Skip to main content
Skip to McMaster Navigation Skip to Site Navigation Skip to main content
McMaster logo
CUPE work action information and updates

Visit McMaster's Labour Updates website for information on the current work action by CUPE Local 3906, Unit 1

Nyers Peter, Graduate Chair Department of Political Science | Professor

photo of Peter Nyers

Peter Nyers

Graduate Chair Department of Political Science | Professor

Faculty
Department of Political Science

Members
Institute on Globalization & the Human Condition

Area(s) of Interest:

Biography

I teach in the area of critical security studies, international relations theory, citizenship studies, and refugee and migrant politics. My research focuses on the social movements of non-status refugees and migrants, in particular their campaigns against deportation and detention and for regularization and global mobility rights. I am particularly interested in investigating how the claims made by politicized groups of non-status people are transforming established norms about citizenship and political community. I am the author of Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation (Routledge 2019) and Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (Routledge 2006). I have also edited several collected volumes on the politics of citizenship, most recently the Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies (Routledge 2014), which I co-edited with Engin Isin. My editorial responsibilities include being a Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serving on the Editorial Boards of International Political Sociology, Materiali Foucaultiani (Italy), Journal of Migration Research (Turkey), and Contexto Internacional: Journal of Global Connections (Brazil). I am also a founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Network (Canada)

I am active in the PhD program in International Relations and the MA programs in Globalization Studies, International Relations, and Cultural Studies & Critical Theory. I welcome PhD proposals in the following areas:

  • Critical security studies
  • Acts of citizenship
  • Politics of borders, migration, and refugees
  • Resistance to deportation and detention
  • Politics of humanitarianism
  • The everyday in international politics

 

Education

  • PhD, Political Science, York University.
  • Graduate Diploma in Refugee and Migration Studies, Centre for Refugee Studies, York University.
  • MA, Political Science and the interdisciplinary program in Contemporary Social and Political Thought, University of Victoria.
  • BA, Political Science, University of Victoria.

Teaching

Courses 2021-22

Graduate

  • Globalization 710 - Globalization: An Introduction
  • Political Science 4GC3 - Global Citizenship

Undergraduate

  • Political Science 4PB3 - Politics of Borders
  • Political Science 778 - Methodologies in Critical International Relations

Research

Books

Edited Books

Journal Special Issues

  • Peter Nyers, Johanna Reynolds, Julie E.E. Young, eds., Dis/Placing the Borders of North America. Special issue of International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 5:1/2 (2019).
  • Engin F. Isin, Peter Nyers, Bryan S. Turner, eds., Celebrating Ten Years of Citizenship Studies. Special issue of Citizenship Studies 11:1 (February 2007).
  • Peter Nyers, ed., What's Left of Citizenship? Special issue of Citizenship Studies 8:3 (September 2004).
  • Michelle Lowry and Peter Nyers, eds., Global Movements for Refugee and Migrant Rights. Special issue of Refuge: Canada's Periodical on Refugees 21:3 (May 2003).

Journal Articles

  • "Protection" and "Struggle" (multi-authored) in Nicholas de Genova and Martina Tazzioli, eds., 'Minor Keywords of Political Theory: Migration as a Critical Standpoint', Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space (2021), pp. 1-95.
  • Peter Nyers, 'Humanitarian Hubris in the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration' Global Affairs 5:2 (2019), pp. 171-178.
  • Peter Nyers, Johanna Reynolds, Julie E.E. Young, 'Dis/Placing the Borders of North America', International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 5:1/2 (2019).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Migrant Citizenships and Autonomous Mobilities', Migration, Mobility & Displacement 1:1 (2015).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Moving Borders: the politics of dirt', Radical Philosophy, No. 174 (July/August 2012), pp. 2-6
  • Peter Nyers, 'Alien Equality', Issues in Legal Scholarship, 9:1 (2011).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Missing Citizenship', International Political Sociology 4:1 (March 2010), pp. 95-98.
  • Peter Nyers, 'Dueling Designs: The Politics of Rescuing Dual Citizens', Citizenship Studies 14:1 (February 2010), pp. 47-60.
  • Peter Nyers, 'No One Is Illegal Between City and Nation', Studies in Social Justice 4:2 (2010).
  • Lauren Dunn, Peter Nyers, Richard Stubbs, 'Western Interventionism versus East Asian Noninterference: competing 'global' norms in the Asian century', The Pacific Review 23:3 (2010), pp. 295-312.
  • Peter Nyers, 'In Solitary, In Solidarity: Detainees, Hostages, and Contesting the Anti-Policy of Detention', European Journal of Cultural Studies 11:3 (August 2008), pp. 333-349.
  • Carolina Moulin and Peter Nyers, '"We live in the country of UNHCR": Refugee Protests and Global Political Society',International Political Sociology 1:4 (November 2007), pp. 356-372.
  • Peter Nyers, 'Why Citizenship Studies,' Citizenship Studies 11:1 (February 2007).
  • Peter Nyers, 'The Accidental Citizen: Acts of Sovereignty and (Un)Making Citizenship,' Economy and Society 35:1 (February 2006), pp. 22-41.
  • Peter Nyers, 'The Regularization of Non-Status Immigrants in Canada: Limits and Prospects,' Canadian Review of Social PolicyNo. 55 (Spring/Summer 2005), pp. 109-114.
  • Peter Nyers, 'What's Left of Citizenship?' Citizenship Studies 8:3 (September 2004), pp. 203-215.
  • Peter Nyers, 'Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement,' Third World Quarterly 24:6 (December 2003), pp. 1069-1093.
  • Peter Nyers, ‘Emergency or Emerging Identities? Refugees and Transformations in World Order,’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28:1 (1999), pp. 1-26.

