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Designs of borders: Security, critique, and the machines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Médéric Martin-Mazé  and
Sarah Perret Open the ORCID record for Sarah Perret [Opens in a new window]
Médéric Martin-Mazé*
Affiliation:
Université Paris VIII Vincennes – Saint-Denis, LabToP-CRESPPA, France
Sarah Perret
Affiliation:
King's College London, United Kingdom and Chair in Geopolitics of Risk, ENS Paris, France
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Over the past 15 years, the European Commission has poured millions of euros into Research and Development in border security. This article looks at the devices that are funded under this scheme. To this end, it applies Multiple Correspondence Analysis to a database of 41 projects funded under 7th Framework Programme. This method of data visualisation unearths the deep patterns of opposition that run across the sociotechnical universe where European borders are designed and created. We identify three rationalities of power at play: territorial surveillance aimed at detecting rare events in remote areas, policing of dense human flows by sorting out the benign from the dangerous, and finally global dataveillance of cargo on the move. Instead of trends towards either the hardening of borders or their virtualisation, we, therefore, find multiple rationalities of power simultaneously redefining the modalities of control at EU borders. A second finding shows where precisely critical actors are located in this sociotechnical universe and indicates that the structure of European R&D in border security keeps irregularised migrants off their radars. This finding calls for more caution as to the possibility to effectively put critique to work within the context of EU R&D.

Keywords

BorderSecurity ResearchTechnologyEuropean UnionCritique
Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 278 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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Footnotes

†

The online version of this article has been updated since original publication. A notice detailing the change has been published at https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2022.5.

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