global apartheid

There is a double-bind of the same kind inherent in the very notion of the circulation of persons. The problem lies not so much in the difference in treatment between the circulation of commodities or capital and the circulation of people, as the term circulation is not used here in the same sense. It is, rather, the fact that in spite of computer networks and telecommunications, capital never circulates without a plentiful circulation of human beings – some circulating ‘upwards’, others ‘downwards’. But the establishment of a world apartheid, or a dual regime for the circulation of individuals, raises massive political problems of acceptability and resistance.

Balibar, “What is a Border?” in Politics and the Other Scene, 82.

cfp – Migration without Boundaries at Michigan State

Call for papers

MSU Graduate Student Research Conference on Migration

“Migration Without Boundaries”

 October 5-6^th, 2012, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Michigan State University will host a graduate student research conference on migration, welcoming papers on the theme, “Migration Without Boundaries.” This conference aims to facilitate and foster an interdisciplinary, trans-institutional cohort of scholars interested in issues of migration and mobility. The organizers of this conference invite papers from scholars at any stage in their graduate career, working on any thematic, conceptual, spatial, or temporal aspect of migration, from any disciplinary perspective. Advanced undergraduate students are also welcome to apply.

Submissions may include research proposals, research designs, dissertation or thesis chapters, methodological models, work in progress, outlines of dissertations, and preliminary research findings. Michigan State University has over 30 renowned faculty members that work on migration, many of whom will serve as discussants. The conference will feature keynote speaker Dr. Rhacel Parrenas of the Sociology department at the University of Southern California on the evening of Friday, October 5^th, and a plenary session and paper sessions on Saturday, October 6^th.

Applicants should submit abstracts including the author’s name, address, institutional affiliation, stage in program, email address, and phone number. Abstracts should be limited to 250 words. A $20 conference fee can be paid online through the conference website upon acceptance.

Students may also consider submitting a panel proposal, including an abstract for the panel and an abstract for each paper presenter. The panel abstract should include a statement about the panel topic and a brief summary of the arguments to be explored by contributing papers.

If you wish to be considered for a travel award, please provide a brief statement of need with application. Please submit abstracts by July 16^th, 2012, invitations will be sent by August 1^st, and we will require attendance confirmation by August 30^th. Papers should be sent to panel commentators by September 17^th, to allow faculty discussants ample time for consideration.

Abstract Due: Monday, July 16^th, 2012

Email submissions and questions to: migrationwithoutboundaries@gmail.com

To download a PDF version of this call for papers click here and for more information visit our Facebook page here.

This conference has been sponsored by the MSU History Department, the Sociology Department, the Asian Studies Center and The Center for Eastern European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CEERES).

Cultures, Migrations, Borders Summer School – Greece

Summer School (website)
Cultures, Migrations, Borders
Lesbos, Greece
June 28 – July 10, 2012

For Master and Ph.D. students in the social sciences

The University of the Aegean and the University of Amsterdam welcome applications for the Summer School ‘Cultures, Migrations, Borders’ that will take place on the island of Lesbos from June 28 to July 10, 2012.

The larger socioeconomic transformations in Africa and Asia have resulted in increased migration flows to Greece and to Europe in general. Greece and the Aegean Sea have served as one of the entry “gates” of Europe, as its geographical position is at the crossroads of populations and cultures. These border crossings have become hot debates especially under the current crisis as they are intertwined with issues of culture and identity formation, the European Union and state policy, and constructions of Otherness. By drawing on an increasing interest in the study of cultures, migrations and borders, our summer course examines how migrations shape and are shaped by processes of boundary formation in a variety of cultural encounters.

