Introduction

At the center of this inquiry are people deprived of rights, purposively barred from fundamental liberties under liberal rule through the politics of borders. Liberal democracies argue that refugees and migrants detained at airports, intercepted on the high seas or sent to refugee camps in third countries are outside their borders and therefore outside the remit of their legal rights procedures. The politics of borders has become an important security practice of liberal states. Borders and the distinction between inside and outside are strategically used to change the ordinary balance between security and liberties in liberal states: to increase policing powers and to limit access to legal rights and procedures. Through the politics of borders, liberal states can deny to particular populations fundamental rights, which are the normative and legal foundation of liberal states, whilst continuing to control the very same space through policing powers. The effect of the politics of borders is legal exclusion. Legal exclusion can include denial of due process, unlimited detention, denial of access to courts, to legal advice and to substantive rights, under conditions of quasiisolation, combined with legally contestable return and rendition policies. These violations of human rights and civil liberties are committed by liberal democracies that continue to operate under the rule of law and value liberal rights, but at the same time restrict or even suspend fundamental rights for a specific category of people at specific places. The politics of borders highlight that illiberal practices are embedded in ordinary politics of liberal democracies and, moreover, how illiberal practices can be legally authorized. These are essentially questions on the borders of liberal rule. It is here that one finds an interesting line of inquiry on how the limitation of liberties is rendered possible under liberal rule. To pursue this question, this book will focus on the relation between the rule of law and liberties. Liberal democracies face a constant struggle in the protection of liberties. In this struggle, rule of law is considered to be an indispensable safeguard for the defense of liberties. According to the liberal conception of law, law guarantees liberties, and moreover facilitates a piecemeal struggle for a more just and inclusive order. This book concentrates on a

different use of law in liberal democracies: law that is purposively designed to restrict liberties; law that constructs and legitimizes unequal access to liberal rights. It seeks to critically examine contemporary manifestations of this problematique inherent to liberal democracies. To explore contemporary liberal security practices at borders, this study will focus on the globally widespread use of migration controls.