Borders, Security, and Transatlantic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century: Identity and Privacy in an Era of Globalized Surveillance

Introduction A dominant feature of the development of law and policy on immigration and border controls this decade in Europe and America has been the emphasis on security. Governments and legislators have increasingly justified the adoption of immigration and border control measures as necessary to fight terrorism, extending what has been described in the context of the EU of the 1990s as an (in)security continuum (transferring the “illegitimacy” of crime to immigrants) to the issue of terrorism.1 In the 2000s, the main source of production of the new (in)security continuum-a process in which political discourse presents the issues of migration, borders, and terrorism and the subsequent legislative and policy responses to each of these phenomena as being inextricably linked-has been the United States. September 11, 2001 prompted the adoption of a series of enforcement measures aiming to protect U.S. territory from terrorism and prevent future terrorist attacks. In the light of how the 9/11 attacks occurred, it is perhaps unsurprising that major emphasis was placed on border controls, or, as the new securitized jargon would have it, “border security.”