The programme of the course is structured around four thematic axes:
a. Theoretical and methodological issues in the study of migration and borders
b. Institutional and political aspects of the migratory condition
c. People on the move, immigrant groups, refugees and host communities
d. Cross cultural encounters across borders and interactions of host/immigrant on the border

In addition, fieldtrips will form the basis for project preparation and presentation. Students will be able to visit and study a reception centre for refugees, experience border life and the reality of border crossing from Greece to Turkey, and learn about the cultural heritage of Lesbos. They will gain practical experience, develop research skills, and learn how to place their findings within wider local and global processes, while they acquaint themselves with life on an Aegean island. Ph.D. students will have the opportunity to present their work at a seminar designed for their needs.

Additional information on the programme, costs, accommodation and the application form can be found at http://migbord2012.pns.aegean.gr

Deadline for applications: May 31, 2012.

Lecturers:
Dr. Bakalaki Alexandra (Social Anthropology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Dr. Bampilis Tryfon (Cultural Anthropology, University of Leiden)
Dr. Bellas Christos (Economics, University of the Aegean)
Prof. Cowan Jane (Social Anthropology, University of Sussex)
Dr. Dimova Rozita (Social Anthropology, Humboldt University)
Prof. Green Sarah (Social Anthropology, University of Manchester)
Dr. Kalir Barak (Sociology/Social Anthropology, University of Amsterdam)
Dr. Lindo Flip (Sociology/Social Anthropology, University of Amsterdam)
Dr. Myrivili Lenio (Cultural Technology, University of the Aegean)
Dr. Moutafi Vassiliki (Social Anthropology, University of the Aegean)
Prof. Papataxiarchis Evthymios (Social Anthropology, University of the Aegean)
Dr. Petrakou Electra (Political Geography, University of the Aegean)
Dr. Petridou Elia (Social Anthropology, University of the Aegean)
Dr. Plexousaki Effie (Social Anthropology, University of the Aegean)
Dr. Rozakou Katerina (Social Anthropology, University of the Aegean)
Dr. Strating Alex (Sociology/Social Anthropology, University of Amsterdam)
Dr. Trubeta Sevasti (Sociology, University of the Aegean)

For enquiries pls send e-mail to: migbord2012@aegean.gr
We would appreciate it if you forwarded this information to interested colleagues and students.
Thank you!
The organizing committee

why ‘interpersonal racism’ isn’t the problem

Here are four statements about race and the recent series of hate crimes that it seems few people, if anyone, is talking about:

• American culture is obsessed with pop-psychology and the concomitant pathologizing of race and racism.
• George Zimmerman’s feelings had nothing to do with whether Trayvon Martin’s murder was racist or not.
• Hate crime legislation places primary definitional power on motivation, precisely as a move to re-establish, secure, and consolidate white supremacy once again in the legal system.
• The recent media coverage of a number of apparent “racially motivated” hate crimes is merely laying bare what millions of everyday people already know by the fact of their continued subordination in a system of national and global apartheid.

As I’ve written about before, racism is about power, not personal feelings of bias or prejudice. I define racism with my students as a political technology of division and hierarchization that specifically utilizes the nexus of skin color, language, national origin, and perceived “essential characteristics” as a way to effect the distribution of power. In theory this means that in different contexts the racial hierarchy can be expressed differently (as in black racism towards whites, etc.). However – and here’s the key point – the globe has developed through a specific set of contingent historical events that lead racism to express itself as a white vs. other relationship that distributes power clearly towards whites.

And this is the problem.

Interpersonal racism is merely one tactic belonging to a specific subset of strategies to ensure racial privilege continues to tip in favor of whites. Racism, therefore, is not a psychological phenomenon; so-called interpersonal racism is merely an expression of systemic racial exclusion and oppression. Which is why it does not matter, at all, whether Zimmerman dislikes black people, or that because he is Latino he can’t be racist, or whatever argument is mobilized for or against him.

