“This remarkable book chronicles the making of the US maritime border as a dialectic of sovereign will and legal reason. Using an impressive array of historical and ethnographic materials on Haitian interdiction, Kahn illuminates the tensions between water and land, refugee and migrant, and imaginaries and practices of jurisdiction that have shaped the legal and political geographies of asylum in the United States and beyond. This is a brilliant and timely intervention in contemporary debates around border securitization.”

Ajantha Subramanian, Harvard University

“Kahn’s astonishing ethnography of the law and politics of America’s interdiction of Haitian refugees at sea is heartrending, insightful, and necessary. No one concerned about the frightening history of the country’s relationship to others at another troubling moment—and no one who cares about the discretionary sovereignty of the modern state and its borders—can afford to look away from the story Kahn tells in this major intervention.”

Samuel Moyn, Yale Law School, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World

"A fascinating read and a masterful example of applied multidisciplinary research."

International Journal of Constitutional Law

"Stunning. . . . Bristling with intelligence. . . . Gorgeous prose and incisive analysis."
 

Lawfare

"A powerful and sophisticated ethnography. . . . Required reading for everyone working on political and legal anthropology."

Political and Legal Anthropology Review

"Multilayered and theoretically sophisticated. . . . A must-read for anyone studying global migration."

International Migration Review

"Path-breaking. . . . Exemplary."

Theory and Event

"A remarkable piece of scholarship. . . . Monumental."

American Ethnologist

"A major contribution to legal anthropology in its sustained and rigorous attention to crucial but often overlooked aspects of the craft of lawyering in enabling and justifying evolving forms of state violence." 

Anthropological Quarterly

"This complex, dense, and rich ethnography, based on two decades of fieldwork and research in state and NGO archives, offers a new conceptual approach to the study of maritime borderlands."

New West Indian Guide

"Jeffrey Kahn’s Islands of Sovereignty is a magnificent exposé of the legal edifices, battles, and narratives, along with federal executive actions and immigration control strategies that from the 1970s through the 1990s transformed governance and immigration policing in the Caribbean seascape. . . This book is a wonderful contribution to our knowledge of the history of border policing and legal history, and is highly recommended for students, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of history, legal studies, migration studies, criminology, anthropology, and critical theory."

Border Criminologies

"In a time when mass deportations are framed as sound migration policy and Haitian communities become focal points in racialized political debates in the United States, and Haiti endures a prolonged multilayered humanitarian, political, and economic crisis, Jeffrey Kahn’s Islands of Sovereignty emerges as a critical text. Kahn offers a profound contribution to our understanding of the juridico-political dynamics shaping U.S. immigration policies, the mechanics of the U.S. 'liberal empire,' and the colonial frameworks that underpin US-Haitian relations."

Law & Society Review