Bridging Fluid Borders: Entanglements in the French-Brazilian Borderland

"Interweaving rich ethnographic descriptions with an innovative theoretical approach, this book explores and unsettles conventional maps and understandings of Europe and the Americas. Through an examination of the recently inaugurated cross-border bridge between France's overseas department of French Guiana and Brazil's northern state of Amapá, which effectively acts as a one-way-street and serves to perpetuate inequalities in a historically deeply entangled region, it foregrounds the ways in which borderland inhabitants such indigenous women, illegalized migrants and local politicians deal with these inequalities and the increasingly closed Amazonian border in everyday life. A study that challenges the coloniality of memory, this volume shows how the borderland along and across the Oyapock River, far from being the hinterland of France and Brazil, in fact illuminates entangled histories and their concomitant inequalities on a large scale. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and border studies with interests in postcolonialism, memory and inequality"--

Cover Page -- Half Title Page -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents Page -- List of figures Page -- Acknowledgements Page -- Beginnings -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Entangled spaces -- 3 Cross-border histories -- 4 Bridging borders -- 5 Intersecting demarcations -- 6 Global migrations -- 7 Conclusions -- Methodological reflections -- Bibliography -- Index.