Speaker
Description
The definition and recognition of borders through the mobility of migrants develops around the reflection on the relationship between borders, territory and the phenomenon of migration: borders as social constructs are strictly related to cross-border control and transnational cooperation and the creation of functional spaces of mobility or containment.
Starting from the relationship between border and territory, current migration policies that pass through border management can be taken as an example of the reaction of states to the impact of globalisation on their sovereignty spaces; the most recent political and social processes, of which globalisation and human mobility are evidently among the most relevant manifestations, have not contributed to the creation of a world without barriers, but rather to a real multiplication of borders. For these reasons, it should come as no surprise that migration and the borders of migration policies take the form of multilevel territorial practices, reproducing state borders at other levels, not only supra-state but also local. To define the spatial and territorial impacts of the analysed policies, it is also deemed necessary to give space to the reconstruction of the current regulatory framework.
The changing nature of borders is, therefore, interpreted as a shift away from territorial and institutional demarcation lines towards policies and practices on different scales and levels.
Boundaries are tools for reflecting on territory, policies and practices, suggesting boundaries to be a social product, the outcome of a collective process of definition and do not exist independently of the subjects that define them.
In this frame, it seems crucial to analyse the instrumental redefinition of the border in the implementation of securitarian and spatial control policies as an outcome of this relationship, and the functional (power-driven) flexibility of the instrument when related to the political, institutional and legal framework of the European Union. This reflection urges as a tool to dismantle the material and political circumstances that make the persistence of confinement mechanisms a necessary condition for security, access to rights and economic prosperity, thus creating an urban, legal, administrative, and spatial confinement.
Healey recalls how the term planning implies a form of governance guided by the articulation of policies through which processes and actions related to them are developed, and how these practices are realised by shifting the focus of boundary governance from the state level to other levels. Such processes and actions, when shared, facilitate the creation of institutional learning practices based on cooperation rather than collaboration, since cooperation, unlike collaboration, can also find space in the contexts of social conflict typical of border territories, where this conflict is transformed into a resource capable of explicating the dynamism and mobility that characterises them.
This dynamism, as will be seen, has an impact on the reconfiguration of their functionalities and the functional role of territoriality.
This contribution, as part of a broader research, aims at investigating the role of territorial functionality concerning boundaries, also in light of more and less recent experimentations, such as the EU - Turkey agreement and the Italy-Albania Protocol.
| Keywords | Boundaries, territory, functionality, migration |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
