Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ing between the EU and the third country in question (Guild 2001; Guild, Groenendijk,
and Carrera 2009). Yet, strikingly, no information can be found in the otherwise rather
transparent communication channels oftheEUonwhyandhowthis list wasmade, des-
pite its obvious far-reaching consequences. Nor is it clear what criteria are being used
to move from the black to the white list. Recently, the EU changed the wording of this
di-visionary view of the world, from a black/white list to a positive/negative list. The
wording may be less racial, but this does not alter the intentions and the discriminatory
effects of this apartheid geopolitics (see also Hansen 2004). With this list, the EU has
created a dichotomous border of in-out, a digital 1-0. In so doing, the biopolitical bor-
der that is constructed selects and prioritises people and social relations in the world.
The EU thus, in terms of access, unjustly discriminates against people by their country
of origin. To base a territorial politics in this time and age on one's place of birth is not
only archaic, as we increasingly live in a trans-national world, but also immoral, as it
regulates and thereby destines the lives of humans on the mere fate of where they were
born. Such nativist geopolitics has perhaps most powerfully and influentially been cri-
ticised by Joseph Carens in his well-cited 1987 article in which he convincingly argued
against a politics based on the lottery of birth.
Figure 7.1
EU's divisionary borderland by EU (Schengen) visa access (source: European Council
Regulation No 851/2005 of 2 June 2005 amending Regulation No 539/2001. Map from
ht-
