International in scope and featuring a diverse group of contributors, The Borders of Justice investigates the complexities of transitional justice that emerge from its “social embeddedness.” This original and provocative collection of essays, which stem from a collective research program on social justice undertaken by the Calcutta Research Group, confronts the concept and practices of justice. The editors and contributors question the relationship between geography, methodology, and justice—how and why justice is meted out differently in different places.

Expanding on Michael Walzer's idea of the “spheres of justice,” the contributors argue that justice is burdened with our notions of social realities and expectations, in addition to the influence of money, law, and government. Chapters provide close readings of Pascal, Plato and Marx, theories on global justice, the relationship between liberalism and multiculturalism, struggles of social injustice, and how and where we draw the borders of justice.

Étienne Balibar is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California at Irvine. He is the author of numerous books including We the People of Europe? Reflections of Transnational Citizenship, and Politics and the Other Scene.

Sandro Mezzadra is Associate Professor of the Political Theory at the University of Bologna. He has published extensively on the subjects of citizenship, migration and postcolonialism. He is co-editor (with Andrea Fumagalli) of Crisis in the Global Economy: Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios.

Ranabir Samaddar, earlier a professor of South Asian Studies, is now the Director of Calcutta Research Group, and founder-editor of the journal Refugee Watch. He is the author of several books on the subjects of Post-colonialism, India and Politics, including The Marginal Nation and The Emergence of the Political Subject.