Allowing racism to be an individual phenomenon of motivations is to ignore what structures both those feelings and the systems that privilege white people. It allows us to dismiss or valorize someone like Zimmerman as either a “lone gunman” or a “neighborhood watch leader acting in self defense.” It allows for the resolution of the specific case, in either direction – guilty or not guilty – without fundamentally altering the underlying racial structure. It allows the fact that Martin was killed by Zimmerman in a gated community, itself an expression of white racial privilege, to go unquestioned. It allows for the racialization of  clothing as expressions of criminality. Most importantly, it allows “stand your ground” laws to go fundamentally unchallenged as a tactic to further the re-establishment of white supremacy in areas where white hysteria is fueled by economic fluctuation, dishonest politicians, and manipulative organizations (ALEC, the NRA, etc.). And it allows the police – everywhere guilty of racialized violence in service to white supremacy – to protect white murderers because all they have to do is claim a generalized fear in the presence of black bodies to justify their violence.

Whether or not Zimmerman goes to jail or not should not be the rubric of the success or failure of Justice. Yes, there is a kind of justice to be had in ensuring proper legal procedures are followed; but it is a weak justice, a procedural justice. Justice in this case is nothing short of the overthrow of the system of white supremacy, which cannot be achieved in the courtroom or the statehouse, in the Senate or Congress. It will be achieved only through the unflinching contestation of white supremacy wherever it expresses itself, including in those spaces of national exclusion (the border), on the street, in the classroom, and so on. It involves, as merely first steps, cop-watch programs, strong citizen oversight of the police, the de-militarization and disarmament of the police.

So, it doesn’t matter if Zimmerman is a “racist” or not. Or whether the perpetrators of bias crimes (see a few below) acted alone or not. It has everything to do with the fact that these kinds of crimes are expressions of a system of global apartheid that, in America, is often racialized along a black/white color line. Attempting to find the psychological motivations for such cases misses the point entirely, and allows for white supremacy to go fundamentally unacknowledged and unexamined.

*****

Some recent cases:

Trayvon Martin case (here)

Vigilantism at the US/Mexico border (here, here, and here)

Hate crimes at Ohio State

Arson targeting Muslim students (here, here)

Hale Cultural Center vandalism (here, here)

Interestingly, Zimmerman used the graffiti as part of his fundraising efforts (here, here)

John McNeil case in Geogria (here), where being black means “stand your ground” defenses don’t apply to you

US soldier murders 17 Afghan civilians (here)

Yale border barriers conference

How did I miss this??? “Walls and Fences: The Politics and Ethics of Border Barriers” at Yale University, April 13-14, 2012.

cfp – international conference on living with difference

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LIVING WITH DIFFERENCE
12-13 September 2012, Marriott Hotel, Leeds, UK

CONFERENCE THEME — how do we develop the capacity to live with difference?

We are witnessing an era of unprecedented population change. This is a product of the twin forces of the global economy and global conflicts which have accelerated patterns of international migration. Other forms of rapid population change are evident too. The historical shift from narrowly hierarchised forms of society to new modernities, in which individuals are assumed to be released from traditional constraints and to have more freedom to create their own individualized biographies, choosing between a range of lifestyles and social ties, has resulted in the more open public expression of a diverse range of social identities and ways of living (e.g. in terms of sexual orientation, disability, gender, religion and belief etc). In this context of super mobility and super-diversity, Stuart Hall (1993: 361) has claimed that ‘the capacity to live with difference is…the coming question of the 21st century’. It is an issue that is becoming even more pertinent given growing tensions arising from post 9/11 terrorism and subsequent Western military interventions and the current international financial crisis because historically there has been a hardening of attitudes towards ‘others’ and a rise in intolerance during times of crisis.

In this context one strand of interdisciplinary research has celebrated the potential for new hybrid cultures and ways of living together with difference to be forged. Yet, while an internalised globalisation of society has occurred at least in parts of many societies, not everyone has access to or sees themselves as part of this cosmopolitanism or will choose to participate in interactions with people different from themselves when such opportunities occur. Spatial proximity can generate positive intercultural encounters but it can also breed defensiveness and the bounding of identities and communities by generating or aggravating comparisons between different social groups in terms of perceived/actual access to resources.

