ABSTRACT
While city gates and walls served as boundaries between locals and newcomers in the early modern period, national borders became the most important demarcation line in the modern era. This implied that migration policies became increasingly oriented towards migrants born beyond national rather than urban boundaries. Walls, gates, and papers constituted the prime nodes via which migrants came into contact with migration policies and regulation. The focus on materialities is much indebted to Foucault's concept of governmentality, that stresses how studying the techniques and practices of control helps to gain insight into how power is exercised, reproduced and transformed. European cities have always functioned as nodes of capital and resources, supported by the influx of various immigrants. The demolition of city gates and walls in most European cities in the nineteenth century offers a material illustration of the changes in governance that took place.
