HOW DOES BORDER „OCCUR“? THE DETERRITORIALISED EUROPEAN BORDER REGIME AND MIGRANT’S TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL SPACES (2012-2015)
Prof. Julia Eckert, Simon Affolter M.A., David Loher M.A., Lic. rer. soc. Simone Affolter
In contemporary European border regimes, border control practices are no longer restricted to the proper geo-politcal border, but relocated and deterritorialised. Nonetheless, undocumented migration towards Europe persists. Unsurprisingly, migrants as mobile subjects exercise their transnational mobility and continue to cross borders. Although not part of the EU, Switzerland is integrated in manifold ways in and part of these European border regimes. Taking the relocation and deterritorialisation of borders as a starting point, the project studies three exemplary modes of doing borders in relocated and deterritorialised border regimes.
The first subproject studies the externalisation of border regimes in the transnational space of mobility between Tunisia and Switzerland. In particular, it focuses on the negotiation of so-called voluntary return migration.
The second subproject analyses internalised border control practices. It studies camps for asylum seekers in Switzerland and reads them as border zones within the state. It asks how power relations are inscribed in everyday interactions between officials and rejected asylum seekers.
The research of the third subproject focuses on the persisting permeability of the border in the European border regime. It analyses the governance of seasonal labour migration of undocumented migrants from Eastern and South-eastern Europe in the agricultural sector of Switzerland.
The multi-perspective approach allows to grasp the complexity of the European border regime. It provides in theory and empirical data new insights into the interdependencies between undocumented migrants’ transnational social spaces and border control practices.
Link to the Project