SRA-E Lisbon 2017

The process of migration is not a new challenge for the European Union but its scale. Efficiency of borders remains in focus on institutional and operational levels more than ever. A crisis of the contemporary borders in the EU can be investigated from two perspectives: theoretical and practical. It refers to an increasing uncertainty about the idea or concept of the present border itself and secondly it concerns a displacement of border practices in different forms. State borders, traditionally perceived as the territorial markers of the limits of authority and sovereignty, have abandoned their “territorial trap” towards a spatial dimension. As a consequence a traditional distinction between internal and external security of the state has blurred and regular entry and exit points at the border spread beyond. Hence, one can find a concept of “bordering practices” instead of border control, which describes filtering rather than blocking out flows of people and goods that stretches beyond the external borders of the European Union. This practice can be called off-shoring borders and in this presentation concerns ‘off-shoring’ of the EU migration controls. It is a pre-emptive operation held outside the European Union’s territory, to deter illegal migrants from leaving, as well as assessing asylum and immigration claims before they reach shores of the EU. Such practices, approved by official bilateral agreements, can be found e.g. in Libya, Turkey, Moldova, Ukraine and defined as a risk management in practice of the EU external borders as well as a risk governance of these borders by transferring European standards and norms of control at its externalised borders.