This chapter examines the intersection of formal and informal economies during socialism through tourist practices and the visibility of the border to people living in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. By drawing on the importance of class during the socialist period, I describe the lower- and middle-class habit of spending camping holidays in the area of Northern Greece around Paralia, Leptokaria, and Platamona. I contrast this with the current rise of the Macedonian nouveau riches who own seaside property in Greece, mainly in the area of Halkidiki, and thus become “sediments,” as for most of them it was the holidays in Greece that impelled them to make these purchases. By examining the legal changes that allowed non-EU citizens to purchase real estate, and the financial crisis in Greece that prompted many owners to sell their property to avoid the new property tax, I contrast the current neoliberal modalities of the two states with those prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s and the role of tourism in dissolving or intensifying the borders. In addition, I also focus on the child refugees who left Greece during the Greek Civil War as “human sediments” deposited all around the world, whose presence constitutes major political factor in the contemporary Greek–Macedonian.

The Conservatives had little option but to acquiesce in the Liberal Government’s policies but this changed with the outbreak of war. War demanded both the management of production and mass political consent, and this new politics forced Conservatives to consider, first, the current and future role of the unions in governance and, second, the party’s institutional relationship with the organised working class. In this period the party attempted to develop a Conservative trade union organisation to appeal directly to the organised working class. This organisation failed to prosper. Conservatives had to accept a growing union involvement in public policy, and although this role would decline with peace, Conservatives accepted that unions had a legitimate consultative and representative role in making public policy. Industrial militancy, with its political implications, and the by now traditional Conservative critique of the unions were strongly opposed, and there was a growing demand from within the party for dramatic measures designed to reduce union power.

This concluding chapter argues for a critical race theory in labour market inequality. Racial stratification is a default position ascribed to all citizens, old and new. The way it operates today means that racism will continue to be a permanent fixture in our society unless we deliberately reveal whiteness and white supremacy for what they are: invisible markers and silent affirmative action for Whites. This chapter discusses the limitations of current methods of addressing disparity in outcomes in labour markets across Europe and outlines the benefits, strengths and weaknesses of a CRT approach. It contends that for a deracialised, non-racist analysis and understanding of the labour market, three core elements of CRT become vital: the centrality of race, race consciousness and the voice of colour through counterstorytelling. This chapter reminds readers that racial inequality is not about where people end up but about where they start.

In order to introduce a CRT perspective to how we look at and talk about racism in Ireland, this chapter examines the symbolic use of colour in emphasising the perceived difference of racialised Irish people in their diaspora settings. It also discusses how whiteness has historically been mobilised to centralise Irish interests both at home and abroad, altering their positioning from colonised to coloniser. The cartography of the top tiers of the Irish labour market presents us with a false picture of a monocultural Ireland. This is in contradiction to census data which demonstrate the presence of newcomers within its borders, including Ireland’s ethnic minorities – the Irish Travellers. A key argument in the chapter is that rather than racism between White bodies invalidating skin colour as a locus of understanding racism, deviation from Eurocentric norms was employed to darken actors and influence the symbolic colour of the perceived difference ascribed to racialised Irish people on both sides of the Atlantic. While Ireland has been a welcoming state, this chapter discusses inconsistencies through its relationship with the Irish Travellers – the Irish racial other – and Ireland’s relationship with its migrant population from the early 1900s to the present.

This chapter examines the effects of the construction in 1871 of the Thessaloniki–Mitrovica railway line that connected the Ottoman towns of Thessaloniki, Gevgelija, Veles, Skopje, Mitrovica, and, later on, Niš and Belgrade. This railway line played a crucial role in the connection and mobility of people, military equipment, food, and other commodities. This vuggy or elongated porosity was the main factor facilitating the modernization of this area, which continued to generate subsequent concentric or moldic porosities with the opening of further railway lines. The analysis begins with the construction and the completion of this main line. Its history tells a story of the last decades of Ottoman rule, as well as the final defeat of the Ottomans during World War One. The socialist period also enabled strong porosity by linking Yugoslavia with Athens to the south, and northwards with Munich and points further to the north, putting Gevgelija and its train station on the map for many travelers. With the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the train services became, at best, less reliable, but were nonetheless crucial for the transfer of migrants in 2015-16. The current disruption of the train service between Thessaloniki–Gevgelija, where passengers cross the border by bus, is the first instance since the line’s opening in 1879 of services not being open to people on both sides of the border.

This chapter focuses on how labour migration to the Gulf contributed to processes of inter-state cooperation across the Middle East. Egyptian migration diplomacy targeted its unskilled and low-skilled labour and focused on ensuring bilateral coordination with Arab host-states that, in turn, led to inter-state cooperation. Egypt coordinated its emigration policy as per host-states’ needs and political sensitivities: it realised Arab oil-producing states’ labour demands, and institutionalised unrestricted short-term, or temporary, emigration across the region; the ruling regime also understood these states’ reticence to politicised migrants, and it discursively linked this form of migration to its repudiation of Nasser and his regional foreign policy, within the context of ‘de-Nasserisation’. Similarly, Arab host-states coordinated their policies to Egypt’s needs and political sensitivities: seeing an opportunity for massive numbers of unskilled and low-skilled migrant workers from Egypt, they prioritised their recruitment over other nationalities; second, they acknowledged the Egyptian regime’s desire to ‘save face’ in terms of Egypt’s deteriorating economic condition, and framed their recruitment of Egyptians as compensation for the Egyptian state’s shouldering the burden of Arab–Israeli conflict. By the end of the 1970s, short-term migration of Egyptians had resulted in inter-state cooperation in other policy fields.

