"While migrants face many dangers in attempting to reach Europe-from drowning to dying of dehydration on the open sea-they also confront an increasingly elaborate legal system that has sprung up between First World and Third World countries, a system designed to return migrants to their countries of origin and keep them out of Europe completely. In The Borders of Responsibility, Kiri Santer provides a thorough account of the architecture of these legal systems and how they are designed to help Europe evade legal responsibility for rescuing migrants. Focusing on legal agreements between Italy and Libya that have resulted in the systematic interception of migrants, Santer shows how Europes liberal identity is belied by legal agreements that let migrants die at sea or that send them back to dangerous, exploitative situations in a post-Gaddafi Libya or in their home countries. Through ethnographic fieldwork with migrants, lawyers, and humanitarian workers, The Borders of Responsibility shows how law is too often used as an instrument of violence against migrants, who fall outside of conventional structures of legal rights"-- Provided by publisher.