Even as economic and military walls have come down in the post-Cold War era, states have rapidly built new barriers to prevent a perceived invasion of undesirables. Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than along the geographic fault lines dividing rich from poor countries: especially the southern border of the United States, and the southern and eastern borders of the European Union. This volume examines the practice, politics, and consequences of building these new walls in North America and Europe. At the same time, it challenges dominant accounts of globalization, in which state borders will be irrelevant to the human experience.

Maria-Elena Alcaraz, a career member of the Mexican Foreign Service, represents the secretariat of external affairs at the Office of Migration Affairs at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, D.C. Malcolm Anderson (M.A., D. Phil, D. Litt, University of Oxford) was formerly professor of politics and director of the International Social Sciences Institute of the University of Edinburgh Peter Andreas (B.A., Swarthmore College; Ph.D., Cornell University) is assistant professor of political science at Reed College Roland Freudenstein (M.A., University of Bonn; special student at the University of Southern California) is the director of the Warsaw Office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Virginie Guiraudon is chargee de recherche at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France Leszek Jesien (M.A., Ph.D., Warsaw University) is an advisor to both the prime minister of Poland and the chief negotiator of Poland's accession to the European Union Rey Koslowski (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University--Newark Gallya Lahav is assistant professor of political science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook Christopher Mitchell (B.A., Ph.D., Harvard University) is professor of politics and director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University Gustavo Mohar is currently minister for political and congressional affairs at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, D.C. Joseph Nevins (Ph.D., University of California--Los Angeles), a geographer, is a Rockefeller Foundation Residential "Community in Contention" postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley Timothy Snyder (B.A., Brown University; D. Phil., University of Oxford), a historian, is presently an academy scholar at Harvard University, and will shortly take up an assistant professorship at the University of Virginia David Spener (Ph.D., University of Texas--Austin) is assistant professor of sociology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas John Torpey (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) currently teaches in the departments of sociology and history and the Institute for European Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Milada Anna Vachudova (B.A., Stanford University; M. Phil., D. Phil., University of Oxford), a political scientist, is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy