A Community of Borders, Borders of the Community: The EU’s Integrated Border Management Strategy

Abstract

The construction of a political community is often explained by a process founded on the emergence of feelings of solidarity between individuals. Such solidarity is the result of a common history, of a culture, of a language or even of a political project or of values shared by all components of the social body. It is often the result of deepening relationships between people and of the discovery of the Other and of its status as an alter ego. Collective identity, where it exists, is above all a question of affection, even friendship, between fellow citizens. At the European level, the transition of multiple demoi to a single European demos could also be seen as a double process. Firstly, it would be a vertical process of attachment to the European project, to its values and symbols. Secondly, it would be a horizontal process in which sentiments of friendship between European citizens are strengthened. The narrative that Europe has chosen to promote in recounting its own history is a narrative of friendship between peoples and of bridges successfully crossed. It is a narrative of reconciliation, solidarity and recognition of the other and of differences. However, political history as well as the history of political ideas teaches us that the formation of a unified social body is not always founded on positive sentiments and love between compatriots, and even that that is quite rare. The body politic is also the product of historical turmoil, wars and armed combats of all kinds. It is built on hostilities, even hatreds, as much as upon friendship. It is a defence mechanism leading men to join together and unite, not necessarily because they have any mutual regard but because they are attempting to jointly protect what is dear to them. Indeed, since Thomas Hobbes and theories of the Social Contract, a number of writers have underlined the crucial role played by insecurity and fear in the emergence of feelings of belonging . This reasoning, often used to explain the formation of national identities and the structuring of modern States, appears to us to be equally useful when applied to the European Union. The progressive application of Community projects for internal security and integrated management of external borders provides a new context for such questions. On the basis of this suggestion, we analyse in the following pages the impact of Community policies directed against illegal immigration on the emergence of a “community of Europeans ». In fact, it seems to us that in posing the question of controlling the Union’s external borders, illegal immigration also poses the question of symbolic and mental borders defining the conditions for belonging to a particular political order. It provides an identification principle for defining the contours of the body politic. In the pages that follow, we explore the hypothesis that the European integrated management project for the Union’s external borders cannot be entirely reduced to a policy for managing migratory flows, but that it must also be seen as a politically constructed discourse on the dangers weighing on Europe. This policy encourages a distinction between «them» and «us» which contributes to the process of forging a European political community on the basis of an emotion, namely anxiety concerning, or even fear of, the Other. In a situation in which a culturally or politically homogeneous whole has not been created, Europeans thus find themselves united and sharing a sense of solidarity as a consequence of a shared feeling of collective insecurity.