Border Heritage

Border Heritage is a masterful book that engages in a debate with methodological nationalism. It takes the city of Trieste as an entry point to think in grounded and at the same time comparative terms about migration, border regimes and memories of displacement. It compellingly brings together first-hand empirical research, historical inquiry and intellectual critique.

This study embodies state-of-the art thinking on forced migration, refugees, and borderlands. In her timely and poignant ethnography, Altin traces out the multiple displacements and migrations that have shaped the port city of Trieste and its surrounding region in the modern era. Altin powerfully demonstrates the value and, indeed, the necessity of historicizing Europe's contemporary migration "crises." In doing so, she demonstrates how today's migrants travel paths and inhabit spaces traversed by previous generations on the move. Drawing upon her own childhood experiences in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Trieste, Altin courageously rejects a predominant narrative that disavows identification with today's migrants and that casts them as different and "undeserving" from the European displaced persons generated by the conflicts of the 20th century. With a bold new vision for conceiving of a "border heritage" comprised by migrations and crossings, this study provides a way forward for scholars, policymakers and humanitarian organizations alike. Avoiding the impasses of an abstract humanitarianism that rests on compassion but ultimately denies its recipients both dignity and agency, Altin's proposal for "memory-as-process" in this quintessential European borderland offers indispensable and broader lessons for establishing common ground.