Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the EU is being combined with an increasingly machine-like external border control.
Current political forces in the EU have expressed a key interest in attracting the high
potentials and some low-cost labour migrants on the one hand and control ling the “re-
dundant” and allegedly difficult to integrate “non-Western” immigrants and refugees on
the other hand in order to preserve social cohesion and protect national labour markets
withinEuropeanborders.Inaddition,althoughthereisnoproofwhatsoeverofaconnec-
tion between labour-market immigration and undocumented migration on the one hand
and terrorism on the other hand, it can be ascertained that the post-9/11 (attacks in New
York and Washington, DC), post-3/11 (attacks in and around Madrid), and post-7/7 (at-
tacks in London) anxieties over global terrorism and security issues have only further
strengthened the restrictive and increasingly di-visionary global border regime of the
EU. This has resulted in a policy that is so focused on a strict border regime and assim-
ilation that the migration motives of those who want to enter the EU are merely being
categorised into a globally defined border between productive/unproductive, friendly/
fiendish, and good/bad, with the direct dichotomous consequence of being allowed en-
trance or not. The restrictive and increasingly global apartheid geopolitics combined
with a neoliberal cherry-picking policy outside the EU is unjust from both the global
economic welfare and a normative point of view, as it sustains and reproduces global
inequality, material, and symbolic segregation and reproduces a discrimination on the
lottery of birth. In addition, this newly engaged global “war” against unwanted or irreg-
ular migration has become falsely and illegitimately intertwined with the global “war”
againstterrorism.Suchaclimateinitselfisnothelpful,tosaytheleast,eitherindestroy-
ing any possible seedbed for discriminatory practices and attitudes toward the Stranger
inside the EU or in diminishing the global inequality. This b/ordering and othering ma-
chine of the EU is co-constructing more not less “illegality,” xenophobia, and fear. The
politics of desire for comfort, identity, and security and of fear for the invading other, as
it is currently framed, is mutually constitutive and hence continuous: without the identi-
fication and targeting of “waste” there is no clean(s)ing desire and vice versa. The self-
declared “combat” is being fought with increasingly higher fences, bigger army tools,
and a growing number of detention and expel centres.
ThecurrentlargelyexclusionarycharacteroftheglobalworldvisionoftheEUmakes
the borders between the EU and its (Near) Abroad(s) spatially extremely press ing and
edgy. A new landscape of control has come into existence. The migrants for whom this
newlandscapeofborderpoliticsconcernsoftencreativelyusethenewframesofcontrol
such as bio-metrical body controls, boat patrol, and camps to their own advantage. No
matter how high the wall may be, there is no wall high enough to block off migration.
Migrants adapt to the new rules, invent personalities, disidentify themselves by throw-
ing away their papers, or even crudely erase their finger reliefs in order to avoid finger
