ABSTRACT
Borders have come to play a critical role as interfaces between domestic concerns and wider interstate and intercultural contexts. As markers of difference, their role as barriers to undesirable influences and threats perceived as emanating from the other side has only been reinforced. This chapter shifts the focus from concrete border enforcement to more implicit, yet telling, bordering practices and the underlying inherent politics of difference that have sprung up throughout Europe during the years following the “refugee crisis”. It examines the prevailing security-oriented rhetoric, the related gatekeeping processes, and the walls of fear that have grown in popularity and allowed the debate on migration to be hijacked, overshadowing many of its benefits. Instead of taking the widespread rhetoric around the closing of state borders as a mere struggle over space, this chapter includes in its analysis factors of ontological insecurity and the psychological comfort that borders can be seen to produce. In order to better understand what motivates the actions by both the states and individuals, we must look deeper into the underlying criteria based on which such bordering is made, i.e., on which basis such categories of binary nature and the subsequent social order are made. Rather than merely defining the unwelcomed “them”, these bordering practices are also illustrative of the defining features of “us”. They can thus be seen indicative of the sense of anxiety and insecurity many ordinary Europeans feel about their identity, place within the wider physical/social world and future.
