Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T20:22:40.364Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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: mederic.martin-maze@univ-paris8.fr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.

References

1 Theresa May, ‘Theresa May makes Brexit speech in Northern Ireland’, Guardian News (5 February 2019), available at: {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n4CtAKqbhU} (19’54).

2 Piazza, Pierre, ‘La biométrie: usages policiers et fantasmes technologiques’, in Muchielli, Laurent (ed.), La Frénésie Sécuritaire. Retour à l'ordre et Nouveau Contrôle Social (Paris, La Découverte, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 Bigo, Didier, Jeandesboz, Julien, Martin-Mazé, Médéric, and Ragazzi, Francesco, Review of Security Measures in the 7th Research Framework Programme FP7 2007–2013, Study No. PE 509.979 (Brussels: European Parliament – Committee on Civil Liberties, 2014)Google Scholar; Bigo, Didier and Jeandesboz, Julien, Review of Security Measures in the 6th Research Framework Programme and the Preparatory Action for Security Research, Briefing Note No. PE 393.289 (Brussels: European Parliament – Committee on Civil Liberties, 2008)Google Scholar; Jeandesboz, Julien and Ragazzi, Francesco, Review of Security Measures in the Research Framework Programme, Study No. PE 432.740 (Brussels: European Parliament – Committee on Civil Liberties, 2010)Google Scholar.

4 Martin-Mazé, Médéric, ‘The power elite of security research in Europe: From competitiveness and external stability to dataveillance and societal security’, International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 6:1/2 (2020), pp. 52–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Hoijtink, Marijn and Leese, Matthias, Technology and Agency in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Hoijtink, Marijn, ‘Capitalizing on emergence: The “new” civil security market in Europe’, Security Dialogue, 45:5 (2014), p. 458CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See also Amicelle, Anthony, Aradau, Claudia, and Jeandesboz, Julien, ‘Questioning security devices: Performativity, resistance, politics’, Security Dialogue, 46:4 (2015), pp. 293–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourne, Mike, Johnson, Heather L., and Lisle, Debbie, ‘Laboratizing the border: The production, translation and anticipation of security technologies’, Security Dialogue, 46:4 (2015), pp. 307–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See, for instance, Rosière, Stéphane and Jones, Reece, ‘Teichopolitics: Re-considering globalisation through the role of walls and fences’, Geopolitics, 17:1 (2012), pp. 217–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Brown, Wendy, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (2nd edn, New York: MIT Press, 2017)Google Scholar.

9 Bonditti, Philippe, ‘From territorial space to networks: A Foucaldian approach to the implementation of biometry’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 29 (2004), pp. 465–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bigo, Didier, ‘Freedom and speed in enlarged borderzones’, in Squire, Vicky (ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 31–50Google Scholar; Rea, Andrea, ‘The network-border: The articulation of mobility and immobilisation’, in Bernes, Laure-Anne, Bousetta, Hassan, and Zickgraf, Caroline (eds), Migration in the Western Mediterranean: Space, Mobility and Borders (London: Rouledge, 2017), pp. 32–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 472.

11 Austin, John L., Bellanova, Rocco, and Kaufmann, Mareile, ‘Doing and mediating critique: An invitation to practice companionship’, Security Dialogue, 50:1 (2019), pp. 3–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leese, Matthias, Lidén, Kristoffer, and Nikolova, Blagovesta, ‘Putting critique to work: Ethics in EU security research’, Security Dialogue, 50:1 (2018), pp. 59–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Aradau, Claudia, Hoijtink, Marijn, and Leese, Matthias, ‘Technology, agency, critique: An interview with Claudia Aradau’, in Hoijtink, Marijn and Leese, Matthias (eds), Technology and Agency in International Relations (London: Routledge, 2019), p. 192Google Scholar.

13 See also Bourdieu, Pierre, La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979)Google Scholar. For a historical perspective of MCA in Social Sciences, see Philippe Bonnet, ‘Pour une histoire sociale de l'analyse des données’, in Frédéric Lebaron and Brigitte Le Roux (eds), La Méthodologie de Pierre Bourdieu en action: Espace culturel, espace social et analyse des données (Paris, Dunod, 2015), pp. 21–42.

14 Brigitte Le Roux and Henry Rouanet, Multiple Correspondence Analysis (Los Angeles, SAGE, 2010); Frédéric Lebaron, ‘How Bourdieu quantified Bourdieu: The geometric modelling of data’, in K. Robson and C. Sanders (eds), Quantifying Theory: Pierre Bourdieu (Dordrecht, Springer, 2009), pp. 11–29; Lebaron, Frédéric, ‘L'analyse géométrique des données dans un programme de recherche sociologique: Le cas de la sociologie de Pierre Bourdieu’, La revue Modulad, 42 (2010), pp. 102–09Google Scholar.

15 Bigo, Didier, ‘The (in)securitization practices of the three universes of EU border control: Military/Navy – border guards/police – database analysts’, Security Dialogue, 45:3 (2014), p. 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 212.

17 Ibid., pp. 214–16; Ajana, Btihaj, ‘Biometric citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 16:7 (2012), pp. 851–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leese, Matthias, ‘Blurring the dimensions of privacy? Law enforcement and trusted traveler programs’, Computer Law & Security Review, 29 (2013), pp. 480–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Bigo, Didier, ‘The transnational field of computerised exchange of information in police matters and its European guilds’, in Madsen, Mikael Rask and Kauppi, Niilo (eds), Transnational Power Elites: The New Professionals of Governance, Law and Security (London: Routledge, 2013)Google Scholar; Bigo, Didier, ‘International political sociology: Internal security as transnational power’, in Bossong, Raphael and Rhinard, Mark (eds), Theorizing Internal Security in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

19 Bigo, ‘The (in)securitization practices of the three universes of EU border control’, pp. 217–20; See also Leese, Matthias, ‘The new profiling: Algorithms, black boxes, and the failure of anti-discriminatory safeguards in the European Union’, Security Dialogue, 45:5 (2014), pp. 494–511CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Amicelle, Aradau, and Jeandesboz, ‘Questioning security devices’, p. 300.

21 Ibid., p. 297.

22 Bourne, Johnson, and Lisle, ‘Laboratizing the border’.

23 Ibid., p. 309.

24 Ibid., p. 320.

25 Baird, Theodore, ‘Who speaks for the European border security industry? A network analysis’, European Security, 26:1 (2017), p. 39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Baird, Theodore, ‘Surveillance design communities in Europe: A network analysis’, Surveillance & Society, 14 (2016), pp. 43–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Baird, ‘Who speaks for the European border security industry?’.

28 Bourdieu, Pierre, Sur l'Etat: cours au collège de France, 1989–1992 (Paris: Seuil, Raison d'Agir, 2011), pp. 178–80Google Scholar.

29 Amicelle, Aradau, and Jeandesboz, ‘Questioning security devices’, p. 302.

30 Aradau, Hoijtink, and Matthias Leese ‘Technology, agency, critique’, p. 201.

31 Austin, Bellanova, and Kaufmann, ‘Doing and mediating critique’; Leese, Lidén, and Nikolova, ‘Putting critique to work’; Sam Weiss Evans, Matthias Leese, and Dagmar Rychnovská, ‘Science, technology, security: Towards critical collaboration’, Social Studies of Science (2020).

32 Bourdieu, Pierre, Science de la science et réflexivité: cours du collège de France, 2000–2001 (Paris: Seuil, Raison d'Agir, 2001), pp. 67–8Google Scholar.

33 Julien Duval, ‘Multiple correspondence analysis’, Politika, available at: {https://www.politika.io/en/notice/multiple-correspondence-analysis} accessed 3 September 2020).

34 Bourdieu, Pierre, Questions de sociologie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1984), p. 113Google Scholar.

35 Axis 1 captures 14.3 per cent of the total variance of the population.

36 Axis 2 captures 11.1 per cent of the total variance.

37 All figures have been obtained by using ‘SPAD’ software.

38 Monique J. Beerli, Shoshana Fine, and Philippe Frowd contributed crucially to this very tedious work. We would like to thank them for their help.

39 According to Linnet Taylor Linnet and Fran Meissner, ‘data-doubles’ are turning the ‘complex’ humans’ identities into a simple standardised identity and ‘not possible to reverse-engineer or change it’. In Taylor, and Meissner, , ‘A crisis of opportunity: Market-making, big data, and the consolidation of migration as risk’, Antipode, 52:1 (2019), p. 282Google ScholarPubMed.

40 Newmann, David, ‘Borders and bordering: Towards an interdisciplinary dialogue’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9:2 (2006), p. 172Google Scholar.

41 Löfflmann, Georg and Vaughan-Williams, Nick, ‘Vernacular imaginaries of European border security among citizens: From walls to information management’, European Journal of International Security, 3 (2018), p. 388CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Tazzioli, Martina and Walters, William, ‘The sight of migration: Governmentality, visibility and Europe's contested borders’, Global Society, 30:3 (2016), pp. 445–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Amoore, Louise and Hall, Alexandra, ‘Border theatre: On the arts of security and resistance’, Cultural Geographies, 17:3 (2010), pp. 299–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrea, Peter, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (2nd edn, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

44 Aradau and Blanke show how ‘Anomalies have become particularly desirable for security professionals in their promise to capture the “unknown unknowns”’. Aradau, Claudia and Blanke, Tobias, ‘Governing others: Anomaly and the algorithmic subject of security’, European Journal of International Security, 3:1 (2017), p. 20Google Scholar.

45 Bourne, Johnson, and Lisle, ‘Laboratizing the border’.

46 Dijstelbloem, Huub and Broeders, Dennis, ‘Border surveillance, mobility management and the shaping of non-publics in Europe’, European Journal of Social Theory, 18:1 (2015), p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on the societies of control’, October, 59 (winter 1992), p. 6.

48 Bigo, ‘The (in)securitization practices of the three universes of EU border control’.

49 Suchman, Lucy, ‘Configuration’, in Luri, Celia and Wakeford, Nina (eds), Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 48Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., p. 56.

51 Bourdieu, La Distinction, p. 257.

52 Didier Bigo, ‘When two become one: Internal and external securitizations in Europe’, in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds), International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration, Power, Security and Community (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 171–205; Lutterbeck, Derek, ‘Between police and military: The new security agenda and the rise of gendarmeries’, Cooperation and Conflict, 39:1 (2004), pp. 45–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the US case, see Rosén, Frederik, ‘Third-generation civil: Military relations’, Security Dialogue, 40:6 (2009), pp. 597–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schultze, Marcus, ‘Necessary and surplus militarisation: Rethinking civil-military interactions and their consequences’, European Journal of International Security, 3:1 (2018), pp. 94–112Google Scholar.

53 Aradau and Blanke, ‘Governing others’, p. 5.

54 Baird, ‘Surveillance design communities in Europe’, p. 43.

55 Martins, Bruno Oliveira and Küsters, Christian, ‘Hidden security: EU public research funds and the development of European drones’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 57:2 (2019), pp. 278–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Médéric Martin-Mazé, ‘The power elite of security research in Europe’.

57 Chalfin, Brenda, ‘Customs regimes and the materiality of global mobility: Governing the port of Rotterdam’, American Behavioral Scientist, 50:12 (2007), pp. 1610–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chalfin, B., Neoliberal Frontiers: An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Côté-Boucher, Karine, ‘Border preclearance and the securing of economic life in North America’, Neoliberalism and Everyday Life (Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 2010), pp. 37–67Google Scholar; Côté-Boucher, K., ‘The paradox of discretion: Customs and the changing occupational identity of Canadian border officers’, British Journal of Criminology, 56:1 (2016), pp. 49–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Leese, Lidén, and Nikolova, ‘Putting critique to work’.

59 Daniele Lorenzini and Martina Tazzioli, ‘Critique without ontology: Genealogy, collective subjects and the deadlocks of evidence’, Radical Philosophy (2020), pp. 27–8.

60 Didier Bigo, ‘Freedom and speed in enlarged borderzones’, in Squire (ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility, p. 43.

61 Didier Bigo, ‘Detention of foreigners, states of exception, and the social practices of control of the Banopticon’, in Prem Kumar Rajaramand and Carl Grundy-Warr (eds), Borderscapes Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), p. 30.

62 Martin-Mazé, Médéric, ‘Unpacking interests in normative power Europe’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 53:6 (2015), pp. 1285–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Bigo, Didier, Polices en réseaux: l'expérience européenne (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 1996), pp. 329–31Google Scholar.

64 Bourne, Johnson, and Lisle, ‘Laboratizing the border’.

65 On Frontex, see Bruno Oliveira Martins and Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, ‘EU border technologies and the co-production of security “problems” and “solutions”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2020), pp. 1–18; and Matthias Leese's work on the ‘European standardization’ of technical solutions for border security. Leese, Matthias, ‘Standardizing security: The business case politics of borders’, Mobilities, 13:2 (2018), pp. 261–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Eu-Lisa, see eu-LISA, Interoperability, available at: {https://www.eulisa.europa.eu/Activities/Interoperability} accessed 3 February 2021.

66 Emirbayer, Mustafa and Johnson, Victoria, ‘Bourdieu and organizational analysis’, Theory and Society, 37:1 (2008), pp. 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Martin-Mazé, Médéric, ‘Returning struggles to the practice turn: How were Bourdieu and Boltanski lost in (some) translations and what to do about it?’, International Political Sociology, 11:2 (2017), pp. 203–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mezzadra, Sandro and Neilson, Bret, Border as Method or the Multiplication of Labor (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 264–370Google Scholar.

68 Baird, ‘Surveillance design communities in Europe’; Baird, ‘Who speaks for the European border security industry?’.

69 Austin, Bellanova, and Kaufmann, ‘Doing and mediating critique’, p. 15.

70 Martins and Jumbert, ‘EU Border technologies and the co-production of security “problems” and “solutions”’, p. 13.