Book Chapters

  • Peter Nyers, 'Petitions and Protest: Refugees and the Haunting of Canadian Citizenship', in Thy Phu and Vinh Nguyen, eds., Refugee States: Humanitarian Exceptionalism and Critical Refugee Studies in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Incipient Cosmopolitanisms', in Eddy Kent and Terri Tomsky, eds., Negative Cosmopolitanism: Cultures and Politics of World Citizenship after Globalization (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Citizenship and International Political Sociology' in Pinar Bilgen and Xavier Guillaume, eds., Routledge Handbook of International Political Sociology (London; Routledge, 2016).
  • Peter Nyers and Zeina Sleiman-Long, 'Citizenship' in Aoileann Ni Mhurchu and Reiko Shindo, eds. Critical Imaginations in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2016).
  • Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers, 'Globalizing Citizenship Studies', in Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers, ed., Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies (London: Routledge, 2014).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Liberating Irregularity: No Borders, Temporality, Citizenship', Citizenship and Security: the constitution of political being, Xavier Guillaume and Jef Huysmans, eds. (London: Routledge, 2013).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Researching Anti-Deportation: Socialization as Method', Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction, Mark B. Salter and Can E. Matlu, eds. (London: Routledge, 2012).
  • Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel, 'Citizenship, Migrant Agency and the Politics of Movement', in Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel, eds.,Citizenship, Migrant Agency and the Politics of Movement (London: Routledge, 2012).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Forms of Irregular Citizenship', in Vicki Squire, ed., The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity (London: Routledge, 2011).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Missing Citizenship', in Cynthia Weber, 'I am an American': Filming the Fear of Difference (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement', reprinted in Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Peutz, eds., The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Sovereignty Redux? Autonomy and Protection in Military Interventions', in Steven Bernstein and William Coleman, eds., Unsettled Legitimacy: Disruptions and Reconstructions of Political Community and Authority (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Securitizations of Citizenship', in Peter Nyers, ed., Securitizations of Citizenship (London: Routledge, 2009).
  • Peter Nyers, 'The Accidental Citizen', in Peter Nyers, ed., Securitizations of Citizenship (London: Routledge, 2009).
  • Peter Nyers, 'Community without Status: Non-Status Migrants and Cities of Refuge', in Diana Brydon and William Coleman, eds., Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Global Contexts (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008), pp. 123-138.
  • Peter Nyers, 'No One Is Illegal Between City and Nation', in Engin F. Isin and Greg Nielson, eds., Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books, 2008), pp. 160-181.
  • Peter Nyers, 'Taking Rights, Mediating Wrongs: Disagreements over the Political Agency of Non-Status Refugees,' in Jef Huysmans, Andrew Dobson, and Raia Prokhovnik, eds., The Politics of Protection: Sites of Insecurity and Political Agency(London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 48-67.
  • Peter Nyers, 'Cosmopolitismo abietto,' in Sandro Mezzadra, ed., Liberta in movimento. Per una analisi politica delle migrazioni contemporanee (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2004), pp. 230-244.
  • Peter Nyers, ‘On Humanitarian Violence: Humanity and the Logic of Sovereignty,’ in Samantha Arnold and J. Marshall Beier, eds., (Dis)Placing Security: Critical Re-evaluations of the Boundaries of Security Studies (Toronto: Centre for International and Security Studies, 2000), pp. 71-78.

Interviews & Reports