Ambiguous bordering practices at the EU’s edges

Introduction

Borders have come to play a critical role as interfaces between domestic concerns and wider interstate and intercultural contexts. As markers of difference, their role as barriers to undesirable influences and threats perceived has only been reinforced. Instead of taking the widespread rhetoric around the closing of state borders as a mere struggle over space, this chapter also includes in its analysis factors of ontological insecurity and the psychological comfort that borders can be seen to produce. It examines the prevailing security-oriented rhetoric, the related gatekeeping processes and the walls of fear that have grown in popularity and allowed the debate on migration to be hijacked, overshadowing many of its benefits. These practices, it is argued, carry elements of identitary and normative, if not civilisational, bordering, producing in the process an illusion of social order and fortifying inflexible social-spatial imaginaries and definitions of acceptable norms, appearance and behavior that seek to communicate who is welcome and who is not.

Europe has long been a popular destination for migrants and refugees. Although it cannot be denied that the numbers of new arrivals spiked in 2015, when more than one million refugees and migrants reached Europe, the bigger picture has been lost behind the numbers. It was not the number of people who arrived that shook the resilience of the European Union (EU). The people arriving were regarded as unacceptable based on their values, language, appearance, religion or other such factors. If the numbers are used to reinforce the argument, it is also worth remembering that the actual EU population has remained relatively stable, growing only marginally, which suggests that people are not only constantly entering but also leaving. Nor can it be suggested that the EU stands out in global migration population comparisons: The share of migrants of the global population is just under 4%, and in the EU just above 4%.‘ What is noteworthy here is that the share of refugees and asylum seekers has grown and now already constitutes roughly 10% of all international migrants. Even then the vast majority (approximately 85%) is hosted by developing countries.

The consistent drive for ever stricter border and migration policies not only in Europe, but throughout the Global North, has not emerged in isolation or purely as the creations of politicians, but reflects the thinking of their electorates. These ideas reinforce the collective imagination of a safe "interior” and an insecure exterior, "outside”, reminiscent of the medieval concept of the fortress (Benedicto and Brunet, 2018: 8). In such rhetoric migration has often been framed as a threat, a security issue, something that needs to be combatted, creating an impression of borders as protective yet vulnerable walls safeguarding the inside from a perceived threat from the outside (Laine, 2018a, 2018b). The promise of a strong nation state as a solution for the perceived chaos has resonated well with the resulting public discourse in many EU member states. The original idea of open borders appears effectively to have been shot down (Ahtisaari, 2017). Fear is in this case a factor that cannot be overlooked. It has been deliberately politicized by feeding xenophobic far-right readings of the situation which hope to harness fears to advance political goals. Yet fear is a psychological, not a political, phenomenon. As Benedicto and Brunet (2018: 7) put it, this fear of the unknown and xenophobia create mental walls for people, who then demand physical walls.

Gatekeeping is underlined here as a particularly intentional form of bordering, premised not only on the creation of difference but on more clear-cut exclusion. The argument posited here is that having the power to determine these criteria is a major factor in the ordering of society, as well as in constructing a particular variety of social reality and view of the world. The applied criteria for bordering can also be seen as indicative of what the EU is envisioned as. That is, Europe appears different depending on whether bordering is effected with the aim of establishing security, preserving a culture, safeguarding economic sustainability or the distribution of state benefits, political functioning and self-determination, or based on interpretations of mere realism, for example. Recent public discussion suggests to many that identity- and value-related questions play an important role in the definition of the very idea of Europe.

The analysis presented here focuses on the apparent securitization of migration and related bordering practices more consistent with the traditional sovereign state imaginary than with any proclaimed post-Westphalian political project. The notion of ontological security is utilised here to explain the politics and practices of the suppression of welcome. It allows us to connect the logic of security with the production and reproduction of identities, and to better understand why, in confronting otherness, rationality may be overridden in the search for continuity, even if this compromises values and norms otherwise held dear. The assumed logic here is that the gatekeeping (ordering) and politics of bordering are not merely technocratic or otherwise distinct processes operating in isolation, but they must instead be understood as processes amidst the everchanging multitude of factors impacting the securing of one’s own security. As many have argued (Mitzen, 2006a: Rumelili, 2015; Kinnvall et al., 2018), the EU seeks ontological security in securing its identity and gives meaning to the space and polity it has come together to govern. However, the policies put in place to cope with the many ongoing crises and risks should not be taken as

Ambiguous bordering practices at EU’s edges 71 merely a means to secure the existence of the EU as a political community. They should instead be seen as the result of the sense of anxiety and insecurity many ordinary Europeans feel about their identity, place within the wider physical/ social world and future.