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Gregory Feldman, The Migration Apparatus: Security, Labor, and Policymaking 
in the European Union
Stanford University Press, 2012, pp. 224
At a time in which the European Union is fortifying its borders in order to prevent “unde-
sired” migrants from entering its territory, Gregory Feldman’s book The Migration Appa-
ratus: Security, Labor and Policymaking in the European Union, published by the Stanford 
University Press in 2012, is of invaluable importance for understanding the mechanisms 
governing EU policymaking on migration. In this book, Feldman maps EU migration poli-
cies and their development in the context of global economic inequality from an ethno-
graphic point of view, using a Foucauldian approach.
The Foucauldian apparatus is a key concept in Feldman’s work. This concept enables 
him to grasp the decentralized nature of EU migration policy, in which the actors involved 
are increasingly unrelated to each other. The apparatus furthermore contributes to ma-
king migration and migrants “manageable” through a variety of strategies. This also leads, 
according to Feldman, to the fact that migration policies are not the result of the morally 
best, but of the most practical approach. Moreover, the apparatus gains autonomy, which 
prevents individuals from counteracting it.
Feldman’s aims are, firstly, to analyse the EU’s migration apparatus within the global 
political and economic order, and secondly, to apply an adequate methodology to achieve 
this aim, something he terms “nonlocal ethnography”. With these objectives, Feldman 
takes the reader on a journey through the world of EU policymaking. In the first chapter, 
he sets the scene of an increasingly disconnected and therefore merely mediated world. In 
the second chapter, Feldman identifies the sphere of EU migration policy as dominated by 
neoliberals and neonationalists, the former demanding a flexible workforce, the latter the 
protection of national interests. These two are, as Feldman argues, not different in kind 
but merely in degree. In the third chapter, Feldman describes strategies of unification and 
simplification as key mechanisms to achieve conformance within the apparatus. Having 
sketched the general workings of EU migration policies in the first three chapters, Feldman 
devotes the subsequent three chapters to specific EU policy fields: border control, biome-
trics, and circular migration. EU policies on border control are conceived by Feldman to 
be an attempt by the EU to harmonize its policies with the objective of keeping out “unde-
sired” migrants from the Global South. While migration is treated as a mass phenomenon 
in this policy field, the migrants are highly individualized in the policies on biometrics. 
These policies, however, go hand in hand, since biometrics equally serve to distinguish 
between “desired” and “non-desired” migrants. According to Feldman, circular migration 
policies work as the “right solution”, reconciling neoliberals and neonationalists, the entry 
of workers being allowed but limited to a specific time frame. In the final chapter, Feldman 
undertakes a methodological discussion, arguing for the use of nonlocal ethnography as a 
tool to map decentralized structures in a globalized world.
Having provided a brief summary of the book, four issues should be discussed more 
critically: the apparatus concept, the methodology of nonlocal ethnography, the supposed 
political divide, and the specificities of the EU.
Even though the use of the concept of the apparatus allows the conceptualization of 
the decentralized logic of EU migration policies, it methodologically excludes the agency 
of both policymakers and migrants in counteracting the migration apparatus. The denial 
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of the agency of migrants is also an effect of the framework in which Feldman places mi-
gration, namely in the context of globally economic inequality. Even though these global 
inequalities must be acknowledged, poverty-related reasons are not the only causes of mi-
gration, as Feldman’s analysis might sometimes lead us to believe.
Closely linked to the discussion of the apparatus as the key concept of this book is the 
discussion of the methodology of nonlocal ethnography. The author attempts to use this 
methodology to overcome the difficulty of mapping decentralized phenomena and thereby 
provide a methodological equivalent to the apparatus concept. The underlying logic of the 
methodology is that neither core locations for ethnographic study exist nor should the 
mere interconnectedness of sites be studied, the rationales and practices being “present in 
multiple locations but are not of any particular location”.
On the one hand, nonlocal ethnography does provide an answer to the problematic of 
doing ethnography in a globalized world. On the other hand, the necessity of choosing loci 
for the research, be they virtual or real, cannot be circumvented. In the case of Feldman’s 
study, one of his main claims, namely that EU policymaking follows a technocratic logic, is 
undermined by his choice of loci. Even though the descriptions and analyses of the various 
conferences and meetings are very insightful, the sites appear to be quite homogeneous, in 
the sense that none of them is a political space. His argument that migration policy tends 
to be technocratic would be more compelling if he could show his readers that this logic is 
also present at the core of the EU’s political institutions. An analysis of more political spac-
es would also either reinforce or contradict his claim that EU migration policy is domi-
nated by the neoliberal and the neonationalist right. An alternative explanation would be 
the makeup of the EU as a structure which is highly influenced by national interests.
In the same line of argument, the EU’s circular migration policies are portrayed to be 
the perfect compromise between neoliberals and neonationalists. Feldman’s reasoning that 
neoliberals and neonationalists would both see their claims fulfilled, the first pushing for 
a mobile workforce, and the latter for a restriction of the migrants’ stay in their respective 
countries, is convincing. Nevertheless, one might ask whether these policies do not also 
partially fulfil the claims of the moderate left – which Feldman supposes to be non-exi-
stent – since circular migration schemes provide possibilities, at least for some migrants, 
to come to Europe. Even though these schemes might follow a neoliberal rationale and 
might, as Feldman warns, be used to obfuscate structural sources of inequality, a closer 
examination of circular migration schemes should be undertaken in order to avoid the risk 
of discarding them too rapidly.
One of the book’s general underlying arguments is that the communautarization of 
migration policies in the EU has led to harsher rules concerning immigration processes. 
However, a comparison with the pre-Schengen situation is misleading, since information 
technologies allowing for enhanced control of borders and the collection of biometric data 
have continued to develop since the implementation of the Schengen Area. No explicit ar-
gument is given as to why individual nation-states would not have adopted similar policies. 
The choice of policy areas for the analysis of this book also receives no further justification. 
It would have been interesting, for instance, to see whether the same logic governs EU asy-
lum policies, which are not addressed in this book. Even though asylum is a very restricted 
policy field, the EU being very far from having a common asylum policy, the adopted poli-
cies have led to some legal improvements in some of the Member States, most notably in 
form of the Qualification and the Reception Directives.
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In summary, the main weaknesses of the book are the limitations of the findings rela-
ting to the utility of the apparatus concept and some open questions regarding the metho-
dology of nonlocal ethnography, the specific institutional characteristics of the EU and the 
supposed divide in the political sphere. In spite of this, one can say that the book delivers 
what it promises to deliver in the introduction. First, Feldman succeeds in analysing the 
decentralized field of EU migration politics in a globally unequal world order. He argues 
in a well-structured and convincing way how the various domains of migration policy are 
part of the migration apparatus, which produces a specific subject position for migrants 
and “functions to maintain a large-scale apartheid between the North and South precisely 
because the prosperity of the former cannot be universalized to include the latter”. Second, 
Feldman successfully opens up new perspectives for ethnographic research in a globalized 
world, thereby contributing to the debate on how ethnography is well-suited to respond to 
globalization, as discussed since the 1980s.
Laura Boucsein
Book Reviews