Politics of difference

For the purposes of this chapter bordering is essentially a multilevel process that takes place, for example, at the level of high politics, manifested by physical borders and visa regimes, as well as in media debates about national identity, legal and irregular immigration and language rights (Linde-Laursen, 2010). The calls for stricter border enforcement and control cannot be taken simply as an attempt to close state spaces, but rather as filtering and sorting the people crossing them, from those perceived as welcome and desirable, and those who are unwanted and undesirable (Laine, 2018a: 232; Коса, 2019: 186). These bordering practices can be considered "biopolitical architectures concerned with regulating circulation” (Pallister-Wilkins, 2016: 156) aiming at controlling undesired flows and “creating an efficient system of selection that determines which types of mobility to allow” (ibid.: 232). Borders, or their underlying regime, function as “differentiating machines” (Rigo, 2007) that produce complex hierarchies not only between citizens and migrants, but within these categories (Tervonen et al., 2018: 139). Being unevenly transparent for different groups, borders are associated with and reinforce discrimination, social injustice and inequality (e.g., Van Baar, 2014; Laine, 2018b).

“Gatekeeping” is brought forth here as an example of a particular kind of bordering whose inherent processes of inclusion and exclusion show evident intentionality. Gatekeeping has been discussed mostly in analyses of mass communication and journalistic cultures, and is used to refer to the notion that journalists’ behaviors and decisions concerning which topics should be covered and from which angles are guided by cultural norms and roles (e.g., Shoemaker and Vos, 2009). Although the media’s gatekeeping role has become increasingly and especially evident in the very framing of recent events as a “crisis”, gatekeeping’s inherent processes of selecting and filtering are not however limited to the media. For the purposes of this chapter’s argument it is usefill to return to the roots of the concept and recall the early work of Lewin (1947), who may have been the first to posit the idea. He developed the concept from the perspective of social psychology in seeking to understand human behavior and personal perception. He saw gatekeeping as a crucial element in how individuals work to understand their own world (physical, mental and social) and define what he had previously termed their “life space” (Lewin, 1936). Lewin believed that a person’s life space existed not in isolation but in dynamic and constant relation to others, with areas of tension and boundary between them. Although there may be an increase in tension within a specific area of a person’s psychological world, these processes should not be considered in isolation but must be seen in the context of the entire life space (Lewin, 1936).

As the aim here is not to delve more deeply into social psychology, it will suffice to take from his work that “[w]hat is real is what has effects” (Lewin, 1936: 19); that is, to focus attention on the subjective importance of aspects of the life space rather than attempting to objectively define every possible influence. Although gatekeeping can be seen as referring to the control that nation states exert over their boundaries’ “gates” through the role of law and their respective migration and border control policies, the underlying reasoning for these actions is seldom raised. However, as Triandafyllidou and Ambrosini (2011: 255) highlight, gatekeeping has more to do with the restrictions of “practical legal access to a nation and its institutions” than the fencing measures actively targeting irregular migrants to arrest and then expel them. As such, an analysis of gatekeeping also raises the normative aspects of immigration regulations (lacovetta, 2006; Nevins, 2010; Satzewich, 2013). Migration law not only enshrines the criteria for potential membership (Dauvergne, 2008: 123), but formal immigration regulations are also often intertwined with values and normative frameworks that highlight gatekeeping’s moral aspects (Pellander, 2015: 1474).

Gatekeeping accentuates the fact that not everyone is free to work, live, move or even visit wherever they please, but people on the move around the world are likely to encounter structures and restrictions established by states or comparable international bodies such as the EU. A process of filtering takes place through these structures in which potential incomers are assessed and categorized based on their perceived desirability and merit. Essentially, the task is to separate those who are considered welcome and wanted from those who are not. Thus, the notion of gatekeeping renders immigration threatening. Although the practice is not new, states have a long history of controlling their borders and monitoring migrants. This has been especially noticeable and more strongly executed since the 2015 European "refugee crisis”.

Various bordering practices in the context of the strength of anti-immigrant movements across Europe have portrayed immigrants as a threat not only to “our” land but to culture, identity, values and conventional ways of life. The European’s very body is now portrayed as facing the crisis, if not under a full-scale attack by invading outsiders. Such rhetoric has been produced to diminish support for welcome and to ignore the harsh reality and humanitarian drama which millions of refugees must endure every day. The prioritizing of policing and border security and surveillance, with the historical perspective which insists most migrations predominantly consist of conquest, conveys an effective image of homelands overran with foreign if not downright criminal elements which the state, if not the EU, must repel. In this sense, borders can be seen as functioning like a computer firewall: They provide security by filtering incoming traffic based on a set of user-defined rales. In computing, the purpose of a firewall is to reduce or eliminate the occurrence of unwanted and harmfill network communications, while allowing legitimate communication to flow freely. The EU’s border regime, including its migration policies, is similarly designed to carefully analyse incoming traffic based on pre-established rales and filter it when it emanates from unsecured or suspicious sources. It thus seeks to facilitate border

Ambiguous bordering practices at EU’s edges 73 crossing for those with a legitimate reason and are trusted, while impeding those who are seen not to have such a right. An illustration can be found in the recent populist debate, in which borders have commonly been proposed as a solution to the migrant “invasion”. Just as firewalls function, borders are seen as providing an essential layer of security which, combined with other measures, prevents malicious incoming traffic, attackers and viruses from malevolently accessing our society.

It is important to remember that the word “choice” is also important. Carling (2015) has examined the use of “refugees” versus “migrants” and found such “two-kinds-of-people” rhetoric troubling and often politically motivated. Urging us to respect both the uniqueness of each individual and the human worth of all, he notes that “[w]hen people drown at sea or suffocate in lorries, our first question should not be ’so, which kind were they, refugees or migrants?’ ” His thinking reflects Bauman (1996), who sees a depiction of the two dominant cultural types of the global era, the “tourist” and the “vagabond”, which he vividly exemplifies in the increasingly clear reality that our mobility is increasingly based on who we are, how much money we have in our pockets and the place to which we are perceived as belonging. Whereas tourists stay or move as they wish and may abandon a place when new and untried opportunities beckon from elsewhere, Bauman (1996: 14) portrays the vagabonds as knowing “that they won't stay for long, however strongly they wished to, since nowhere they stop they are welcome”. In other words, “tourists travel because they want to; the vagabonds - because they have no other choice” (ibid.).

Where the EU is concerned, migration injects tension into its hybrid model (Mitzen, 2018: 1380). It challenges the need to manage the tension between liberalism's universalist free-movement aspirations and the state project’s particularism of bounded security communities (Hollifield, 2004). The tension between liberal ideals and reality is felt at borders and reflected in migration policies and governance. Even states with strong anti-nationalist histories, Duyvenduk (2011: 1) notes, now face vocal movements employing the rhetoric of “longing for a homogenous national home”. Migration poses an ongoing governance challenge not only to its member states but to the EU as a whole, especially given the populist and nationalist appeals to homeland discourses of closure and fear (Mitzen, 2018: 1383). Her concern is that the EU is becoming “a migration state writ large and that governing migration is pushing the project toward the Westphalian model” as “the EU intensifies its own fortress by increasingly hardening EU borders” (ibid.: 1380).