Reimagining EUrope through the Governance of Migration

Abstract

AbstractIn its own narrative, EUrope conceives of itself as a postnational and transborder project, often through tropes of movement and the transgression of borders. In light of this imaginary, recent mass migrations provoked a serious conundrum. How would the EUropean polity reconcile the dominant idea of itself with its desire to erect barriers to cross-border movements from the “Global South”? This article inquires into tensions between, first, Hungary and, second, Italy vis-à-vis the European Commission and other EU member states over the control and regulation of unauthorized migrations in 2015 and 2018. Both examples allude to divergent and conflictual ways of governing migration, often associated with different levels of governance, particularly the supranational and the national, and different values, particularly those of tolerance and intolerance vis-à-vis the “migrant other.” While the illusion of “EUropean” and “un-EUropean” ways of governing migration is meant to be kept intact, not least through a recoding of antimigrant violence, a closer look reveals the deep entanglement of forms of migration governance that has given rise to a thoroughly EUropean border regime. This article points to the need to develop a new conceptual vocabulary in order to capture the EUropeanness of the border.