We therefore invite papers from any discipline or geographical context that critically engage with this exciting topic to stimulate further debate about how societies can develop the capacity to live with difference, while also providing the chance to hear from leading thinkers on this topic.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Ash Amin
Zygmunt Bauman
Davina Cooper
Patricia Ehrkamp
Anne-Marie Fortier
Sophie Watson

THEMES
The conference will be organised around four strands:
•         Theorising and Researching Difference
•         Encounters with Difference
•         Contesting Values in the Public Sphere
•         Managing Difference: Socio-legal Responses

Potential topics for submissions might include, but are not limited to: identification and belonging; attitudes towards any form of diversity (e.g. sexual orientation, disability, gender, race and ethnicity, religion and belief, age etc.); embodied  encounters with difference; theories of cosmopolitanism; competing group rights claims; intercultural competencies; patterns of prejudice (e.g. homophobia, Islamaphobia, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, disablism, ageism etc.); concepts of tolerance and intolerance; structural challenges to inclusion; strategies for managing difference.

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 13 April 2012. Abstracts of up to 300 words should be emailed to geo-LIVEDIFFERENCE@leeds.ac.uk.  Abstracts should include a title, the presenter(s) institutional affiliation(s) and contact details and an indication of to which of the four conference themes the paper relates. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified in the week commencing 23 April 2012.

ACCOMMODATION AND REGISTRATION
Leeds has a great range of accommodation to suit all tastes and pockets.  Delegates will have the opportunity to make on-line reservations at best rates, on a selection of hotels that are being reserved for use by LIVEDIFFERENCE conference delegates.   Details of the hotels and booking process will be available on the conference registration pages.  Registration will open on 23 April 2012. The conference registration fee is £60 per day, with a reduced rate of £30 per day for postgraduates.  Fees include all day catering and a wine reception on day one.  Evening dinner and accommodation are not included.

ABOUT THE VENUE
From shopping and dining, to contemporary arts and a vibrant nightlife, Leeds offers something for everyone. The compact city centre is easy to explore, and boasts interesting architecture like the Leeds Town Hall, and the Victoria Quarter.   Attractions include sport, theatre and an eclectic music scene, alongside Leeds Art Gallery (which includes the Henry Moore Institute) and Leeds City Museum. Leeds is also less than 20 miles from the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. For more information about Leeds see http://www.visitleeds.co.uk/, and the surrounding attractions in the Yorkshire countryside see http://www.yorkshire.com/

Organised by:
This conference is organised on behalf of the European Research Council funded project – Living with Difference led by Professor Gill Valentine, with colleagues Johan Andersson, Aneta Piekut, Joanna Sadgrove, Alison Suckall, and Nichola Wood.

If you require further information or have any queries please contact either: Gill Valentine – g.valentine@leeds.ac.uk; or Alison Suckall – a.j.suckall@leeds.ac.uk
http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/projects/livedifference/

migration in control societies: governmentality without territory

I submitted an abstract for the 2012 International Geographical Congress (August 2012 in Cologne, Germany). It’s a huge conference, from what I gather, and they seem very concerned about the submissions being “cutting edge science.” So I have no idea if I’ll get in, but I figured I’d apply and see what happens.

*****

My abstract:

This paper responds to the call for research on the practices motivating and promoting changes in the management of international mobility, the social consequences for migrants and societies resulting from mobility-related practices, with a view toward elaborating normative ideas of a “no borders” politics.

