ABSTRACT
Whenever one discusses the issue of borders and mobility within the context of European enlargement processes, one immediately notices that migration policies are taking shape, above all, as border policies that are transforming the European Union into ‘Fortress Europe’. 2 The sharp edges of Eastern Europe, once made of iron and concrete, have been replaced by fabrics that are more refined: electronic communication and paper. In a word, new borders are above all bureaucratic. Pushing immigrants off and beyond the external protected borders of the European Union is simply a partial and inadequate response to migration processes that are becoming more and more dynamic and diversified. “ … immigrants, beginning with foreigners in irregular situations or who can easily be rendered illegal, are deprived of fundamental social rights (such as employment insurance, health care, familial allocations, housing, and schooling) and can be expelled as a function of ‘thresholds of tolerance’ or ‘capacities of reception and integration’ that are arbitrarily established according to criteria of ‘cultural distance’— that is, race in the sense the notion has taken on today.” 3
