All quiet on the Eastern border? Bordering practices at the EU Eastern border

Session conveners: Magdalena Kmak magdalena.kmak@abo.fi & Witold Klaus witold.klaus@gmail.com

Session description

This session focuses on the migratory paths, international protection and rule of law, migration control and bordering practices, as well as the interwoven responses to discourses, politics, perceptions, and imaginations of migration on the Eastern border, from different perspectives: history, law, the processes of bordering, and people.

In recent years, the eastern part of the European Union and its borders have attracted much more international attention than before. The year 2021 could be marked as a pivotal point in this regard, when the so-called Eastern Border Route became fully operational, and people on the move appeared in large numbers at the Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian borders, seeking to cross irregularly. This led to the militarisation of the area, affecting later also Estonia and Finland, and the introduction of physical barriers along the border. Yet, the developments at the border remain understudied and undertheorized.

The aim of this session is to respond to the renewed focus on the Eastern border and to understand and conceptualise the recent developments at that border that have so far gathered limited academic attention beyond the legal analysis of pushbacks. The session will focus on historical developments, bordering practices, and various forms of resistance, thereby revealing the processes of border enforcement on the EU’s eastern flank. In particular, the session will critically analyse how the securitisation of external European Eastern borders has developed over the years, how changes to law and practice have been justified, and which actors have been involved in that process and how the access to protection and the rule of law has been affected in result.

This session critically examines the processes that led to the fortification of the Eastern border over the years. Special attention is paid to events after 2021, when those processes have accelerated. The focus includes:

1) the progressive securitisation of the EU Eastern border as a result of the institutionalisation and Europeanization of migration and refugee policies in the EU. The session will show, in particular, the recent shift from understanding migration as a concern for social cohesion, internal security, and public order to characterising it as instrumentalised and constituting an external hybrid threat and, in consequence, an existential threat to the EU and its border states.

2) the rapidly progressing militarisation of the border through the deployment of military forces, armed personnel, and militarised infrastructure to regulate migration flows, effectively merging border security and defence objectives. The session focuses on both material measures—such as fences, barriers, and checkpoints—and operational strategies, including surveillance and military patrolling, characterised by the development of physical infrastructure.

3) criminalisation not only of migration and people on the move themselves, but also of solidarity and activism, as a result of militarisation and politicisation of migration.

4) different forms of resistance to these developments of securitisation, militarisation, and criminalisation, including legal, political, humanitarian (solidarity), and individual forms of resistance and coping.

The session will include selected chapters from the forthcoming edited collection, but will also be partially open for individual submissions.

The session will be organised in English.