Contemporary practices of policing migration flows no longer follow a logic of inclusion/exclusion because the border is no longer the primary site of enforcement and the goal of such practices is no longer to keep mobile populations out of a territory. Western (“receiving”) states rely instead on myriad techniques that implement three broad strategies: the internalization and externalization of policing, and the excision of territory. By shifting migration enforcement away from borders, the governance of human mobility has become dislocated from territory, contributing to the rapid rise in the securitization of migration precisely because of this dislocation. This paper explores various technologies of migrant policing and their relation to, production of, and ambivalence toward various territorialities. Using Gilles Deleuze’s analysis of “control societies,” the author orients these technologies as mechanisms that modulate population flows in ways that produce “inclusive exclusions” and “exclusive inclusions,” where migrant presence or absence is approached as a process of filtration rather than exclusion. The author argues that these control mechanisms, or modulating technologies, help to produce a generalized condition of precarity, which facilitates state and economic interventions that would not otherwise be possible. The paper concludes with a consideration of potential political subjectivities produced by and through governmentality without territory. Rather than a project of “open borders,” the author explicitly locates these subjectivities as operating in a politics of “no borders,” paralleling the territorially dislocated technologies of population modulation. New spaces, literally and figuratively, for politics and resistance are opened as an incitement toward articulating a stronger “no borders politics.”

*****

Session Information:

Title: Free Flow or Better Stay at Home? Changing Practices in the Management of International Mobility

Abstract: This session discusses new developments in the field of mobility and migration politics. The international governance or ‘management’ of human mobility is based on the (re‐)construction of migrants as ‘risks’ and of cross‐border mobility as a ‘risky project’ for individuals and receiving societies. The trend to distinguish between the ‘openness’ to skilled migration (‘free flows’ across ‘smart borders’) and the ‘closure’ to unskilled workers obscures the convergence of apparently different state and non‐state policies and practices in creating categories that order human mobility. Contemporary state and non‐state practices of cross‐border mobility and migration are characterized by a high degree of complexity; they are based on a mix of traditional coercive and direct interventions (‘border management’) and less repressive and indirect practices. Mobility and migration ‘management’ takes place at mostly all political levels and scales: transnational, international, and national scales; the individual migrant ‘level’; social behavior and body politics (as illustrated e.g. by the use of large‐scale ‘information campaigns’ that promote ‘better stay at home policies’ or the increasing popularity of ‘medical pre‐departure screenings’). Against these material practices of control and regulation, migrants and the advocates for ‘free movement’ and ‘no borders’ are challenged to find their own creative spaces and answers to the question if and how migration should be regulated and how autonomous mobility projects can still be realized.

We invite contributions that analyze the (1) narratives and worldviews of recent mobility and migration politics; (2) key actors and practices motivating and promoting changes in the management of international mobility; (3) social consequences for migrants and societies resulting from mobility‐related discourses and practices; (4) spatial and multi‐level modes of mobility politics; and/or (5) normative ideas of the free and open cross‐border flow of people.

research statement – the figure of the refugee

I was working on this for a presentation in my department, which has since fallen through. But I thought I would post it here, as I found it to be a pretty useful exercise.

*****

As a scholar, I am primarily interested in the problematics of political transformation, in both actually-existing and ideal forms. My work aims toward understanding politics and political phenomena genealogically and/or archaeologically, using Foucault’s and Agamben’s approaches to understanding concepts, practices, and discourses. In particular, I have been trying to understand the development of borders and bordering practices as an aspect of political sovereignty, and how current developments in the enforcement of human mobility would change that border/sovereignty relation. As a part of this project I have been studying European and American migration histories, popular and political responses to migration, and the laws and policies that enable specific regimes of policing practices. For my dissertation, I am turning toward a study of the figure of the refugee. This study explores the discourses of political membership from the point of view of politics’ excess populations, those deemed surplus to the constitution of a polity and expelled from a territory.

There are (at least) three basic strands to the dissertation. The first strand is to understand the phenomenon of forced displacement throughout history. Understanding, for example, the shift from an order of political exile of individuals to an order of mass displacement can illuminate changing patterns in politics, and lay bare some underexplored workings of the nation-state. I see the figure of the refugee as constituted by the nation-state, a state-effect, countering popular ahistorical assertions in the field of Refugee Studies that refugees have always existed. I also see the figure of the refugee, however, as an autonomous figure, marking the limits of the state and a potential revolutionary subject.

