Disorderly Borders: How International Law Shapes Irregular Migration

by Chantal Thomas

Immigration crises faced by the United States today show the interplay between areas of global law and policy that might at first glance seem quite disparate--economic law, human rights and refugee law, and criminal law relating to the trafficking and smuggling of migrants. This book is largely dedicated to unpacking those dynamics and ultimately argues that reform efforts must be expanded.

Using as a central case study how international law relates to the irregular labor migration of undocumented migrant farm workers in upstate New York, this book examines the conditions for entry of these workers, for their residence and work while in the US, and finally what happens if they are apprehended and subject to expulsion. The author aims to show that the presence of these migrants can be significantly attributed to dynamics flowing from international economic law, and that the interaction of international economic law with international human rights, refugee, labor and criminal law in defining their legal rights and remedies is often incoherent. As such, this wave of irregular migration might be seen as the product of a "perfect storm" in international law: a vexed and unstable relationship between disparate regimes that propels dynamic population movements without just and orderly means of protection.

368 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication August 28, 2042

About the author

Chantal Thomas (born 1945 in Lyon) is a French writer and historian. Her 2002 book, Farewell, My Queen, won the Prix Femina and was adapted into a 2012 film starring Diane Kruger and Léa Seydoux.

Thomas was born in Lyon in 1945, and was raised in Arcachon, Bordeaux, and Paris. Her life has included teaching jobs at American and French universities (such as Yale and Princeton) as well as a publishing career. She has published nineteen works, including essays on the Marquis de Sade, Casanova, and Marie Antoinette.

In 2002, Thomas published Les adieux à la reine (Farewell, My Queen). The novel gave a fictional account of the final days of Marie Antoinette in power through the perspective of one of her servants. It won the Prix Femina in 2002, and was later adapted into the 2012 film Farewell, My Queen. The film stars Diane Kruger as the titular queen and Léa Seydoux as her servant Sidonie Laborde. Thomas co-wrote the screenplay,and it opened the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival. Helen Falconer of The Guardian called the work "a well written slice of history" with "evocative, observant prose," but criticized it for creating a narrator who "merely provides us with a pair of eyes to see through rather than capturing our interest in her own right." While disagreeing in its classification as a novel, Falconer did however add that Farewell, My Queen "generates in the reader a real sense of being a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on the affairs of the great and the not so good."

Thomas is currently the director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

(from Wikipedia)