This deeply researched and beautifully written book turns the spotlight onto the violence faced by racialised life seekers as they encounter and traverse Alpine borderscapes and asks the important question of what these experiences tell us about and mean for European society.

Polly Pallister-Wilkins, author of Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives, University of Amsterdam

A remarkable ethnographic work, thanks to which Vergnano has closely observed how the reintroduction of systematic border controls in the very heart of Europe have transformed the Alps into a barrier. And how, at the same time, breaches of protest and surprising alliances have emerged. Vergnano questions archetypal figures such as “smugglers” and “activists” to the benefit of a “social drama” that she constructs with great brilliance. This book reads like a novel, with ethnographic vignettes that plunge the reader into an "upside down" world.

Cristina Del Biaggio, University of Grenoble Alpes

“This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand from a close range the multiple meanings of crossing borders in today’s Europe for the the various actors involved in what has unnecessarily become a matter of life and death. The book, with its uncompromising insistance on the humanity of actors, leaves the reader hopeful about the potentialities of bridging divides and unbordering societies.”

Barak Kalir, University of Amsterdam