Everyday borders in Calais: The globally intimate injustices of segregation

This article offers an account of the ‘globally intimate’ injustices of everyday borders in Calais, showing how a racialised geopolitics of global borders is embodied locally through everyday practices of segregation. The intimate everyday embodiment of this segregation is crucial to the creation of a hostile environment for people racially identified as ‘irregular’ and underlies the border’s power of division and world-making. Yet also, in the everyday lives of those struggling with and against this segregation, we find powerful political opposition to the border’s injustices embodied in intimate ways. This article argues that a ‘globally intimate’ lens provides important insights into the racialised violence required to maintain geopolitical borders while at the same time revealing borders as sites of political contestation.