The changing dynamics of security in an enlarged European Union. Challenge Paper No. 12, 24 October 2008

The relation between liberty and security has been highly contestable over the past 10 years in the EU integration process. With the expansion of the EU’s powers into domains falling within the scope of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, liberty and its relation to security has brought a new range of issues, struggles and debates. Acts of political violence labelled as ‘terrorism’ and human mobility at the European and international levels have justified the construction of these phenomena as threats to the security and safety of the nation state. They have legitimised the development of normative responses that go beyond traditional configurations and raise fundamental dilemmas for the security and liberty of the individual. This paper assesses the ways in which the notions and perceptions of security and insecurity in the EU have evolved as political values and legal/policy goals, and how they are being transformed. It aims at synthesising the results of the research conducted since 2004 by the Justice and Home Affairs Section of CEPS through the CHALLENGE project (Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security). The research has been premised upon one basic, but determining question: To what extent has the evolution of the international context altered the dynamics of liberty and security in the EU

Suspicious Infrastructures: Automating Border Control and the Multiplication of Mistrust through Biometric E-Gates

In recent years, practices of control at EU border crossing points have been progressively transferred to electronic gates, or what is often called Automated Border Control (ABC). In this paper, I unpack ABC’s infrastructure and argue that e-gates enact three distinct modes of suspicion: First, they address the mistrust towards travellers’ identity claims and promise to better detect identity fraud and the misuse of other persons’ ID documents. Second, they replace the manual work of border guards, which has itself been suspected of being unreliable and error-prone. Third, however, ABC has also raised suspicion among border guards and data protection advocates alike, due to its opaque mode of operation. To examine how these three modes of suspicion unfold, I first show that automating border control relies on a heterogeneous entanglement of material devices, calculative practices and new forms of data. Drawing on document analysis and participant observation of ABC, I then trace the socio-technical controversies that its proliferation has sparked, arguing that e-gates have significantly reconfigured how suspicion at the EU borders is enacted and led to a multiplication of mistrust in the European border regime

Vision and transterritory:the borders of Europe

This essay is about the role of visual surveillance technologies in the policing of the external borders of the European Union. Based on an analysis of documents published by EU institutions and independent organizations I argue that these technological innovations fundamentally alter the nature of national borders. I discuss how new technologies of vision are deployed to transcend the physical limits of territories. In the last twenty years EU member states and institutions have increasingly relied on various forms of remote tracking, including the use of drones for the purposes of monitoring frontier zones. In combination with other facets of the EU border management regime (such as transnational databases and biometrics) these technologies coalesce into a system of governance that has enabled intervention into neighboring territories and territorial waters of other states to track and target migrants for interception in the “prefrontier.” For jurisdictional reasons, this practice effectively precludes the enforcement of legal human rights obligations, which European states might otherwise have with regard to these persons. This article argues that this technologically mediated expansion of vision has become a key feature of post-Cold War governance of borders in Europe. The concept of transterritory is proposed to capture its effects

Frontex and the evolution of cooperation on European border controls

This dissertation explores the role of the EU agency Frontex in the EU border regime. Contrary to the mainstream formulation in academic research which views that Frontex is a mere tool of EU member states and did not change the intergovernmental cooperation, this dissertation has pursued the agency’s potential in bringing integrative effect on the regime. To this aim, this dissertation has used the sociological institutionalist approach as it provides a theoretical basis for defining the EU border regime and explaining the nature and mechanisms that Frontex has exercised to influence the regime. By looking at Frontex’s activities in mobilisation of state border agencies, promotion of common standards and producing risk analysis at external borders, this research has found that Frontex has had integrative effects on the regime with certain limitations. Empirical analyses have shown that a set of procedures and mechanisms that Frontex has developed have increased the participation of state border agencies in EU’s border guard activities, which implies the shift of the initial intergovernmental cooperation to a more structured form of cooperation. It has also found that, although the outcome has been unevenly spread in Europe, Frontex has acted as an agent of transfer in promoting common standards for border guard training curriculums and automated border control systems. Moreover, Frontex has effectively transformed the politically defined “risks” at the EU’s external border to measureable terms at an operational level, which has enabled the classification of the EU member states. This dissertation has observed the effect of the agency’s risk analysis in the policy makers’ decisions. These findings conclude that, although it is still of a hybrid nature that has derived from contradicting elements between state-centric and supranational forces, Frontex has certainly changed the regime towards integration. In this context, this dissertation has enriched the understanding of institutional and organisational dynamics in a EU policy field and the role that EU agencies can play in it

EU Borders and Their Controls: Preventing unwanted movement of people in Europe? CEPS Essay No. 6, 14 November 2013

his Essay attempts to take a step back from the tragic event in the first week of October 2013, when a boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa and some 300 persons drowned seeking safe harbour. It sets out to examine the issue of EU border controls from the perspectives of the technologies, new and old, building on a variety of scholarly disciplines to understand what is happening to border controls on the movement of persons in the EU and why the results are so deadly. The Essay opens with an overview of what actually happens at the EU’s external borders. It then moves on to assess the old and new set of border control technologies that are deployed at the EU external borders, and how new technologies such as those based on automated controls and biometrics, are transforming the classical principles of European border controls. It then covers the reasons why people are refused admission at the EU’s external borders and the extent to which new border and surveillance technologies would assist in the effective controls in light of EU border law. Conclusions are finally offered on the articulation between the facts of EU border controls on persons and the claims and proposals for new technologies that are emerging from the EU institutions

The intersection of counter-terrorism, migration and border control policies in the European Union: the securitisation of migration?

Over the years, migration has been presented in Europe as a threat to the economy, labour market, culture and also security. The migration-security nexus has become a topic of growing interest among scholars in the face of events such as the 9/11 attacks and the ‘Migration Crisis’ (2015). The latter was a significant challenge for the European Union (EU) as it put pressure on the EU’s operational capabilities and questioned solidarity amongst the Member States. This situation was furthermore affected by several terrorist attacks which became framed in relation to the flow of irregular migrants and asylum seekers. This thesis addresses the intersection between counter-terrorism, migration and border control policies in the EU between 1986 and 2017. Hence, it covers a long period that considers the foundational stages of these policies in the EU. It studies the perception of migration as a threat through the adoption of the securitisation theory, especially focusing on securitisation through the association of migration with terrorism. It does so by offering a historical overview of developments in these policies, analysing the EU discourse and selected security practices as well as how they have become legitimised. Analysing forty-four EU documents, it distinguishes several strands in the discourse on migration, terrorism and border control which present duality in the construction of migration, similarities in the representation of migrants and terrorists as well as how the discourse on border control constructs both of them as a threat. The analysis of the securitisation through practices demonstrates an increase of impediments to irregular migration, an increase of use of technology and biometrics and an extension of the scope of the purposes of the tools. In sum, this thesis confirms the growing perception of the intersection between counter-terrorism, migration and border control policies which contributes to the securitisation of migration

Border controls as a dimension of the european union’s counter-terrorism policy: A critical assessment

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. This article critically examines the use and effectiveness of border controls in the European Union (EU)’s counter-terrorism policy. It shows that the EU has made substantial progress towards achieving the objectives that it had set for itself in this policy area, but has not managed to fulfil all of them, and certainly not by the deadlines originally set. It further argues that, contrary to their usual depiction in EU official documents, these border control measures make a limited contribution to the actual fight against terrorism, whilst having some negative effects. From that viewpoint, the fact that the EU has failed to meet all of its objectives in the use of border controls for counter-terrorist purposes may paradoxically be seen as a positive outcome