ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discuss the deaths suffered at the outer European Union (EU) borders and the ensuing civilian action and use the concept of "the border" as an analytical prism for making these phenomena intelligible. First, the photo challenges several boundaries or distinctions, including the boundary between life and death, between human life and waste, and between individual sorrow and collective outrage. Second, the external EU borders can be viewed as not only a pure demarcation of legal jurisdiction but also as an interface between orderly, domestic policy and international anarchy, between sovereign enclosure and free mobility, and between the principles of human dignity and pragmatic politics wherein the loss of life is calculated. Third, popular reaction to the photo of the dead boy being circulated challenges the distinction between the government and the populace, between legality and illegality, and between who counts as existent and who does not.
