Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
such, associated with a fear of losing comfort and a community's self-defined identity.
These perceived threats to a community's comfort lead to the politicisation of protec-
tion, whereby the terra incognita beyond the border is justifiably neglected due to the
indifference shown and the intentional blindness to the outside. Over land and sea this
fear manifests itself physically in the installation of a barbed-wired gate, making it dif-
ficulttoapplyforentrance intotheEUfactory.Overtime,thedissolutionoftheinternal
barbed wire in the EU and the Iron Curtain between West and East Europe has been re-
placed by new barbed wire and what some define as a new Golden Curtain between EU
andnon-EU.Regardless ofwhetherthatmetaphorisappropriate ornot,itdoesalludeto
the commercialisation of politics, what Slavoj Žižek has called the postpolitical society
that the EU has become (Žižek 1999).
Death at the Border
To guard the newly installed barbed wire, the European Agency for the Management
of Operational Cooperation at External Borders of the Member States of the European
Union (FRONTEX), which was installed a few years ago, has become increasingly im-
portant. The Agency's mission is defined as:
FRONTEX coordinates operational cooperation between Member States in the
fieldofmanagementofexternalborders;assistsMemberStatesinthetrainingof
national border guards, including the establishment of common training stand-
ards; carries out risk analyses; follows up the development of research relevant
forthecontrolandsurveillanceofexternalborders;assistsMemberStatesincir-
cumstances requiring increased technical and operational assistance at external
borders; and provides Member States with the necessary support in organising
joint return operations.… FRONTEX strengthens border security by ensuring
the coordination of Member States' actions in the implementation of Commu-
nity measures relating to the management of the external borders.
Hence, the goal of FRONTEX is to strive for an overall enhanced common effective
ness and efficiency in controlling the EU's external border; the goal is to come to a pan-
European model of integrated border security. To this end, FRONTEX also works with
what they call RABITs, an acronym for Rapid Border Intervention Teams. The analogy
with the term rabbits is striking. Such an implicit (or explicit) animalisation and dehu-
manisation of border control is worrying, yet not uncommon (see also Papadopoulos,
Stephenson, and Tsianos 2008). The empowerment of state power through animal rep-
resentations and metaphors has long been used by nation-states. Most of the nation-
states would have an animal (e.g., a bear, eagle, cock, lion) as their national animalistic
Search WWH ::




Custom Search