Euro-Crafting at Border Zones

The European Union is often conceptualised as an entity that is profoundly different from that of the modern state. Through a reading of the recent humanitarian crisis precipitated by large-scale migration into Greece, the paper challenges the understanding that the crafting of the European Union (‘Euro-crafting’) is qualitatively different from the crafting of the modern state. Conceptually, the paper proposes that Euro-crafting should be thought through in relation to practices of statecraft, instead of a priori postulated as qualitatively different from such practices. Putting such an understanding of Euro-crafting to work, the paper explores the recent humanitarian crisis precipitated by large-scale migration into Greece and demonstrates how practices of Euro-crafting mirror the major desire-driven practices of modern statecraft; practices of ordering, bordering, and identification. I would also like to thank the Graduate Research Support Program of the Graduate and Professional Student Association at Arizona State University for a travel grant. Finally, thanks to Lena Karlsson for help with the map. The usual disclaimer applies.Notes1. , accessed 18 June 2013.2. Charlemagne, ‘The Unstoppable Flow’, The Economist, 19 Feb. 2011.3. V. Schmidt, ‘Re-Envisioning the European Union: Identity, Democracy, Economy’, Journal of Common Market Studies 47 (2009) p. 24.4. S. Borg, ‘European Integration and the Problem of the State: Universality, Particularity, and Exemplarity in the Crafting of the European Union’, Journal of International Relations and Development (2013), AOP doi:10.1057.5. See for example L. Bialasiewicz, ‘Off-Shoring and Out-Sourcing the Borders of Europe: Libya and EU Border Work in the Mediterranean’, Geopolitics 17/4 (2012); X. Ferrer-Gallardo, ‘The Spanish-Moroccan Border Complex: Processes of Geopolitical, Functional and Symbolic Rebordering’, Political Geography 27/3 (2008); V. Kostadinova, ‘The Commission, ENP and Construction of Borders’, Geopolitics 14/2 (2009); M. Kuus, ‘Policy and Geopolitics: Bounding Europe in EUrope’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101/5 (2011),6. D. Mitrany, ‘The Prospect of Integration: Federal or Functional?’, Journal of Common Market Studies 4/2 (1965).7. N. Parker and R. Adler-Nissen, ‘Picking and Choosing the ‘Sovereign’ Border: A Theory of Changing State Bordering Practices’, Geopolitics 17/4 (2012).8. N. Parker and N Vaughan-Williams, ‘Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the “Lines in the Sand” Agenda’, Geopolitics 17/4 (2012) p. 729.9. Ibid., pp. 731–732. See also M. B. Salter, ‘Theory of the /:The Suture and Critical Border Studies’, Geopolitics 17/4 (2012) p. 735.10. See note 5.11. Bialasiewicz, ‘Off-Shoring and Out-Sourcing’ (note 5) p. 844.12. The way I use ‘discourse’ here follows the understanding of Laclau and Mouffe, on whose understanding of discourse there is nothing specifically linguistic about it. See E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso 1985). For a pioneering case for discourse analysis in European Integration Studies, see T. Diez, ‘Europe as a Discursive Battleground: Discourse Analysis and European Integration Studies’, Cooperation and Conflict 36/1 (2001). I am throughout the paper using ‘crafting’ instead of ‘writing’, to avoid any confusion about narrowly associating the enactment of Europe only with linguistic practices. My use of ‘crafting’ implies agreement with a poststructuralist insistence on examining the ways in which subjects are performatively enacted in all kinds of social practice.13. R. L. Doty, ‘Racism, Desire, and the Politics of Immigration’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28/3 (1999); R. L. Doty, Anti-Immigrantism in Western Democracies: Statecraft, Desire and the Politics of Exclusion (London: Routledge 2003).14. ‘UNHCR says asylum situation in Greece is “a humanitarian crisis”’, UNHCR Briefing Notes, 21 Sep. 2010, available at , accessed 10 June 2013.15. A. Triandafyllidou (ed.), Irregular Migration in Europe – Myths and Realities (Farnham: Ashgate 2010) p. 37.16. R. van Munster, Securitizing Immigration: The Politics of Risk in the EU (Houndmills: Palgrave 2009).17. A. Zolberg, ‘Matters of State: Theorizing Immigration Policy’, in C. Hirschman, P. Kasinitz, and J. DeWind (eds.), The Handbook of International Migration (New York: Russell Sage 1999).18. W. Walters, ‘Europe’s Borders’ in C. Rumford (ed.), The SAGE Handbook of European Studies (London: SAGE 2009) p. 496.19. L. Bialasiewicz, ‘Borders, Above All?’, Political Geography 30 (2011) p. 299.20. P. Fargues and C. Fandrich, ‘Migration after