The second strand is to understand how the nation-state has operated through a process of interiorization, or the production of an interiority through a dual process of conquest and pacification. This is related to the first strand, in that this portion of the study is dedicated to the processes behind and discourses related to state formation itself. How and why is it that the process of state formation produces excess populations? This question is a step back from the preceding strand, from an understanding of the production of the refugee subject to an understanding of the production of the nation-state as the primary institution governing human movement. In other words, a move from the subject to the structural milieu.

The third strand is a consideration of the figure of the refugee as part of a coherent global system of complementary, but distinct, structures of state and capital. I argue that the effect of nation-state formation and continual processes of primitive accumulation is the production of an ever-growing surplus population. Unlike past eras, however, today’s surplus populations have nowhere to go, and therefore exist as an exterior population present in the interior. This phenomenon is what has given rise to a novel regime of contradictory practices of policing, monitoring, and controlling migration flows. The surplus population in past eras were expelled and, generally, only open to primitive accumulation after state formation; now, however, with states encompassing the entire territorial scope of the globe, there is no longer room for state formation, but capital would like to enclose, productivize, and capture surplus populations nonetheless. This means that globalization is not merely the shift to an immaterial or information economy, but is also the making-refugee of the economy. This process is ongoing, and opens up a vast and growing population of peoples to class conflict, but the composition of this “class” must be produced in conjunction with flexible workers in the knowledge economy.

To sum up, the questions posed in the dissertation revolve around a set of interlocking questions:

• What are the mechanisms, technologies, and practices by which states have mobilized to control human mobility? What can we learn about the state, power, and politics from these practices?
• How are states and capital operating in distinct, complementary, and contradictory ways that produce precarious migration flows, and how does this form of precarity articulate with longer-standing forms of labor flexibilization? How can we weaponize this precarity against capital and the state?
• How can political thought be opened into new directions by beginning with the figure of the refugee, rather than, for example, the citizen?

borders and boundaries: fetishizing the material

In a post on 8/15/11, I tried to gesture toward thinking borders through Agamben’s Stanzas, and in an even earlier post (4/18/11; a panel talk delivered at AAG 2011) I made the claim that borders do not exist.

The problem I am trying to work through is a phenomenon addressed in different ways by Wendy Brown (in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty) and Reece Jones (in the forthcoming Border Walls). Essentially, the phenomenon of bordering implies something that in practice is both impossible and impractical: the physical, actual exclusion of bodies from a territory. We already know from the work of Mat Coleman, Didier Bigo, Alison Mountz, and others that immigration and refugee policing no longer happens at the border. Instead, borders as exclusionary sites marking an interior and exterior have transformed into borders that exist on/within the body of the immigrant or refugee, and require specific technologies, techniques, and practices to actualize the border in a policing event. As Coleman, citing Heyman and others, notes, the majority of immigration policing happens on the interior (in non-border states) through traffic stops and other domestic spheres – rather than at the border or in the workplace. So what relevance is a border if the border is, in a sense, everywhere?

“Edges matter,” as Edward Casey notes in a recent article in Environment and Planning D, “Border versus Boundary at La Frontera.” But he asks an important question: “Edges are not parts of matter or space (if anything, they mark the moment when matter gives way to empty space); they have mainly to do with the differences between things. But what are they, positively put” (384)? He differentiates between a border and a boundary thusly:

• border – “a clearly and crisply delineated entity…established by conventional agreements, such as treaties or laws; thus…a product of human history and its vicissitudes.” (385)
• boundary – can have “cultural and historical parameters” but is often “natural in status”…”rarely demarcated with any precision, varying in contour and extent… porous in character… lacks exact positioning.” (385)

