The University of New South Wales Press offers a selection of content on immigration and migration, part of the Association of University Presses’ collection of targeted readings. Image: UNSW Press
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
University Presses Share Their Targeted Resources
From time to time, the Association of University Presses asks its member-publishers to contribute some of their most signal work. This is a way the organization can take advantage of what makes it unique as an association of international university presses that publish on some of the most difficult and vexing issues of the day.
In offering a collection of Essential Reading on Immigration, the association’s administration writes, “The movement of people from one place of residence to another is as old as humankind itself. So how and why does human migration collide with geopolitics periodically, resulting in the demonization of human beings who have chosen to migrate or been forced to flee?
“Association of University Presses members around the world have long published scholarly works that contribute to understanding even the most complex systems and contentious current events.”
As a news medium focused on international publishing, we’ll focus on highlight several of the resources being made available to you here, but there are a total 38 university presses offering books, border studies, journal articles, “books to read with the news”—that one warms a journalist’s heart—migration studies, and much more.
The collection is here. In it you’ll find the resources offered by each participating university press, followed by a listing of individual works.
Some Highlights To Consider
Descriptive copy, as indicated, is quoted from text provided by each press.
American University in Cairo Press
Making Routes: Mobility and the Politics of Migration in the Global South
“Making Routes: Mobility and Politics of Migrant in the Global South provides fresh understandings of mobility flows, transnational linkages, and the politics of migration across the Global South, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Moving away from North–South, East–West binaries and challenging the conception that migratory movements are primarily unidirectional—from South to North—it explores how state policies, migrants’ trajectories, nationalism and discrimination, and art and knowledge production unfold in places as widespread as Egypt, Turkey, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Haiti.
“Seventeen academics, activists, and artists from a range of backgrounds and disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, and international relations reveal the diverse narratives, migration patterns, forms of agency, and laws that make up the complex reality of South–South migration, offering vital new pathways for research in migration studies today.”
Leuven University Press
Comunidad, pertenencia, extranjería: El impacto de la migración laboral y mercantil de la región del Mar del Norte en Nueva España, 1550-1640
(Community, Belonging, Foreignness: The Impact of Labor and Trade Migration From the North Sea Region to New Spain, 1550-1640)
“Comunidad, pertenencia, extranjería reveals the central role played by labor and mercantile migration from the North Sea region in the Viceroyalty of New Spain during a critical period in the formation of colonial societies.
“Far from being a marginal migration, as has been believed until now, the presence of northern migrants was strategic for the expansion and maintenance of the Hispanic monarchy due to their contribution of labor, technological knowledge, commercial networks, and transnational capital.
“From the cross-sectional analysis of the impact of this migration on the society, politics, and economy of New Spain, this work shows how it is impossible to tell the story of the Spanish empire without taking into account the role that non-Spanish Europeans played in its formation and evolution.”
McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal: World Refugee Day 2025
The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees agency’s World Refugee Day honors those who have been displaced from their countries because of conflict or persecution. Forced migration is a local, regional, national, and international challenge with profound political and social implications.
Hearts of Freedom: Stories of Southeast Asian Refugees
“First-hand accounts of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees who settled in Canada, contributing to the well-being and strength of their new country.
“Between 1975 and 1997 some 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians fled atrocities in their home countries, with more than 210,000 resettling in Canada. While this history is partly known to some Canadians, little has been written about it, especially from the perspectives of the refugees themselves.
“Hearts of Freedom is a rich oral history based on interviews with 145 former refugees, sharing deeply moving accounts of oppression, concentration camps, genocide, and perilous escapes over land and sea. Survivors reflect on their first impressions of Canada – the unfamiliar snow and cold, the unexpected kindness of neighbors, and occasional encounters with racism. Through their experiences, we come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Canada’s refugee programs. These stories reveal how refugees’ attachment to Canada grew over the years and how multiculturalism policies facilitated that.
The University of Alberta Press
The Elephant Has Two Sets of Teeth: Bhutanese Refugees and Humanitarian Governance
“This ethnography follows Bhutanese refugees who fled Bhutan, resided in camps in Nepal, and finally settled in the vastly different culture of Australia.
“Along the way, they learn the ways that humanitarian compassion is used to oppress, contain, and erode human rights. They also learn, however, that this charitable framework has small cracks that allow for action. The Bhutanese find ways to move between the contradictory expectations of refugee-ness as they strive to become citizens.
“Their experiences illustrate the complex strands of power that intertwine to limit the scope of people who “deserve compassion.” Neikirk also describes how responses to refugee crises have shifted from facilitating the movement of people to enforcing their containment. Readers in refugee studies, anthropology, and development studies will be interested in this rich transnational study.”
Again, see the full list of participating universities and content here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Association of University Presses is here; more on issues in immigration is here, more on politics and literature is here, and more on academic and scholarly publishing is here.