Inside out and outside in: COVID-19 and the reconfiguration of Europe’s external border controls

Abstract

»Von innen nach ausen und von ausen nach innen: COVID-19 und die Rekonfiguration von Europas Ausengrenzkontrollen«. The extension of border controls beyond Europe’s territory to regulate the flows of would-be migrants is a popular – and highly controversial – policy approach adopted by European governments. The present paper examines recent developments char-acterizing the externalization of border management in Europe, paying par-ticular attention to the changes that have occurred during the COVID-19 global pandemic. This represents a time when mobility has been severely re-stricted in most of Europe (and the rest of the world). The aim is to map the impact of the pandemic on relevant “externalizing” policy instruments (e.g., visas, extra-territorial patrolling and surveillance, external processing of asylum claims, and offshore detention of migrants) and to assess their future tra-jectories. The paper shows that during the pandemic, the externalization of border controls has expanded and adapted to the new conditions. As a result, some of the key dynamics that define this policy arrangement have been rec-reated internally, a phenomenon referred to here as the “internalization of externalized border controls.”. © 2021, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. All rights reserved.