Vicki Squire, Making and Unmaking Global Citizenship: Lived Experiences of Precarious Migration – Edinburgh University Press, December 2025

Studies how the claims of people with lived experiences of precarity and displacement refuse, disrupt and enact various alternatives to violent bordering practices

• Introduces ‘global citizenship in the making’ as a framework for the analysis of migratory claims
• Evaluates different interpretations of the politics of precarious migration, including coloniality, racial capitalism, abolition and global citizenship
• Develops a novel account of claims as implicit as well as explicit, and as indirect as well as direct
• Draws on research across multiple contexts conducted over two decades, including the Mediterranean, the Mexico-US border region, sub-Saharan Africa and the UK

How do lived experiences of precarious migration generate claims to rights, belonging and accountability? To what extent does global citizenship in the making provide an analytical framework that helps to make sense of such claims? And in what ways do claims in situations of precarity trouble conventional ideas of citizenship and ‘the international’? This book draws on research conducted over two decades with people experiencing the violence of contemporary governing practices first-hand. Based on case studies including the Mediterranean, the Mexico-US border region, sub-Saharan Africa and the UK, it charts a multiplicity of ways through which claims are enacted in situations of precarity. The book highlights the potential and the limits of global citizenship in the making. Vicki Squire concludes that theories of coloniality, racial capitalism and abolition provide critical insights for a migrant-oriented perspective on the politics of precarious migration.