I think, at this moment, this is a good distinction that can be adopted somewhat unproblematically (or as much as anything can be unproblematic…). Where Casey’s work is especially interesting is how he locates borders as “an expression of state power” (386), and details a fundamental ambiguity between border and boundary. He posits a spectrum rather than a strict dichotomy:

boundary/borderland/BORDER/walls & fences/border-line

He clarifies:

“At the left end of this spectrum we have terms that approximate to edges that are porous and malleable…On the right end, closure and exactitude are prized…” (389)

Essentially, a border, then, is a construction, an impulse, a fetish, that has a materiality but is ultimately contingent. A will to border, rather than a phenomenological border.

Casey retains an emphasis on a distinction between border and boundary – the terms mean something, and the materiality of the phenomenon does differ. His analysis is best read as, perhaps, an argument for the understanding of bordering practices (including walls and fences) along with borderlands (as an ambiguous space with unique geographies and cultural phenomena – i.e. Anzaldua). However, what remains ambiguous in his essay, and is indeed taken up in the responses by Michael Dear, Mat Coleman, and Roxanne Doty in the same issue, is the fact that contemporary policing practices that do not adhere to borders (lines, fences, walls, checkpoints) are part of the borderlands. But what happens when the borderlands is everywhere?

Some questions, in no particular order:

How do we conceptualize borders as a materiality without substance? Can we?

How do we reconcile the utter failure of bordering in preventing mass migration/movement, the effectiveness of certain bordering practices at keeping some (and I stress some) people out of a defined space/territory, and the reality of interior policing practices being the primary site for population management?

What is the relation between the State and borders? What is the relation between the State and interior enforcement? If there is, as I suspect, a different set of relations for each practice, do we have to change our understanding of the State?

I especially appreciated the following quote, given my discussion of Agamben’s Stanzas and the fetishization of the border:

“All the personnel employed at or near the wall are expected to pursue certain goals in common… These goals include accuracy in the demarcation of the border and the policing and surveillance of the entire border region with regard to national security, illegal drug importation, and immigration control. All of these fiercely held goals converge in making the border itself ever more definite and known as something that is objectively and unquestionably there – and presented as such. In all this concerted activity, it is as if La Frontera [the US/Mexico border] has been fetishized as an object in itself – but, finally, more an ideal object, an asymptote or regulative ideal, a sheer limit, than a material entity. The wall bears the brunt of the materiality, but the border itself, insofar as it is distinguishable from the wall, is regarded as untouchable and invisible – as is true of any pure border. In the case of La Frontera, the border as an ideal object acts to protect and sanction…vested interests…as if to legitimate these interests by this very act of idealization. So as not to keep the border entirely in the ideal realm, such concrete entities as walls and border markers are created and continually invoked, anchoring what would otherwise be abstractly projected as ideal.” (387)

the risky individual in the Schengen regime

Elspeth Guild and Didier Bigo, “Collectively Specifying the Individual: The Schengen Border System and Enlargement,” in  Malcolm Anderson and Joanna Apap, Police and Justice Co-Operation and the New European Borders (New York: Kluwer Law International, 2002): 121-138.

 *****     *****      *****     *****      *****     *****      *****     *****      *****     *****

Guild and Bigo provide a basic framework for understanding the Schengen agreements and the basic problems of their implementation, continued interpretation, and conflicting national/international claims. More specifically, they explore the way EU Member States specify which individuals constitute security threats and the problem of an international border regime that operates through mutual recognition of national decisions rather than international harmonization [nb: which may, since 2002, be less of a problem than when the article was written].

They note that “[t]he EU objective as regards movement of persons is the creation of a common territory without internal borders (at least not at the frontiers between the Member States) accompanied by one common external frontier” (121). The entire experiment of the creation of the European Union is based in the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital, and as Guild and Bigo make clear, the initial implementation of an (EU internal) open borders regime in the early 1990s was held up specifically due to disagreements over the free movement of persons – not goods, services, or capital. The stumbling block was the question of security.