Being a sibling can have a profound effect on our identity and sense of self, and this chapter explores how sibling relationships can influence our sense of who we are and what we can become in the future. This chapter begins with an extended discussion of two sisters, unpacking narratives of similarity and difference in their relationship, demonstrating how these processes shape the sisters’ ideas about the people they are, their understandings of their experiences of school and their sense of their future. The remainder of the chapter discusses some of the key themes involved in the relationship between siblings and the self, outlining how sibling identity is relationally constructed through a discussion of the comparing of siblings and the application of relational labels concerning character and appearance. A paradox between the relational construction of sibling identity and Western ideals of authentic personhood is identified. The chapter then moves on to discuss the role of others in the relational construction of sibling identity through an exploration of how they are shaped through the telling of family stories. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how identity can be informed by a sibling’s reputation in and between different contexts such as school, home or community.

How do migrants and people of migrant descent move between the different segments of the labour market? This is the main focus of chapter 6, which uses micro-level analyses of everyday experiences to reveal how migrants change their place on the labour supply chain. The chapter presents interest convergence, social capital and equal opportunity as three vehicles with which migrants negotiate their way through racially stratified societies. The way the labour market experiences of migrants align to any of these concepts has long-term implications for everyone, including the creation of racialised ghettos and tripartite segmentation in the labour market. Intersecting vulnerabilities including gender and age that foster (inter-)intra-group layering also form part of the chapter.

Chapter 5 critically interrogates the notion of Europe as a community of values, to argue that the EU is unable to address its colonial history and postcolonial present. Despite projecting an image of itself as a place of human rights and humanitarianism for people seeking peace and safety, people arriving to the EU often experience sub-standard living conditions, a lack of information on asylum and reception procedures, long periods of uncertainty due to opaque bureaucratic systems, and delays and administrative hurdles to family reunification. These serve as a continuation of the racialised forms of violence and precarious conditions that people experience during their fluid and fragmented journeys. Despite anticipating better treatment, people on the move pose far-reaching political questions and demands to the EU on the basis of their lived experiences. As such, the migratory testimonies from our counter-archive throw into sharp relief the question of Europe itself, which is inseparably linked to how the EU relates to its ‘others’.

Despite the 1926 General Strike the party under Stanley Baldwin maintained and expanded the Government’s relationship with the unions. Baldwin’s amplification of One Nation politics and endorsement of voluntarism necessitated holding Conservative hostility to the unions in check. Conservatives were in government for most of the inter-war period, during which the unions’ reputation shifted from a quasi-revolutionary threat to a bulwark of the status quo. A long-term effect of the General Strike was to confirm the growing relationship between the State and the TUC, and reinforced the party leadership’s determination to keep ‘politics’ out of industrial relations. Rearmament after 1934 put a strain on this relationship, as the TUC sought to expand its role, whilst the Chamberlain Government sought to limit its influence in order to avoid a political threat to the status quo.

This chapter situates the book within the wider academic literature on African football migration. It focuses on the schism between studies that have emphasised macro-level determinants and those that have foregrounded the experiences and subjectivities of migrating, or aspirant, African players. The purpose of unpacking this schism is to illustrate that a comprehensive explanation of transnational African football migration, in all its temporal phases and scalar complexity, requires an interdisciplinary analytical framework. The second half of the chapter outlines such a framework. It introduces how the book conceptualises the lived experiences and subjectivities of African youth and adults as they seek to produce and sustain transnational mobility through football. Crucially, the approach adopted accommodates a macro-level perspective of forces within and beyond the football industry that impact players’ migratory projects, while also offering critical insights on how these projects are shaped by the micro-level agency of players, and more localised social, economic and cultural dynamics.

The chapter highlights the pernicious use of race as a means of categorisation to determine access to scarce and desired resources. The way whiteness selectively privileges groups is discussed. The chapter introduces readers to the everyday performance of white supremacy as the underlying structure of white privilege. In this regard, whiteness is counterposed as privilege against whiteness as dominance as the locus of understanding the effect of whiteness and the resulting marginalisation and subjugation of Blacks and non-Whites. The chapter ends by defining some key terms for understanding racial stratification.

Chapter 6 considers how the testimonies of people on the move represent a critique of the EU’s role in producing the drivers and conditions of flight across various sites and along diverse migratory routes. The chapter documents a range of claims to justice that emerge from our counter-archive, before focusing on two key ways in which the testimonies challenge the EU as complicit in the injustices driving migration. First, it identifies a series of demands that point to the EU’s implication in wars and conflicts that drive migration and, second, it identifies a series of demands that point to the limits of the EU’s focus on development aid. The chapter shows how migratory acts of desertion challenge securitising narratives of crisis, while decolonising migratory acts challenge humanitarian narratives of crisis. The chapter argues that these acts form part of a broader collective movement for peace and equality against the injustices of Europe’s ‘postcolonial present’ – a movement that opens up opportunities for the revival of theoretical imaginations through the reclaiming of migration by people on the move.

The conclusion revisits theory and the possibilities offered by porosity both as a conceptual and an analytical tool, as well as its relevance for the contemporary Balkan realities around and within the border regions.