the Arab Spring’, MPC Research Report 9 (2012).21. See Ferrer-Gallardo (note 5).22. ‘The Battle for Libya: Killings, Disappearances, and Torture’, Amnesty International (London: Amnesty International 2011) p. 88.23. ‘Border Burden: Greece Struggles to Deal with a European Problem’, The Economist, 19 Aug. 2010.24. However, many more have died trying to come to Europe. Amnesty International estimated that at least 1,500 migrants had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, following the Arab Spring between March and September 2011. See Amnesty International (note 22) p. 88.25. UNHCR (note 14).26. ‘Coping with a Fundamental Rights Emergency – The Situation of Persons Crossing the Greek Land Border in an Irregular Manner’, Fundamental Rights Agency, Vienna (2011) p. 18.27. Interview, Athens, March 2011.28. The so-called Dublin II Convention stipulates that an asylum seeker cannot seek asylum in more than one EU Member state, and has to seek asylum in the country of entry.29. Council of Europe, ‘M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece’, Application no. 30696/09, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 21 Jan. 2011, available at , accessed 10 June 2013.30. European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union. FRONTEX is the EU’s agency for external border security, see further below.31. H. Friese and P. Wagner, ‘Survey Article: The Nascent Political Philosophy of the European Polity’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 10/3 (2002).32. H. Drake and Jacques Delors: Perspectives of a European Leader (London and New York: Routledge 2000) p. x.33. J. Zielonka, Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006) p. 5.34. S. Bartolini, Restructuring Europe: Centre Formation, System Building and Political Structuring between the Nation-State and the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005) p. xiii. See also P. Joenniemi, ‘Turning into a Sovereign Actor? Probing the EU Through the Lens of Neighbourhood’, Geopolitics 17/1 (2012).35. Ferrer-Gallardo (note 5). See also, for example, J. W. Scott, ‘Reflections on EU Geopolitics: Consolidation, Neighbourhood and Civil Society in the Reordering of European Space’, Geopolitics 16 (2011) p. 164.36. Kostadinova (note 5).37. F. Boedeltje and H. Van Houtum, ‘Brussels is Speaking: The Adverse Speech Geo-Politics of the European Union Towards its Neighbours’, Geopolitics 16 (2011).38. Borg (note 4).39. See P. Dunleavy and B. O’Leary, Theories of the State: The Politics of Liberal Democracy (Houndmills: Macmillan 1987); C. Hay, M. Lister, and D. Marsh (eds.), The State: Theories and Issues (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan 2006).40. M. Weber, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in The Vocation Lectures, trans. by R. Livingston (Indianapolis: Hackett 2004 [orig. 1919]).41. Zitierung: BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08 vom 30.6.2009, Absatz-Nr. (1 - 421), Federal Constitutional Court, available at , accessed 12 June 2013.42. Ibid.43. See Laclau and Mouffe (note 12); R. K. Ashley, ‘Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematic’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17/2 (1988); R. K. Ashley, ‘Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War’, in J. Der Derian and M. J. Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations – Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books 1989); T. Mitchell, ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics’, American Political Science Review 85/1 (1991); C. Weber, ‘Performative States’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27/1 (1998); D. Campbell, Writing Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1998); J. Painter, ‘Prosaic Geographies of Stateness’, Political Geography 25/7 (2006).44. A. Finlayson and J. Martin, ‘Poststructuralism’, in C. Hay, M. Lister, and D. Marsh, (eds.), The State: Theories and Issues (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 166.45. P. Abrams, ‘Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State’, Journal of Historical Sociology 1/1 (1988).46. Mitchell (note 43) p. 94.47. M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-79, ed. by M. Senellart, trans. by G. Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2008) p. 77.48. J. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1962). See also J. Derrida, ‘Declarations of Independence’, in Negotiations – Interventions and Interviews, 1971-2001, ed. and trans. by E. Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2002).49. Foucault (note 47).50. In IR this point has perhaps best been brought out by Richard Ashley; see, for example, his ‘Living on Border Lines’ (note 43).51. Doty, Anti-Immigrantism (note 13) p. 12. Doty’s work is in turn informed by Deleuze and Guattari; see in particular G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1983).52. I am here loosely drawing on the framework proposed by the so-called Las Cruces Group, namely; a focus on identities, orders, and borders. See M. Albert, D. Jacobson, and Y. Lapid (eds.), Identities, Borders, Orders-Rethinking International Relations Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001).53. Y. Lapid, ‘Introduction’, in M. Albert, D. Jacobson, and Y. Lapid (eds.), Identities, Borders, Orders-Rethinking International Relations Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001) p. 10.54. For the diversity of such approaches, see in particular Salter (note 9).55. Doty, ‘Racism, Desire’ (note 13) pp. 593–594.56. S. Toulmin, Cosmopolis (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1990).57. A. Sharma and A. Gupta (eds.), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell 2006) p. 10.58. Ibid., p. 27.59. Painter (note 43) p. 753.60. See C. Shore, ‘Transcending the Nation-State?: The European Commission and the (Re)-Discovery of Europe’, Journal of Historical Sociology 9/4 (1996); C. Shore, Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (London and New York: Routledge 2000); C. Shore, ‘Whither European Citizenship? Eros and Civilization Revisited’, European Journal of Social Theory 7/1 (2004).61. Shore, Building Europe (note 60).62. See, for example, N. Parker and N. Vaughan-Williams et al. ‘Lines in the Sand? Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies’, Geopolitics 4/3 (2009).63. Kuus (note 5) p. 1142.64. T. Maroukis, ‘Irregular Migration in Greece’, in A. Triandafyllidou (ed.), ‘Irregular Migration in Europe – Myths and Realities’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), p. 103. It should be noticed that the second instance was abolished altogether in 2009, but then reinstituted in 2011.65. ‘Attacks on Immigrants on the Rise in Greece’, New York Times, 1 Dec. 2010.66. Ibid., p. 103.67. The interviews were conducted in an open-ended, semi-structured manner, lasting between thirty minutes and an hour each.68. Two weeks after my visit, several hundreds of right-wing extremists attacked the centre, destroyed much of the things inside, sprayed the walls, and injured ten of the Somalis. Shortly thereafter, the centre closed down.69. H. Smith, ‘Illegal Migrants Risk Death for Right to Stay in Greece’, The Guardian, Sunday 6 March 2011.70. ‘Papoutsis, Besson, Malmström and Laitinen Visit RABIT Operational Area’, Press Release, FRONTEX, 5 Nov. 2010.71. ‘Plans for a Wall on Greece’s Border with Turkey Embarrass Brussels’, Guardian Weekly, 11 Jan. 2011.72. European Union, ‘Council Regulation (EC) No 2007/2004 of 26 October 2004 establishing a European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union’, Official Journal of the European Union. For a more extensive analysis of FRONTEX, see A. W. Neal, ‘Securitization and Risk at the EU Border: The Origins of FRONTEX’, Journal of Common Market Studies 47/2 (2009) pp. 333–356.73. Ibid., §5.74. Ibid., chap. 2, art. 2.75. ‘Hermes Extension: Joint Operations Background’, FRONTEX, 2011, available at , accessed on 5 June 2013.76. ‘Rabit Operation – Situational Update’, FRONTEX, Press Release, 12 Jan. 2011.77. M. Ertel and W. Mayr, ‘Shutting the Back Door to Fortress Europe’, Der Spiegel, 13 Jan. 2011.78. In July 2011 there had been three incidents of ‘facilitators’ opening fire on FRONTEX teams.79. H. Smith, ‘Fortress Europe: Greece Bids to Stem Migrant Surge from Turkey with Guns, Wire and a “Wall”’, The Observer, 5 Feb. 2011.80. ‘Ethics of Border Security’, Centre for the Study of Global Ethics University of Birmingham, Study Commissioned by Frontex, available at , accessed 5 June 2013.81. Refugee Council and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, ‘Joint Response to Select Committee on the European Union Sub-Committee F’, (Home Affairs): Frontex Inquiry, 24 Sep. 2007, p. 3.82. ‘Hermes Extension: Joint Operations Background’, FRONTEX.83. ‘Greece RABIT 2010 Deployment’, Frontex Press Kit – RABITS 2010 Deployment, p. 2.84. ‘Papoutsis, Besson, Malmström and Laitinen Visit RABIT Operational Area’, FRONTEX Press Release, Nov. 2010, p. 5.85. V. Bachmann and J. D. Sidaway, ‘Zivilmacht Europa: A Critical Geopolitics of the European Union as a Global Power’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34 (2008) p. 104.86. Parker and Adler-Nissen (note 7) p. 774

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