In the real world, we can’t assume that existing boundaries are accepted, let alone that they will be accepted in perpetuity. Nor can we assume that people outside these boundaries have no desire or claim to enter the country. Any political theory which has nothing to say about these questions is seriously flawed.
(Kymlicka, 2001: 252)
Introduction: why talk about ‘borders’ now? Context and theoretical framework
Beyond the short-term implications, today’s human mobility and geopolitical transformation due to the Arab Spring is substantially altering the Mediterranean agenda. The 2011 events are not only transforming the dominant approach of the issue that was generally considered as valid until then.2 They are also giving increasing visibility to the region’s border management. In the context of the Western Mediterranean area, new heuristic instruments are needed in order to help interpret the new sense generated by the change of the notion of ‘border’.
This chapter seeks to precisely theorise about what we have called the conceptual dynamics of border in a world in motion. Needless to say that the most important conceptual change experienced during the last two decades lies in consideration of borders as complex political institutions that (dis)connect social spaces – not only in administrative terms but also in cultural, economic, functional, symbolic, identity and emotional terms. Territorial borders are no longer understood by the scientific community as static entities, as mere fixed lines on the map. Today, they have been conceptualised as a process, as a socially constructed reality in constant motion.
From a political theory point of view, this has remarkable implications. First, it has an effect on the very traditional notion of state sovereignty, which only makes sense due to the existence of a border that legitimises it. With an increasing human mobility among states, the notions of sovereignty and border have been devoid of a substantial symbolic part of their traditional meaning. This has led to a debate revolving around the notions of flexibilisation, or even relaxation (and even disappearance) of borders as the main elements within a policy and speak about managing movement, which entails the continuous movement of people. It should be said, however, that borders understood in terms of visas, citizenship, residence permits and physical control of the external perimeter of a state evidence the creation of new socio-spatial categories. In other words, they illustrate the new types of bordering (Wolff and Zapata-Barrero, 2011).
As a result, research on borders is no longer the analytical and descriptive exercise that it used to be (Minghi, 1963: Prescott, 1978). It has now become a field for scrutiny on the socio-spatial dynamics (Wastl-Walter, 2011). We are going from the idea of a static border line to the movement of bordering. In other words, the scientific approach related to borders is now entirely focused on the process of b/ordering (see for instance Paasi, 2005; Van Houtum et al., 2005: Newman, 2006).
Over the last two decades, the analysis of border dynamics in the EU has mainly revolved around the tensions between the logics of debordering/permeability and rebordering/impermeability that are often applicable to any state (Anderson et al., 2003). The free movement of nationals and third-country nationals within the EU (the so-called Schengen area) and the creation of an external common border have led to a series of geopolitical practices and discourses, often contradictory from a normative point of view (Wolff, 2010; Zapata-Barrero, 2010c). For years, the somewhat overused notions of ‘Europe without borders’ and ‘Fortress Europe’ have been applied simultaneously. The discourse on permeability vs impermeability, relaxation and intensification is still that applied to the EU and its borders, and more so in the Western Mediterranean.
In this scenario, the EU’s management of borders cannot only refer to the mere control of its external perimeter. Rather, it should be considered in a wider context within the EU’s external relations (Aubarell et al., 2009). There are countless examples to illustrate how the control and management of border expand simultaneously both inside and outside of the ‘bordered’ territory. The EU’s process of bordering is therefore taking place in origin, transit and destination. It is dissociated from the territorial border in its strict sense and adopts a slightly different approach, materialising in the drafting of cooperation agreements signed between the EU and third countries: in cyberspace; in biometric databases; in the polyphony of national and supranational geopolitical discourses on migration control; or in immigrant detention centres located both within and outside the EU borders (see different contributions in Zapata-Barrero and Ferrer, 2012).
The new dynamics of movement of workers that ‘come and go’ in a circular way (among the last works, see Constant, et al., 2012; Zapata-Barrero et al., 2012) also require new types of policies focused primarily on managing mobility rather than on the traditional territorial borders.
A theory on borders within the framework of the Western Mediterranean is therefore embedded in the changing constellation of EU practices and policies on migration and border management. It should not be forgotten that the multidisciplinary and multisemantic nature of the notion of border can become an important pitfall if there are no holistic considerations that give account to the plurality of approaches from where it can be tackled. It is commonplace to claim that research on borders is a field without borders (O’Neil, 1994: 71). The task of theorising might help put some order to the different approaches, subjects and arguments around it so that it may create a link with the different disciplines envisaged. It may also propose new theoretical frameworks aimed at evaluating strategic policies and actions related with borders.
The main goal is to theorise on what has already been conceptualised as Borders in Motion.3 Given this context, this chapter is based on the hypothesis that the relationship between politics and borders is being reshaped as a consequence of the movement of people between states. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to explore the link between the concept of ‘border’ and policies aimed at managing human mobility, taking the Western Mediterranean as the main geographical area case study.
