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Migration: Border Control and Security

Selected e-articles

Abstract: This article details how knowledge is produced, circulated, and acted upon by migration control officials working in different sites of the European border regime. Drawing on research into the politics of knowledge in border and migration control, along with studies of street‐level bureaucracy, we trace the knowledge mobilised to craft state fictions that form the basis of border bureaucrats' decision‐making. Empirically, the article builds on research carried out in three different projects that all explore how borders are enacted across Europe and beyond. It details how knowledge is produced at the rear and frontline of border and migration control, and traces how ‘bad documents’, gut feelings, and informal administrative practices informed by racialized and class‐based suspicions are mobilised for decision‐making. Sources matter less in such state‐crafted dominant fictions, which instead obtain their legitimacy through bureaucratic circulation and inscription and make them ‘true enough’ for officials to act upon.

Abstract: What do the EU's bordering practices tell us about its liberal credentials? Through a systematic study of the EU's migration policies, which reveals an enhanced control over borders, this article argues that there are key contradictions within the EU's approach to the liberal world order. Abstract The relevance of bordering practices and dynamics for the European Union has significantly increased in recent years, ranging from Brexit to the open-border policies towards Ukrainians fleeing Russia's military aggression, through the crises in the Schengen area due to migration and COVID–19. In its attempts to respond to these challenges, the EU has been widely criticized in particular for its approach to migration; it has been alluded to as being cynical, negligent and even ‘illiberal’. The aim of this article is to analyse whether and in which sense this allegation is correct, providing clear normative criteria. Drawing from political theory, we identify three different understandings of ‘just’ migration governance, all compatible with a liberal approach, and use them as benchmarks to evaluate the EU's stance. Focusing on selected EU bordering practices—physical, administrative and external bordering—we detect a general trend towards re-bordering, meaning processes through which the control of borders is enhanced and their exclusionary meaning is increased. Most of all, the article shows that EU policies have been leaning towards one specific understanding of liberalism to the detriment of the others, which poses significant challenges to the EU's credentials as a pillar of the liberal international order (LIO).

Abstract: In response to the recent crises in Europe, many governments have tightened their border controls despite considerable criticism from the EU Commission and civil society. While borders are at the core of recent crises, we lack systematic evidence of how governments publicly inform about border politics and justify measures. Therefore, we ask: How do EU governments communicate about borders? We analyze a comprehensive sample of press releases of the Austrian and German governments over 12 years (2009–2020). Applying a mixed‐methods design, we employ automated text analysis, specifically latent semantic scaling (LSX) to scale documents regarding how they communicated permeability (openness and closedness) of borders and the state of affairs regarding a state of crisis and routine. Based on this quantitative analysis, we then apply qualitative text analysis to explore the nuances and patterns of this communication to gain in‐depth insights into governmental stances about borders.

Abstract: This article argues that spatial exclusion is a central element of, and a precondition for, exclusion from fundamental rights. Keeping individuals who are seeking access to rights geographically separated from spaces ordered by the rule of law is a defining feature of the contemporary European legal order. The European legal space is surrounded by borderlands, which are not only humanitarian borderlands, but also legal borderlands. Unpacking the meaning of borderlands and frontier zones could, therefore, be greatly productive for future perspectives on legal geography.

Abstract: In this paper, we critically interrogate the registration of migrants in pan-European, large-scale biometric databases, like Eurodac (European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database). We employ the notion of “epidermal politics”, which analytically captures how human bodies – and skin in particular – become sites of identification, violent control, and contestation. Thinking through epidermal politics allows us to understand how the development of technologies that render skin visible and analysable, such as fingerprint scanners and biometric matching algorithms, are entangled in relations of power, structural racism, and subjugation. Drawing on the work of Simone Browne (2015) and her elaboration of Franz Fanon’s theory of epidermisation, we argue that migration control in Europe, and its violent and racialising effects, are embedded within data infrastructures that “stigmatise” (Van Der Ploeg 1999) post-colonial “others” with codes to control their mobilities. We unpack this argument in three stages. First, we discuss the governmental rationales that inform the use of Eurodac for the management of migration and asylum in Europe. Second, we discuss how biometric control is related to different forms of state violence, including deportation, prolonged detention, and physical violence associated with the forced registration of migrants’ fingerprints. Third, we attend to strategies employed by migrants to contest biometric control, focusing specifically on fingertip burning and mutilation, which we interpret as acts of dissent and self-determination to escape control. Overall, our goal is to emphasise the need to pay closer attention to dynamics of violence and racialisation that emerge at biometric and other kinds of “hi-tech” borders.

