Internacional, 2016

The paper examines contemporary conceptualisations of the migration and development nexus, using ... more The paper examines contemporary conceptualisations of the migration and development nexus, using a spatial lens. It challenges mainstream conceptualisations based on static and bounded understandings of space and place; it incorporates Marxist and postcolonial understandings of migration and development; and it politicises the way in which this nexus can be conceptualised. The "double pincer of migration" is a metaphor that captures the "freedom" to follow capital, the "selection" performed by regulatory mechanisms that prevent such freedom from fully realising itself, and the agency of migrants treading the pincer, who, while being caught up by the structural forces shaping the double pincer, render it fluid and selectively enabling. KEYWORDS: space (Thesaurus) • migration and development nexus • geographies of development • agency (author's keywords) PALAVRAS-CHAVE: espaço (Thesaurus) • nexo entre migração e desenvolvimento geografias de desenvolvimento • agencia (palabras-chave autor) 1 Nota do tradutor: optou-se por uma tradução literal para concervar a intenção do autor com a metáfora.

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Tracing connections and its politics

The chapter argues that studying places and identities as a tension yields useful research insigh... more The chapter argues that studying places and identities as a tension yields useful research insights, because it forces us to do three things. First, it forces us to think about places and identities as processes – as continuously configured and re-configured, rather than as predefined, entities. Second, it forces us to think about them as embodied, material processes. The concrete ways in which this tension pans out cannot be known in the abstract or a priori – they must be studied in concrete settings, as they play out in different historical moments, geographical contexts and in relation to different individuals or social groups. It therefore forces us, third, to think about the unequal power relations that shape these tensions, both in their global and structured as well as in their fluid, situated and embodied configurations. Borders can help us to capture both the fixed and the mobile, or, the slipperiness of units that both are and are not.

The Success of NGOs

Review of: Social Networks and Migration in Wartime Afghanistan. By Kristian Berg Harpviken. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2009

Empire, Imperialism and the Refugee

Re-producing the Humanitarian Border

Geopolitics

Refugees and Empire

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, 2021

Tracing connections and its politics

The chapter argues that studying places and identities as a tension yields useful research insigh... more The chapter argues that studying places and identities as a tension yields useful research insights, because it forces us to do three things. First, it forces us to think about places and identities as processes – as continuously configured and re-configured, rather than as predefined, entities. Second, it forces us to think about them as embodied, material processes. The concrete ways in which this tension pans out cannot be known in the abstract or a priori – they must be studied in concrete settings, as they play out in different historical moments, geographical contexts and in relation to different individuals or social groups. It therefore forces us, third, to think about the unequal power relations that shape these tensions, both in their global and structured as well as in their fluid, situated and embodied configurations. Borders can help us to capture both the fixed and the mobile, or, the slipperiness of units that both are and are not.

Imperialism, Empire and the Refugee Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

Contemporary theorisations of imperialism and empir e, in their disparate analytical approaches a... more Contemporary theorisations of imperialism and empir e, in their disparate analytical approaches and political inclinations, share a part icular concern with the figure of the refugee. This is not surprising, as histories of em pires and refugeeing are inextricably linked to each other. Emerging in its modern form at the b eginning of the 20 th century from the ashes of European empires, the modern refugee insti tution has functioned since then as a discursive and material cog for the assertion and u pholding of key principles and practices in the international sphere, and of the hierarchies as sociated to them. The refugee is and has always been deeply implicated with the disruption, establishment and consolidation of international politico-institutional orders.

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Border rhythms

Timespace and International Migration

Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee

Marx in the Field, 2020

Accountability to Whom?

Placing Borders in Development

Geopolitics, 2016

Development is inextricably related to the state-centred cartography of world spaces defined by b... more Development is inextricably related to the state-centred cartography of world spaces defined by borders, both in its historical trajectory and contemporary entanglements. Yet the multiplicity of channels and directions characterising their articulation are scarcely explored. This article contributes to this emerging field of enquiry. It delineates the essential traits of the borders and development nexus by establishing a systematic dialogue between the fields of Border Studies and Development Studies, a dialogue framed by concerns with scalar politics. More specifically, the paper places borders in development in two ways. First, it places borders in Development Studies: it identifies borders as a useful analytical vantage point that lay at the intersection between state-and non-state centred geographies of development. Second, it places Border Studies in development: focusing on the tension between borders and bordering processes, it interrogates economic growthand poverty-related policies. Three contributions to the study of development arising from placing borders in development in this way are highlighted. The paper also expands the emerging field of enquiry concerned with the relation between borders and development, by considering development policies not yet been examined through the prism of borders, and by emphasising the hierarchical and yet unpredictable nature of the borders and development articulation. At its broadest, the discussion dis-entangles the multiplicity of scales and directions in which borders, bordering and the development process intersect. It is at this scalar intersection that the force of development, and the potentials for engaging, opposing, avoiding, or subverting it, lay.

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The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration

The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, 2013

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Borders, distance, politics

Borderless Worlds for Whom?

Over the last two decades, the deployment of ever more sophisticated border management techniques... more Over the last two decades, the deployment of ever more sophisticated border management techniques for the purposes of controlling human mobility has engendered an equally sophisticated set of theorisations concerned with conceptualising the spatialites emerging out of these processes. The expansive understanding of borders deployed by such contributions has promoted a conceptualisation of borders as mobile and fluid institutions of social control, to the point that the borderless narrative of globalisation, seems to have been replaced by one that depicts borders everywhere. The chapter engages with these contributions and their critique to suggest an investigative perspective that distinguishes between borders, as lines constitutive of a state-centred cartography of world spaces, and border functions, as the place-specific and embodied manifestation and experiences of such cartography. Analytically accounting for the socio-spatial distance between these two dimensions, the chapter suggests, may offer analytical and political insights.

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Back to Borders

Critical Sociology, 2016

What is a border? Who is a migrant? The paper uses these questions to distinguish between constru... more What is a border? Who is a migrant? The paper uses these questions to distinguish between constructivist, Marxist and postcolonial answers provided by critical border scholarship, with three aims. First, identifying common concerns and interrogating divergent trajectories, the paper offers a practical invitation to dialogue between these various positions. Second, it evidences how critical border scholarship follows a social-to-spatial analytical trajectory to answer these questions: borders and migration function as a spatial confirmation of a pre-defined ontology of the social. As this is deemed unsatisfactory, third, the paper proposes turning this analytical trajectory on its head by going back to borders, i.e. by studying the spatial manifestations of borders and migration to investigate how the social is heterogeneously configured in place-specific and embodied settings. The paper argues that what is left after these debates is the need to focus on actual social hierarchies, a...

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