European border surveillance systems running a self-fulfilling circle

Abstract

The background for storing information in SIS is wide and discretionary, many items of information are evaluative, and 'discreet surveillance' quite clearly opens for political surveillance and surveillance of a wide circle of individuals around main person. As early as 1999 Thomas Mathiesen drew this conclusion based on an analysis of first generation Schengen Information System (SIS). We intend to take up this line of reasoning, and highlight exclusionary mechanisms built into EU's common asylum policy, enforced through development of a vast 'panoptical machine', potentially being the most repressive political instrument of modernity. Since 2013 a network of border surveillance systems is in place, grounded on advanced and interlinked functions of Second Generation of internal border surveillance system SIS (SIS II) and introduction of external European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR). Both systems have been designed to monitor influx of individuals, such as economic migrants and asylum seekers. This has become a highly topical issue, as dividing line between asylum seekers and immigrants has become blurred. Both groups are perceived as threats by a growing segment of public and by right wing political parties throughout Europe (Aradau, 2004; Huysmans & Squire, 2009). In this line Squire (2009) stresses emergence of notion of asylum-seeker-cum-illegal-immigrant (p.12). Accordingly, it is suggested that surveillance by EU systems leads to exclusion of undocumented asylum seekers that become conflated with illegal immigrants and thereby are depicted as a threat to Union's security. Against this background, this paper examines question as to what degree workings of EU surveillance systems foster this conflation of asylum with immigration, in particular through a strengthened interoperability of EU border surveillance systems, leading to an increasing exclusion of asylum seekers.