Abstract: A central and formative ingredient in the governance of migration in the European Union (EU) is the continuous construction of a large-scale digital infrastructure to ensure border security. Although border and critical security studies have increasingly focused on the multiple aspects of techno-materiality and infrastructural devices of border control, less has been said about how such an infrastructure encodes and transmits collective future visions of border (in)security. Therefore, this paper analyzes the making of a sociotechnical imaginary of digital transformation of the EU border regime, specifically focusing on the role of eu-LISA, the European agency for the development and management of large-scale IT systems. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interview material, we analyze the ways in which this agency emerges as a site for assembling and rehearsing this sociotechnical imaginary, gradually transforming borders into sites of experimentation in the EU Schengen laboratory. As our case illustrates, studying the visionary dimensions of digital infrastructuring helps us to understand how imagination becomes collectivized and materialized, opens up or closes down sociotechnical realizations, and thus tacitly governs the project of digitally infrastructuring the EU border regime.

Abstract: The aim of the article is to fill a gap in the literature on the externalisation of immigration control by focusing not on practices of extraterritorial immigration control but on the externalisation of immigration control at the EU external border. The article will examine four parallel and inter-related trends of preventive injustice on the border: the denial of law and pushbacks, and their handling by judicial authorities and EU institutions and agencies; the emerging framework of the instrumentalisation of migration; the normalisation of border procedures based on the fiction of 'non-entry'; and detention of third-country nationals at the border, to back up non-entry policies. The article will highlight the rule of law deficit such externalisation entails.

Abstract: This paper discusses biometric borders in Europe, focusing on the Eurodac database and practises of fingerprinting people on the move in Greece as a politicised attempt to control and limit secondary movement as set out in the Dublin Regulation. The paper presents empirical research to explore one way in which migrants in Athens negotiate Eurodac; where alternative imaginaries informed ideas of 'big' and 'small' fingerprints, shaping interactions with the asylum service as well as secondary movement. I use Autonomy of Migration (AoM) theories to depict borders as places of ongoing conflict, subjectivity and transformation and introduce the work of Castoriadis' social imaginaries and the radical imagination to explore migrants' alternative imaginaries. I argue that these occur at points of friction, within the constraints of, and alongside, a dominant socio-technical imaginary driving the proliferation of biometric border controls. I believe this enables a deeper understanding of the autonomy with AoM theories. Here, autonomy is presented as instances of self-creation, spurred on through the radical imagination and shaping moments of uncontrollability, where the subjective dimension of migration informs both meanings of autonomy as well as alternative imaginaries. Ultimately, I argue that these practices seek to disrupt and challenge the dominance of biometrics as a signifier of control, identity and truth.

Abstract: The aim of this article is to describe the evolution of immigration detention policies at the Southern European border. This will be done by presenting original data on the actual functioning of immigration detention in Italy in the wake of the so-called “refugee crisis”. By shedding light on these developments, the article reveals a notable convergence of first reception and return policies, which in turn is driving a transformation of the landscape of immigration detention leading to a proliferation of detention regimes and spaces of containment. Drawing on the literature on carceral geographies, this development is analyzed within the framework of Italy's distinct role in the geopolitics of EU border control policies. The article ultimately suggests that the immigration detention system has gradually been co-opted by the border control infrastructure, becoming part of a broader and intricate control assemblage whose essential function is the regulation of human mobility.

Abstract: The gradual digitization of EU migration policies is turning external borders into AI-driven filters that limit access to fundamental rights for people from third countries according to risk indicators. An unshakeable confidence in the reliability of technological devices and their ability to predict the future behaviour of incoming foreigners is leading towards the datafication of EU external frontiers. What happens if the supposedly infallible algorithms are wrong? The article aims to understand the consequences of algorithmic errors on the lives of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers arriving in the European Union. This contribution investigates the socio-political implications of deploying data-driven solutions at the borders in an attempt to problematize the techno-solutionist approach of EU migratory policies and its fundamental rights impact on affected individuals.

Abstract: This paper examines whether multilevel transnational cooperation makes a difference in refugee protection, especially in protracted displacement. In response to the forced migration of millions of Syrians to Turkey starting in 2011, the EU and Turkish government published a joint statement in March 2016. The so-called EU-Turkey deal (EUTD) provided a substantial flow of money (EUR 6 billion in four years) from the EU to Turkey. In return Turkey had to commit to contain and control migration movement toward the EU. In social science, there are quite diverse evaluations of the EUTD. Whereas some studies focus on its effectiveness and efficiency in reaching the outlined goals, other publications stress its geo-political effects on migrants’ mobility and (externalized) border control. Meanwhile some studies look for points to improve the EUTD while others criticize it fundamentally. This article analyzes the involvement of different types of international governmental and non-governmental organizations (IGOs and INGOs) in the four main action fields of the EUTD and its implicit side effects on the Turkish regime of migration management. It first summarizes some crucial findings and pending questions in the social science literature. Based on analysis of available documents and our own interviews in Turkey, we then shed light on the organizations involved in the implementation of the EUTD and its effects on the Turkish regime of refugee protection (...). 

Abstract: A state’s control over its borders is a basic exercise of national sovereignty—a principle weakened only by international obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention. A similar principle can apply to a group of states such as the European Union (EU) that has established internal freedom of movement for its citizens: a necessary counterpart to that freedom is control of entry at its external borders. In the EU case that control has proven practically difficult and politically contentious in the face of extensive irregular migration—both economic mi[1]grants and asylum-seekers—taking place away from authorized border crossing points. (The relevant borders include those of the four non-EU states that are part of the Schengen zone of visa-free movement.) The length of external land borders is some 10,000 km; sea-borders make up another 40,000 km. Although there is an EU border control agency, Frontex, policing responsibility, at least for land borders and for some of the most trafficked sea-crossing routes in the Mediterranean and Aegean, lies largely with individual states. EU and Schengen member-state governments have a range of views about immigration but are uniformly opposed to irregular border-crossing. In states with external land borders, the responses in many cases have entailed erection of physical barriers along with patrols and surveillance systems. The extent of these barriers is indicated in the passage reprinted below from a recent European Parliament briefing paper. Patrols by coastal state authorities and by Frontex endeavor to interdict irregular migration by sea. In both cases, deterrence actions at the borders—“pushbacks”—while responsive to domestic political pressures, have a mixed record of effectiveness and have evoked some protests on human rights grounds.

Abstract: This article addresses the counter-effects of the politics of externalization of European frontiers in Libya through a qualitative analysis of a case study concerning a group of Somali asylum-seekers who, after being held and tortured in Libyan detention centres, managed to cross the Mediterranean and arrived in Italy where they accidentally met and, thus, pressed charges against their torturer. Based on the information provided in the judicial files containing their testimonies, which led to the first recognition by a European court of the unbearable forms of violence suffered by migrants in Libya, this article offers a critical reflection on the implications of migration control enforcement promoted at the EU's borders on the European civil and political community. Moreover, it provides a reflection on the challenges raised for migration studies by survivors' testimonies on the wider implications of subjective experiences and biographical narratives in illuminating emerging domains of social responsibility and political action.

Abstract: This paper analyzes the role of border fortifications for migration control and access to asylum based on two case studies: the Hungarian–Serbian and U.S. American–Mexican borders. The research is based on qualitative interviews on both sides of the borders. It shows that despite other options for border control, fortifications still play an important role, especially for asylum seekers. Fences fulfill a material, a symbolic and a filtering function here. The three functions contribute in different ways to preventing asylum seekers from crossing the border, thus depriving refugees of the opportunity to apply for asylum. The paper shoes that fences fulfill functions that other forms of border control (such as shifting or smart borders) cannot accomplish in the same way and it thereby contributes to understanding the ‘puzzle’ of contemporary border fencing.

Abstract: This paper offers a case study of the dynamic of securitisation of asylum seekers and migrants in Poland since 2015. It uses a unique case of the external actor - the Belarussian government - not merely threatening to escalate the pre-existing situation but actively constructing it by creating new migration flows and forcibly pushing asylum-seekers and migrants into the EU. By reconstructing the discourse and practice of the securitising actor and the intervention of the external actor, the paper shows that the pre-existing securitisation of asylum seekers and migrants in Poland was instrumentalised by the external actor, which led to the further development and intensification of the securitising policies and practices and their justifications. The analysis contributes to our understanding of the securitisation process in the moment of the context change as triggered by an exogenous factor - an intervention by the external actor.

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