Policy Press

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure

By Paolo Novak

Published

Jun 18, 2025

Page count

192 pages

Browse the series

Global Migration and Social Change

ISBN

978-1529234206

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Jun 18, 2025

Page count

192 pages

Browse the series

Global Migration and Social Change

ISBN

978-1529234220

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press
Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure

This book offers a fresh perspective on the European migration crisis, chronicling its everyday realities in a central Italian province. Through vivid ethnographic accounts, it reveals how the forces and relations animating this crisis are reproduced and transformed in the rooms of ordinary buildings converted into shelters for asylum seekers.

Drawing on postcolonial and feminist approaches, the author explores the intersection of global and local histories, migrant stories and bordering processes, providing a timely lens for understanding migration today.

This is an invaluable contribution to debates on EU borders, including their logistical management, their coloniality and the autonomous force of migration that subverts them.

Paolo Novak is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies and Co-Director of Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies at SOAS University of London.

Introduction

1. Buildings as Protagonists

2. The Place of Asylum Infrastructure

3. Provincializing Logistics

4. Destabilising Coloniality

5. Placing Autonomy

6. The Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure