The document discusses the evolving nature of borders and border control, emphasizing how globalization leads to increased mobility and the reconfiguration of borders into porous networks rather than rigid lines. It outlines three main interpretations of borders: a borderless world, the emergence of transnational communities, and the securitization of borders as a response to perceived threats. Additionally, it explores European policies on migration and security, focusing on the use of surveillance technologies to manage movement and categorize travelers.

1. Controlling the Undesirable
at the border-network
Andrea Rea
Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB-GERME)
THE ANTI-ATLAS OF BORDERS
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
30 Septembre – 2 Octobre 2013
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2. Plan
1)
2)
3)
4)
From borders to bordering
Three main interpretations
The border-network
European policy of mobility and
bordering processes
5) Controlling the undesirable at the
airport
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3. 1. From borders to bordering
• State borders, state sovereignty and territory
• In Westphalien state model, border is the container of the state
which allows control populations and protection against the exterior
• Military conception: Border as a continuous demarcation line
between homogenous entities
• From spaces of places to spaces of flows (Castells, 1996)
• Harvey ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey, 1990) or ‘time-space
distanciation’ (Giddens, 1990)
• Human mobility has increased and the classic notion of migration
has become insufficient
• Mobility of elites (entrepreneurs, scientists, advanced service
producers, transnational professionals, artists, etc.) and growing
consumption-led mobility (tourists)
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4. 1. From borders to bordering
• Debordering-rebordering
• “The debordering processes in the world’s states might lead
to a “debordering of the world of states” (Albert & Brock
1996).
• The first process refers to the increasing permeability of
borders and the decreasing capacity of states to curb this
trend
• while the debordering (or rebordering) of the world of
states involves the response of states seeking to adapt to
globalisation.
• In the literature, at least three processes are distinguished
that contribute to debordering.
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5. 1. From borders to bordering
• Three main changes
– The first is the expansion of the world economy.
The large movement of financial capital and the global
strategies implemented by transnational companies
constitute the central elements of current economic
globalisation.
– The second process of debordering is indeed the
increase in international regulations, the growing
involvement of international organisations and
supranational entities (such as the European Union) and
the emergence of transnational networks or transnational
social movements acting on a global scale.
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6. 1. From borders to bordering
– The third debordering process is linked to the
dematerialisation of the border.
The most well-known example is the mobility of
information and knowledge as a result of the internet (for
the economy, especially since the digitalisation of stock
exchanges).
The dematerialisation of the border also affects the
mobility of people. The crossing of the physical border of a
state is disconnected from the control of the right to move.
Surveillance is no longer mainly localised at the physical
borders of states. It operates first through administrative
procedures and databases and only later, for some, upon the
physical passage of the border
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7. 2. Three main interpretation
• Borderless World
– The expansion of the world economy gave birth to the
globalisation of economic activities, what Ohmae (1991) calls
The Borderless World, in which the state no longer occupies a
central position, giving way to the market and consumer.
– The world economy is also fragmented and the continuities
and fluidities of economic activities occur mainly between
transnationalized regions (Ohmae 1996) and global cities
(Sassen 1991).
– Other authors like Ohmae (1996) and Guéhenno (1995) claim
that we are witnessing not the end of territory but the end of
the nation-state and in a certain manner the end of
democracy.
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8. 2. Three main interpretation
• Transnational communities
– Creation of new dislocated and deterritorialised spaces:
transnational communities founded on a strong sense of
belonging linked to a common origin (national, ethnic,
religious, etc.). (Hannerz 1996, Appadurai, 1996).
– Transnational communities and diasporas have emerged as a
result of increased transport facilities and telecommunication
(Glick-Schiller 1994; Portes 1999; Faist, 2000).
– Borders have not dissolved, they are reconfigured. They are
no longer linked to geographical borders: their construction is
primarily based on boundaries, on ethnic and cultural borders
– The globalised upper classes (Sassen 2007) are also
transnational communities (transnational professionals).
These transnational communities could be perceived as
detached from territory and to offer an alternative to the nationstate as a social, economic and political organisation.
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9. 2. Three main interpretation
• Securitization
– New approaches in the field of International Relations
recognize that the border is an area of demarcation rather
than a barrier and that processes of bordering are
disconnected from territory.
– Since the ‘return of identity’, with reference to identity
building as the internal cohesion of states, the border
remains a front line to be defended (Huntington 1996).
– This conception leads to the development of narratives that
state that new threats (organized crime, terrorism, drug
trafficking, smuggling, human trafficking, irregular
migration) threaten the domestic social cohesion of nationstates and the identities of their people.
– “Loss of control" is the dominant border narrative (Sassen
1996; Andreas 1999). This approach is based on the idea that
one of the major risks of globalization is the dissolution of
borders which threatens the nation-state, its homogeneity
and internal cohesion.
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10. 3. The Border-Network
• This approach propose to no longer think in such rigid
terms as the separation between inside and outside
(Walker 1993).
• The border is not as a line which must be defended, a
conception still largely dominant in many policy
narratives, particularly European narratives on EU external
border security.
• The border is consider as a porous or broken line that
cannot form a closed circle, since it is the exchange with
the outside that permits survival. The border ensures
communication (Newman, 2003).
• Rather than a fixed identity, the border is therefore a
meeting place, a site of economic transaction, exchange,
construction and re-construction of belonging.
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11. 3. The Border-Network
• Border-network = network of space-time units (checkpoint,
square, consulate, airport,etc.) where human (street level
bureaucrats at the consulate, border guards, travellers,
lawyer, etc.) and non-human (laws, procedure, databases,
etc.) interact with the aim to produce pratices which enact
state sovereignity. (Rea; 2013)
• With this approach globalised world is a propagation of
crossing points that together form a border. The border must
be seen as fluid or liquid.
• Globalisation does not lead to the destruction of borders, quite
the opposite. States and supranational or international
institutions of order and security continue to play a central
role in controlling the border and the border-crossing.
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12. 3. The Border-Network
• At the heart of this outlook: the mobility and not the
territoriality : The aim of the border control aim to
improve freedom of movement of goods, knowledge, and
people.
• Security instruments are designed primarily to ensure
maximum freedom of movement for the majority, and
subsequently to filter and control the minority groups that
deviate from certain criteria, defined a priori as dangerous
or suspicious.
• Surveillance is used to accelerate the mobility of
legitimate travelers (Torpey, 2000) and control is used to
filter and block undesirable travelers trying to circumvent
migration laws (Bigo et al. 2011). There is a necessary
continuity which allows for monitoring everyone and
controlling some.
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13. 4. European policy of mobility and
bordering processes
• Dispositifs of security : are there to accelerate mobility for
certain people, while filtering and blocking others with
migratory risk and migratory profile.
• Irregular migration as a crime
• Migration and new penology (Feeley & Simon, 1992)
• New penology = passing from an individualised penalty to one
targeting and controlling populations at risk. This type of
policy is basically founded on both an economic and
managerial legitimacy. It is preferable to prevent rather than
punish, to minimise risk than to ensure punitive justice.
• The security dispositifs managing migration flows that are used
to ensure border control, for instance, between Europe and the
countries south of the Mediterranean, are composed of four
elements.
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14. 4. European policy of mobility and
bordering processes
A)From Travellers to Groups at risk
• The first surveillance tool defines legitimate travellers and the
groups at risk for security and migration reason (Bigo & Guild,
2005).
• Countries subjected to the obligation of obtaining Schengen Visa
(short stay) as a condition to enter into the territory is a way of
creating countries at risk where nationals are considered to be a risk
(Infantino, 2013, Infantino & Rea, 2012).
• As to asylum, the European institutions establish lists of safe
countries, which annihilate the right to asylum for their nationals.
• The beneficiaries of the right to family reunification are subject to
massive restrictions. The instrumental logic of immigration tends to
reduce the legitimacy of travellers who do not contribute to the
economic and financial activities and to privilege the social and
economic utility of foreigners considered worthy (entrepreneurs,
merchants, businessmen, political, cultural and artistic elites, etc.).
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15. 4. European policy of mobility and
bordering processes
B) Technological apparatus of surveillance
• Preventive policies of remote control
• Migration control constitutes an excellent laboratory for the
technologisation of surveillance (smart borders)
• Three main surveillance tools
– Accumulation of information on individuals and of the
constant resort to biometry during the crossing of European
borders + Data bases
• For accelerating mobility (Parafes and Previum) or
sorting and blocking (SIS, VIS, EURODAC).
– Displacement of controls on people intending to cross
external borders of the EU from the physical spaces of the
border to the territories of departure of travellers. At the
border (airport): body + data double
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16. 4. European policy of mobility and
bordering processes
– Technologies of control at the point of departure:
• SIVE (Sistema Integrado de Vigilancia Exterior), which is an electronic
surveillance system that polices the coasts using boats, infrared cameras,
satellites, etc. This system has limited the arrival of irregular migrants using
“pateras” in Andalusia.
• In 2011, EUROSUR (European Border Surveillance System) was launched
to reinforce the management of the southern and eastern maritime borders of
Europe using satellite images and sensors.
• The AMASS (autonomous maritime surveillance system) project uses buoys
equipped with infra-red cameras and hydrophones in order to detect
subaqueous sounds. When a suspicious vessel is detected, images are
directly transmitted to a control centre on the shore. Compared to SIVE,
AMASS seeks to improve the control of the European coasts through the
early warning of suspicious vessels.
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17. 4. European policy of mobility and
bordering processes
•
FRONTEX plays a crucial role in the preventive fight against irregular
immigration by trying to send back to the coasts whence the migration
candidates came. (Militarisation approach of the border)
C) Operating in the countries of departure and
focussing on a target public
•
•
•
•
Government at distance (Rose & Miller, 1992)
The cooperation agreements for police
The readmission of irregular migrants, deportation
The strengthening of intervention capacities at land and sea
borders
• Securing travel documents and training of officials
• Creation of “buffer zones” with the The Neighbourhood Policy
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18. 4. European policy of mobility and
bordering processes
D) Ultima ratio = Detention
• Detention and expulsion of irregular migrants
• The extension of detention in detention centres, including
in the country of transit, the increase of expulsions and the
European coordination of readmissions by charter flights,
bear witness of the rationalisation of the removal
procedures.
• The adoption of the “return” directive in June 2008,
constitutes a sort of harmonisation based on minimum
standards, in casu long detention (up to 18 months), which
is a removal measure accompanied by the prohibition to
subsequently enter the territory and but a feeble protection
against removal and expulsion.
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19. 5. Control at the airport
• Central activities at the border (airport) are sorting,
categorizing and profiling (Lyon 2003) travelers
• Sorting is based on the use of surveillance tools:
– Traditional: passport, visa
– Biometric technologies (fingers prints, retina patterns,
etc.), various databases (SIS, VIS, EURODAC) (Adey,
2002)
• At the airport, the body is condensed in databases (smart
borders) (data double) moving separatly from the
physical one
• What happened at
– The first line check
– The second line check (confessional, Salter, 2007)
– Detention center
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20. 5. Control at the airport
Questions on governance
• Bureaucratic governance based on bureaucratic rules
• Network governance based on trust (databases)
(Flemming & Rhodes, 2005)
Questions on implementation policy and street level
bureaucrats
• Degree of interpretation of European regulations
• Division of labor and organization of border guard
organization
• Border guard, as street level bureaucrats, can use
discretionary power (Lipsky, 1981)
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21. Bibliography
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22. •
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