Borders as Infrastructure

An investigation of borders as moving entities that influence our notions of territory, authority, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. In Borders as Infrastructure, Huub Dijstelbloem brings science and technology studies, as well as the philosophy of technology, to the study of borders and international human mobility. Taking Europe's borders as a point of departure, he shows how borders can transform and multiply and how they can mark conflicts over international orders. Borders themselves are moving entities, he claims, and with them travel our notions of territory, authority, sovereignty, and jurisdiction. The philosophies of Bruno Latour and Peter Sloterdijk provide a framework for Dijstelbloem's discussion of the material and morphological nature of borders and border politics. Dijstelbloem offers detailed empirical investigations that focus on the so-called migrant crisis of 2014–2016 on the Greek Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos; the Europe surveillance system Eurosur; border patrols at sea; the rise of hotspots and “humanitarian borders”; the technopolitics of border control at Schiphol International Airport; and the countersurveillance by NGOs, activists, and artists who investigate infrastructural border violence. Throughout, Dijstelbloem explores technologies used in border control, including cameras, databases, fingerprinting, visual representations, fences, walls, and monitoring instruments. Borders can turn places, routes, and territories into “zones of death.” Dijstelbloem concludes that Europe's current relationship with borders renders borders—and Europe itself—an “extreme infrastructure” obsessed with boundaries and limits

Moving the Immovable: Climate Change and the Multiple Tensions between Mobility and Immobility

The lecture examines the emergence of the research field of climate migration from a philosophy of science and technology perspective. It explores the tensions between mobility and immobility by discussing three specific technologies and infrastructures that emerge from the notion of climate migration and push mobility to the extreme: interventionist policies that encourage managed retreat, experimental digital technologies that promote circulation, and a proposal for a climate passport. It then considers implications of this paradigm of mobility for STS, focusing on immobility as a concept that can deepen and challenge our understanding of a trinity of states, sovereignty, and territory under conditions of climate change and mobility. By reconceptualizing the relationship between mobility and immobility, the lecture proposes a nuanced and refined alternative to the emphasis on motion, movement, and mobility, with the aim of contributing to the discussion of how climate (im)mobilities and Anthropocene (im)mobilities unfold

Surveillance at sea: The transactional politics of border control in the Aegean

The relationship between vision and action is a key element of both practices and conceptualizations of border surveillance in Europe. This article engages with what we call the ‘operative vision’ of surveillance at sea, specifically as performed by the border control apparatus in the Aegean. We analyse the political consequences of this operative vision by elaborating on three examples of fieldwork conducted in the Aegean and on the islands of Chios and Lesbos. One of the main aims is to bring the figure of the migrant back into the study of border technologies. By combining insights from science and technology studies with border, mobility and security studies, the article distinguishes between processes of intervention, mobilization and realization and emphasizes the role of migrants in their encounter with surveillance operations. Two claims are brought forward. First, engaging with recent scholarly work on the visual politics of border surveillance, we circumscribe an ongoing ‘transactional politics’. Second, the dynamic interplay between vision and action brings about a situation of ‘recalcitrance’, in which mobile objects and subjects of various kinds are drawn into securitized relations, for instance in encounters between coast guard boats and migrant boats at sea. Without reducing migrants to epiphenomena of those relations, this recalcitrance typifies the objects of surveillance as both relatable as well as resistant, particularly in the tensions between border control and search and rescue

European Variations as a Key to Cooperation

This Open Access book offers a novel view on the benefits of a lasting variation between the member states in the EU. In order to bring together thirty very different European states and their citizens, the EU will have to offer more scope for variation. Unlike the existing differentiation by means of opt-outs and deviations, variation is not a concession intended to resolve impasses in negotiations; it is, rather, a different structuring principle. It takes differences in needs and in democratically supported convictions seriously. A common core remains necessary, specifically concerning the basic principles of democracy, rule of law, fundamental rights and freedoms, and the common market. By taking this approach, the authors remove the pressure to embrace uniformity from the debate about the EU’s future. The book discusses forms of variation that fall both within and outside the current framework of European Union Treaties. The scope for these variations is mapped out in three domains: the internal market; the euro; and asylum, migration and border control

Drawing Bruno Together

This Crossing Boundaries stems from two events: the recent STS-Italia conference (Bologna, June 2023) and the 4S/ESOCITE conference (Cholula, December 2022). Both events dedicated a space for reflecting on Bruno Latour’s intellectual legacy, inviting some of the scholars who had the chance and the privilege to work with him. The text opens with a reflection by Madeleine Akrich on her two-decade experience working alongside Latour and on the multifaceted nature of his contributions to sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. The text continues with a contribution by Huub Dijstelbloem, who explores Latour’s magmatic thinking, emphasizing the transformative power of his ideas. Annalisa Pelizza traces two key associations in Bruno Latour’s intellectual trajectory. The first one traces back to Latour’s early engagement with the semiotics of the “École de Paris” and Greimas’ theory of enunciation, emphasizing the local context of the French semiotic debate. The second association delves into Latour’s connection with technofeminism and Donna Haraway’s material-semiotics, highlighting a global dialogue initiated in the late 1980s. Finally, Paolo Landri underlines the transformative potential of Latour’s vocabulary in the context of education, underlying the interdisciplinary connections fostered by following Latour

Atmospheric Border Politics: The Morphology of Migration and Solidarity Practices in Europe

This paper seeks to expand recent interest in the material practices, policy techniques and technopolitics of borders, migration and solidarity initiatives in Europe by connecting this debate to Sloterdijk’s spherological philosophy. With his thematization of enclosures, atmospheres, foams and life support Sloterdijk helps us to give a more morphological account of borders. We illustrate the benefits of this move by reflecting on the recent questions of hostile environment and the criminalization of migrant solidarity practices and movements. The paper also highlights certain limitations in Sloterdijk’s thoughts, which appear when it is brought into migration research. Arguing that Sloterdijk remains somewhat sedantarist in his approach to atmosphere we introduce a concept of the envelope as a way to foster a more dynamic, agonistic and mobilityfocused conception of enclosure