Security At The Borders

Philippe M. Frowd shows how tightening border security in West Africa is a statebuilding practice, underpinned by international and local security officials and technologies.

Drawing on the concept of the ‘politics of compassion’, this Handbook interrogates the political, geopolitical, social and anthropological processes which produce and govern borders and give rise to contemporary border violence.

This book focuses on security practices, civil liberties and the politics of borders in liberal democracies. In the aftermath of 9/11, security practices and the denial of human rights and civil liberties are often portrayed as an exception to liberal rule, and seen as institutionally, legally and spatially distinct from the liberal state. Drawing upon detailed empirical studies from migration controls, such as the French waiting zone, Australian off-shore processing and US maritime interceptions, this study demonstrates that the limitation of liberties is not an anomaly of liberal rule, but embedded within the legal order of liberal democracies. The most ordinary, yet powerful way, of limiting liberties is the creation of legal identities, legal borders and legal spaces. It is the possibility of limiting liberties through liberal and democratic procedures that poses the key challenge to the protection of liberties. The book develops three inter-related arguments. First, it questions the discourse of exception that portrays liberal and illiberal rule as distinct ways of governing and scrutinizes liberal techniques for limiting liberties. Second, it highlights the space of government and argues for a change in perspective from territorial to legal borders, especially legal borders of policing and legal borders of rights. Third, it emphasizes the role of ordinary law for illiberal practices and argues that the legal order itself privileges policing powers and prevents access to liberties. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, social and political theory, political geography and legal studies, and IR in general.

This book explores and maps the relationship between borders, security and global governance. Theoretically, the book seeks to establish to what degree, and in what ways, traditional notions of borders, security and (global) governance are being eroded, undermined and contested in the context of a globalising world. Borders are increasingly being re-conceptualised to account for connectivity as well as divisions at the same time as focus is shifting from permanence to permeability. The ambivalence ascribed to bordering processes is at heart a security concern; borders are not only entwined with state formation but are also attempts at governing securities, identities and histories. Proceeding from a critical rendering of statist conceptualisations of borders, security and governance, the book not only emphasises the politics of borders, mobility and re-locations, but also provides a shared groundwork for interrogating the spatial conditions for bordering and border work as manifestations of a continuously deferred becoming rather than being. A principal contribution of the volume is its scrutiny of how borders are enacted and perceived in and through the everyday, and of how such production and construal can make sense as acts of resistance to various forms of governing. Such a focus reveals the necessity of investigating how governing from afar affects the possibilities and tendencies to securitise as well as desecuritise, within as well as beyond elite settings. This book will be of much interest to students of border studies, human geography, governmentality, global governance and IR/critical security studies.

This book is a unique and original examination of borders and bordering practices in the Western Balkans prior to, during, and after the migrant "crisis" of the 2010s. Based on extensive, mixed-method, exploratory research in Serbia, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, and Kosovo, the book charts technological and human interventions deployed in this region that simultaneously enable and hinder the mobility projects of border crossers. Within the rich historical context of the Balkan Wars and subsequent displacement of many people from the region and beyond, this book discusses the types and locations of borders as well as their development, transformation, and impact on people on the move. These border crossers fall into three distinct categories: people from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia transiting the region; citizens of the Western Balkans seeking asylum and access to labour markets in the EU; and women border crossers. This book also maps border struggles that follow these processes, analyses the creation of labour "reserves" in the region, and examines the role that technology – in particular smartphones and social media - play in regulating mobility and creating social change. This volume also explores the role of the EU in, and the impact of the aforementioned processes on nation-states of the Western Balkans, their European future, and mobility in the region. Whilst the book focusses on a particular region in Southeast Europe, its findings can be easily applied to other social contexts and settings. It will be particularly useful to academics and postgraduate students studying social sciences such as criminology, sociology, legal studies, law, international relations, political science, and gender studies. It will also be useful for legal practitioners, NGO activists, and government officials.

Border security has been high on public-policy agendas in Europe and North America since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and on the headquarters of the American military in Washington DC. Governments are now confronted with managing secure borders, a policy objective that in this era of increased free trade and globalization must compete with intense cross-border flows of people and goods. Border-security policies must enable security personnel to identify, or filter out, dangerous individuals and substances from among the millions of travelers and tons of goods that cross borders daily, particularly in large cross-border urban regions. This book addresses this gap between security needs and an understanding of borders and borderlands. Specifically, the chapters in this volume ask policy-makers to recognize that two fundamental elements define borders and borderlands: first, human activities (the agency and agent power of individual ties and forces spanning a border), and second, the broader social processes that frame individual action, such as market forces, government activities (law, regulations, and policies), and the regional culture and politics of a borderland. Borders emerge as the historically and geographically variable expression of human ties exercised within social structures of varying force and influence, and it is the interplay and interdependence between people's incentives to act and the surrounding structures (i.e. constructed social processes that contain and constrain individual action) that determine the effectiveness of border security policies. This book argues that the nature of borders is to be porous, which is a problem for security policy makers. It shows that when for economic, cultural, or political reasons human activities increase across a border and borderland, governments need to increase cooperation and collaboration with regard to security policies, if only to avoid implementing mismatched security policies.

This edited volume analyzes recent key developments in EU border management. In light of the refugee crises in the Mediterranean and the responses on the part of EU member states, this volume presents an in-depth reflection on European border practices and their political, social and economic consequences. Approaching borders as concepts in flux, the authors identify three main trends: the rise of security technologies such as the EUROSUR system, the continued externalization of EU security governance such as border mission training in third states, and the unfolding dynamics of accountability. The contributions show that internal security cooperation in Europe is far from consolidated, since both political oversight mechanisms and the definition of borders remain in flux. This edited volume makes a timely and interdisciplinary contribution to the ongoing academic and political debate on the future of open borders and legitimate security governance in Europe. It offers a valuable resource for scholars in the fields of international security and migration studies, as well as for practitioners dealing with border management mechanisms.