Guild and Bigo outline three principles regarding the free movement of persons, “achieved through the deployment of four tools.” The principles are (125-126):

1. “No third country national should gain access to the territory of the Schengen States (with or without a short stay visa) if he or she might constitute a security risk for any one of the States;”

2. “A presumption that entry across one Schengen external border constitutes admission to the whole territory and an assumption (not as high as a presumption in law) that a short stay visa issued by any participating state will be recognized for entry to the common territory for the purpose of admission (there are explicit exceptions justifying refusal specifically on security grounds;”

3. “Once within the common territory, the person is entitled to move within the whole territory for three months without a further control at the internal borders of the participating states (this rule is also subject to exceptions on grounds of security.”

The tools are (126):

1. “The Schengen Information System;”

2. “A common list of countries whose nationals require visas to come to the common territory for short stays (visits of up to three months); and a common list of those excluded from the requirement. The definitive black and white lists were achieved in December 1998;”

3. “A common format, rules on issue and meaning for a short stay visa;”

4. “Carrier sanctions.”

The focus of the Schengen regime, then, is on who is and should be excluded from the entire ‘territory’ of the European Union. It does this, as noted above, by a system based on each Member State recognizing the legitimacy of each other Member States’ claims of security and interests. In other words, if one Member State excludes a specific person, then all other EU members are obliged to uphold that decision, except in circumstances where right (i.e. to asylum) conflicts with arbitrary notions of security.

Schengen articulates three levels of exclusion:

1. Those specific persons appearing in the common list (in the Schengen Information System database) based on prior actions, associations, and/or status; [a priori individual exclusion]

2. Those persons not yet specifically excluded, but accepted as having the potential for risk; a system of visa restrictions keeps these populations in their own countries (away from the physical EU space), effectively moving the border to the embassy/consulate; [a priori group exclusion, allowing individual exceptions]

3. Those persons included in the exclusion lists by virtue of their citizenship in a State facing a group exclusion who are not granted visas. [a posteriori individual exclusion]

Visas in this formulation are a method of shifting the “effective border” from the EU Member States’ physical territories, to the interior of the applicant’s own State. This prevents “risks” from occupying EU space until they are deemed acceptable.

A problem within the Schengen regime has been the definition of risk. As noted, each Member State is able to define their own parameters for what/who constitutes a risk, which leads to conflicts at times between Member States (i.e. the recent event where France stopped the TGV at the Italian border because the train was filled with people fleeing the conflicts in North Africa) (131). Indeed, the only basic category agreed upon by the Member States is that, at some level, risk is defined as poverty: “As regards the identification of risk categories, the Common Consular Instructions states that ‘it is necessary to be particularly vigilant when dealing with ‘risk categories’ in other words unemployed persons, and those with no regular income etc.’ Thus, the most precise categorisation on mala fides persons who are profiled as a risk are the poor. These are the persons who will always menace the security of the Member States” (129).

Significantly, Schengen does not apply to long-term stays (beyond three months), although it has “substantial consequences” for long-stay visas and residence.

What is significant for the entire Schengen regime, one of the constituent ideas of the EU itself, is the fact that in the opening up of borders, the Member States must further codify (beyond day-to-day policing) what is desirable/undesirable in individuals wishing to access the European Union. Although Schengen identifies groups/nations deemed “risky,” the basic functioning of the entire regime is inscribed at the level of the individual body. Schengen does not begin with who is allowed, but rather with a specific category of risky individuals, the poor, who are then mapped upwards based on either human rights claims (as in family reunification, asylum, and so on) or their specific utility to the EU (as in their ability to be productive). In a rather significant way, then, entrance to the EU is determined according to the narrow space of those lucky enough not to be excluded, instead of in some sort of positivity. This means that one of the very founding pillars of the contemporary European Union is the exclusion of risky individuals, wherein risk is most concretely defined as poor.