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paolo novak

@terminalias.bsky.social

190 followers 270 following 55 posts

borders, migration, development sottovoce

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paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · 13h

This discussion is part of the Global Teach In/out events organised by Migration_Scholars_Global_Network

📍Birkbeck Cinema 43 Gordon Square London
📆11 November 1pm

Join us!

and join the network
www.instagram.com/migration_sc...
www.facebook.com/profile.php?...
@migrationscholars.bsky.social

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · 14d

📌Return - a two-day workshop exploring the concept and practices of return

📅 Day 1: 17 October 2025, 5:30 pm, DLT, SOAS
📅 Day 2: 18 October 2025, 1:00–5:00 pm, SOAS Bar

info and registration
➡️https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/return-workshop-idea-practice-and-contested-horizon

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Aug 28

The asylum accommodation “ problem” is about how the state organises inequality.

Hotels, barracks, flats – all are political battlegrounds where the wider inequalities in our society are exposed.

www.soas.ac.uk/about/blogs/...

Five lessons the UK can learn from Italy’s asylum accommodation crisis

Asylum accommodation is a political battleground: drawing on his research in Italy, Dr Paolo Novak shows how the UK’s case reveals that it is never just about housing, but about power, inequality, and...

Reposted by paolo novak

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · Jul 5

"The Nazis... imagined their targets would self-deport. Once the myth of self-deportation collapsed, they turned to more punitive measures. On Tuesday, Noem similarly noted the Everglades camp was meant to frighten immigrants into self-deporting. 'If you don’t,' she said, 'you may end up here.'"

Opinion | Don’t call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Call it a concentration camp.

This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jul 5

Milano, hai bisogno del Leoncavallo

effimera.org/in-difesa-de...

In difesa del Leoncavallo - Effimera

Il Leoncavallo è sotto sfratto. Dopo oltre trent’anni, uno degli spazi sociali più importanti d’Italia rischia di scomparire per sempre. Ti ricordi quanti ricordi abbiamo […]

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jul 3

That's precisely what border management does. Securing borders doesn't mean being 'anti-immigration.' It means anti-specific-forms-of-. It's about distinguishing between desirable and undesirable types of circulation

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 30

Aggressive publishers-driven marketing
youtu.be/230--PLGo8o?...

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure

YouTube video by Bristol University Press

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

We know that the border crisis isn’t about migration—it’s about the re-production of racialised exploitation, dispossession and hierarchy. The book investigates how this process is granularly produced and constructed in place, and why this is important. #worldmaking #placemaking

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

Ch 6 "The postcoloniality of asylum infrastructure," concludes that chronicling the border crisis demands embracing empirical unevenness, ontological instability, and conceptual ambiguity. It calls for a postcolonial gaze that provincializes, destabilizes, and places concepts.

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

Ch 5, "Placing autonomy" revisits the autonomy of migration debate from the standpoint of place, showing how the thrown-togetherness of migrants/non-migrants unevenly constructs asylum infrastructure. #AutonomyOfMigration #Migrants #Embodiment #Borders

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

Ch 4, "Destabilising coloniality" interrogates coloniality literature from the standpoint of place and illustrates the multiple "afterlives" haunting asylum seekers' reception facilities. The coloniality of asylum is a content-form #deco #PostcolonialStudies #Asylum #Place

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

Ch 3, "Provincializing logistics" interrogates critical logistics literature from the standpoint of place, and explains why logistical operations are lively, uneven, and unstable #Logistics #EUBorders #Place

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

Ch2 "The place of asylum infrastructure" formalizes the book's "standpoint of place" articulating Marxist and decolonial geographies via #GillianHart #MiltonSantos and #DoreenMassey. It proposes an ontologically unstable approach to studying borders and their crisis.

#SpacePlace

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

Ch 1 "Buildings as protagonists" argues that buildings aren't passive backdrops but places that "communicate" complex social and political relations. They serve as crucial analytical standpoints for mapping the border and its crisis. #Architecture #SocialGeography

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

Introduction: the book's main aim is to offer an understanding of the EU border machine centred on the deeply situated cartographies that explain its emergence, entrenchment and transformations, in and across “places”, and to foreground the unevenness of these processes

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

read the introduction @SOAS research repository soas-repository.worktribe.com/output/436575

buy the ebook for £18 @googlebooks or through @BrisUniPress if you subscribe to their newsletter

ask your library to buy the expensive hardback @SOASLibrary

wait for the paperback, out next year

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 ethn...

soas-repository.worktribe.com

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

This terrain isn’t about countermapping or transcendence—it's about contesting the worldmaking nature of borders from within -through embodied, situated, and relational struggles by migrants and non-migrants alike. This is the worldmaking force of placemaking practices.

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

the standpoint of place dis-entangles the place-transforming nature of worldmaking processes and the worldmaking nature of placemaking practices.

it delineates the terrain where border politics unfolds

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

The book conceptualises the EU border machine through a double dialectic—what it calls the "standpoint of place". Throughout its chapters, border crossing and border reinforcement processes are articulated with processes of production and construction of place. #borderstudies

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 18

0ut today!

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure is a carto-ethnography of the EU border machine told through the buildings that house it.

@SOASDevelopment @soasdevtrac @SOAS_CMDS

bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/buildings-of...

a thread🧵

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure; This book examines the buildings used as reception centres for asylum seekers in central Italy to reveal how they reflect the Euro...

bristoluniversitypress.co.uk

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 6

Dont miss Gilbert achcar's new book

saqibooks.com/books/saqi/t...

Reposted by paolo novak

Harsha Walia @harshawalia.bsky.social · Jun 4

Drone spotted above the Madleen is believed to be Israeli Heron drone, operated by Greek coast guard. EU / Frontex pioneered maritime surveillance for targeting migrants, with multi-billion dollar contracts going to Israeli manufacturers. Fortress Europe & Zionist genocide are reinforcing violences.

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · Jun 4

"The forum moves beyond documenting destruction to consider how infrastructure is both a tool of domination and a terrain of struggle. it highlights how Palestinians resist infrastructural warfare and how international solidarity movements can intervene in the systems that enable it."
👇👌

rafeefz.bsky.social @rafeefz.bsky.social · Jun 4

New forum in Geopolitics: Disruptive Geographies and the War on Gaza
How is infrastructure weaponised in Israel's settler colonial warfare and how is it being disrupted by transnational solidarity? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Disruptive Geographies and the War on Gaza: Infrastructure and Global Solidarity

This forum explores the geopolitics of infrastructure in the context of Israel’s war on Gaza, situating the current genocide within longer histories of settler colonialism, spatial control, and tra...

www.tandfonline.com

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · May 25

I have been #nicotine_sober for 44 days and approximately 8 hours and 40 minutes, after roughly 40 years of joyful and committed addiction.

Amongst many other contrasting feelings, I feel really sorry for those #academic colleagues whose contributions I have had to #peerreview in this period.

paolo novak @terminalias.bsky.social · May 22

out in one month

ebook at £27.99 or 21quid if you subscribe to the @BrisUniPress mailing list.

info and marketing to follow

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/buildings-of...

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure

Buildings of Refuge and the Postcoloniality of Asylum Infrastructure; This book examines the buildings used as reception centres for asylum seekers in central Italy to reveal how they reflect the Euro...

bristoluniversitypress.co.uk