ABSTRACT
The European borders and the practices and technologies that constitute them are contested. This chapter examines the development of EU border control with a particular focus on its external dimension as it is manifested towards African countries and migrants. Since the categorization of cross-border mobility is a disputed domain, I invoke the concepts of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants during the chapter. At the risk of conceptual ambiguity, this is nevertheless done in order to show how discursive identifications can activate various regimes of enforcement towards human mobility.