Debates related to borders are perhaps one of the most visible signs that we are experiencing a process of change (Rumford, 2006). The way in which concepts and categories related to immigration policies are defined has always been related to borders.4 However, political theory has not given sufficient consideration to the concept. This ‘conspiracy of silence’ is extremely important, since most of the inconsistencies in liberal political theory are based on the consideration of borders (Kymlicka, 2001: 250). For example, it is surprising to note that the notion of ‘border’ has long been a concept taken for granted in modern debates on immigration.5
In order to theorise the conceptual dynamics of border, the concept will be first approached as a political category, and then some theoretical frameworks will be identified. I will then go on to discuss the arguments focusing on human mobility and border control to finally give some concluding remarks for further conceptual research.
Border as a political category
A system of categories can ideally be used to provide an inventory of reality – a catalogue of what exists in the world in itself (the Aristotelian tradition), or to conceptualise the world in order to understand it better (the Kantian tradition). It therefore has both an analytical and informative function, as it helps us to discern what is in reality vague and disjointed, while at the same time understanding some important aspects such as socio-economic conditions and inequalities in the world (inequalities of gender, social status, education, age, economic status, etc.). In analytical terms, the function of a category is to highlight something’s distinguishing feature. It is at this point that it becomes detached from its own etymology. Indeed, the ancient Greek word kategoria describes what could be said against someone in a court of law. This is the sense that Aristotle uses: what can be said of or about a subject, as a means to distinguish categories. More precisely, Aristotle created his list of political regime’s categories after distinguishing between the ‘different questions that can be asked of something’, and noting that ‘only a limited number of responses can be adequately given to any particular question’ (Ackrill, 1963: 78–79).
From the political standpoint, the task of categorising is not a neutral task. It always has a system of strategic intentions and is always based on specific explanatory purposes. Categorising immigrants as workers, for example, is not the same as categorising them simply as people, even when we categorise them as political and social actors. Describing migration flows as a system of categories directly related to the market, as when using demographic categories such as brain drain, social education and status and actions such as remittances, is also not the same as describing the flows according to a broader framework (beyond the market), introducing categories such as gender, religion, language, etc.
This political dimension of categories also means that it is the result of a process which expresses a way of interpreting the world, and also has a foundational dimension, in the sense that it can help with understanding social change. We can also use categories to express desiderata and to demand new approaches for the transformation of reality.
In short, considering all the above, every society uses a system of categories that are part of its structural cement, until there is a gradual process of change that makes it unsustainable, and a process of reflection on the foundations that anchor the categories system thereby begins. At that point, the categories that only had a descriptive and social aspect become political categories.
Perhaps the most visible evidence that the political category of the border has been one of the concepts taken for granted in the social sciences debate is that the concept itself is not often mentioned in the definition of the state. It is taken for granted when discussing what is required by a population, a territory and sovereignty to exercise power. Even in the classical Weberian definition of the state as the ‘monopoly of legitimate power in a territory’, the territory is assumed to be defined by a border. Today, the border has become a political category that is the subject of discussion. It may be the focus for political disagreements over its management when it is linked to human mobility. It is this link between concepts and politics that we aim to highlight in this chapter.
This means that it should be regarded as a category that helps to understand power relations and inequalities, such as the classic identity-based socio-economic categories like gender, skin colour, ethnicity, social class, religion, etc. If we therefore consider what kind of inequalities and power relations are related to the existence of borders, the answer is directly related to the social inequalities between developed and developing countries, including democracies and democratising countries. Likewise, the system of argument based on borders has a historical relationship with Europe’s colonial past. The drawing of borders was related to the separation of communities and the spread of European domination.
As a political category, the border has at least three properties: it is a primary political institution, it is a process and it is a functional notion.
First, it is an institution.6 In fact, I contend it is a primary political institution. As an institution, it involves at least three theses. First, the historical thesis: we state that there are no ‘natural boundaries’ and they have never existed. The notion of a ‘natural border’ is simply a political myth (Balibar, 2001: 174). Linking the border to a river or a mountain range is based on the desire to ‘naturalise’ a notion that is essentially political. In this process of naturalisation, its meaning is essentialised, to the point where just as it is impossible to change the course of a river or a mountain chain, the border ‘is there forever’. That means that as an institution, the border is primarily a historical category that must always be understood within its own biography, as a result of a particular history. Balibar (2001: 163) is correct to point out that borders have reached their ‘historical limit’, beyond which it is increasingly difficult for them to perform their internal and external functions.
The second idea can be formulated using the theory of stability: namely, that the border is not only an institution, but also a limit-institution. This expression comes from Balibar (2001: 174). The author asserts that borders (frontières) must be considered as limit-institutions, in the sense that “they must be able to remain stable while all other institutions are transformed: they must give the state the possibility of controlling movements and activities of citizens without themselves being subject to any control”. If we accept this stability thesis, when the institution becomes unstable (which basically means its original function is changing), as is the case at present, all other institutions that depend on this stability automatically become a subject for discussion. Finally, we come to the non-democratic thesis, in the sense that as institutions, borders are the result of an undemocratic decision.
In some respects, the stability thesis al...
