Volume 3 issue 2 December 2015
Mapping the Construction of EU Borderspaces as Necropolitical Zones of ExceptionKirstine Nordentoft Mose and Vera Wriedt
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This paper maps the politico-legal construction of EU borderspaces as necropolitical zones of exception, foregrounding the systematic aspects underlying the constant control and violence in EU borderspaces, which risk being obscured in current discourses of ‘crisis’ and corresponding policy responses. The first part of the paper conceptualises the militarised borderspace emerging under contemporary control techniques; mapping what we refer to as the horizontal extension of border control through agreements with countries of origin and transit, and the vertical extension of surveillance through drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The second part analyses how these control techniques construct bio- and necro-political borderspaces as fluctuating zones of exception horizontally and vertically extended beyond the territorial border, moving with the body of people in a migrant or refugee position who are constantly exposed to the racialised threat of violence and death. The proposed concept of borderspaces complements Balibar's critical border topography with Eyal Weizman's politics of verticality, and nuances Giorgio Agamben's conceptualisation of the state of exception drawing on Achille Mbembe’s and Alexander Weheliye’s critical readings of necropolitical techniques and racialising assemblages.
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