Border Regimes

Local consequences of the Trianon Peace Treaty have not been researched thoroughly. This study describes the everyday life of rural people on both sides of the Eastern part of the new border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Based on research in Hungarian and Czech archives and with the help of newspaper articles, the author illustrates the difficulties of re-establishing the old familial and economic ties between villages that were separated by the border. Many activities of the borderland people were illegal. The paper discusses how authorities responded to these offences. Besides long and small distance traffic and the problems of dual landowners, illegal crossing, contraband, and border incidents are also part of the analysis. Contrary to all hardships, the border remained permeable in the interwar period.

Abstrakt: Niniejszy artykuł stanowi próbę wypracowania narzędzi teoretycznych służących do analizy europejskiego reżimu migracyjnego przy pomocy pojęć używanych przez filozofów polityki związanych z podejściem biopolitycznym. Wykorzystując prace z zakresu border studies i migration studies, autor diagnozuje kryzys tradycyjnie rozumianego konceptu granicy, a wraz z nim ładu postwestfalskiego. Lokując załamanie się porządku opartego na triadzie suwerenność-terytorium-populacja w kontekście neoliberalnego reżimu akumulacji kapitału, autor proponuje ujmować granice jako produktywne urządzenia wzmacniające przepływy warte trwania i blokujące niepożądane formy cyrkulacji. W konkluzji artykuł wskazuje na niemożliwość współistnienia w dłuższej perspektywie swobody przepływu wewnątrz Unii Europejskiej i arbitralnych mechanizmów kontroli wymierzonych w migrantów zewnętrznych. Utrzymywanie tego stanu rzeczy skutkuje zatarciem podziału wnętrze/zewnętrze i utraty stabilnego związku granic z terytorium, przez co urządzenia powołane do ochrony swobody mobilności stają się dla niej głównym zagrożeniem Słowa kluczowe: biopolityka, reżim migracyjny, autonomia migracji, limologia, polityka migracyjna Unii Europejskiej

This paper examines how states in origin and destinations countries shape migration by exploring emigration from Suriname from the 1950s to the 2010s. Suriname experienced substantial emigration growth, particularly between 1973 and 1980, a period that included independence from the Netherlands, a coup d’état and the end of the preferential immigration channel with the Netherlands. Using a historical approach that combines the analysis of migration literature, primary documentary sources and qualitative interviews of Surinamese migrants, returnees and non-migrants mainly in Suriname, this paper examines migration volumes, timing, destination and variations across different segments of the population. The paper finds that the political and economic uncertainties associated with independence and the establishment of a border regime had an important impact on the evolution of Surinamese migration, but also points to the importance of educational aspirations, long-term socio-economic conditions in Suriname, and employment opportunities and family connections in the Netherlands. Dutch migration policies also affected Surinamese migration, first stimulating emigration in the 1973–1980 period and then encouraging family reunification and irregular migration. The timing of these factors has contributed to the strong post-colonial influence in Surinamese migration.

Andrea Komlosy has written a very well informed and extremely stimulating book, which can be confidently recommended for the general public, as well as for the specialist professional audience. Even though the border phenomenon encompasses many further aspects that would certainly benefit from further research and representation, Komlosy has undoubtedly made a very important contribution to this complex issue with her book.

This chapter aims to map these diverse trajectories of political activism contesting the border in Madrid, posing key questions about migrant subaltern political action (Featherstone, 2012). It particularly explores the rising empowerment of migrant political subjects in the city during the last years, leading to a radical transformation of migrant solidarities and contesting white hegemony in political spaces. It engages with the issue of ‘whiteness’ as constitutive of the practices, analyses and agenda of the Spanish Left politics, making unity and convergence a difficult task. The argument proceeds as follows: In the first section, we explore the dimensions of the urban border in Madrid (Fauser, 2017; Lebuhn, 2013) and the racialised geographies it shapes. From here, we move into an attempt to map the most salient articulations of migrant solidarity in the city over the last ten years disrupting such geographies. In so doing, the second section engages with forms of activism and migrant solidarity by neighbours challenging the police and the politics of enclosure across the different districts, especially in the post-2011 indignados conjuncture (Janoschka & Mateos, 2015; Méndez, 2012; García Sedano, 2015).
While these are mostly ‘white’ forms of political solidarity by ‘national’ neighbours towards migrants, the last two sections engage with political articulations by migrants, putting the issues of race and migrant subaltern political agency in the spotlight. We address the Movement of Anti-racist political Action 12N (MAPA 12N) which attempts to build a migrant collective political subject in the line of the French ‘political antiracism’ (Kipfer, 2011) and Territorio Doméstico, that has put domestic labor and race at the core of migrant resistances in the city over the last ten years. We argue that migrant activism and border struggles are reshaping the political space of the city questioning the ways in which solidarity politics have been articulated so far.
We conclude with some thoughts on the ways in which urban political movements are key actors in the re-negotiation of borders from below and on how migrants reshape the political with their agency. Additionally, we reflect on key problems posed by the experiences of activism on migration in Madrid, the naturalization of the relationship between whiteness and the political space in Spain, and the issue of how to build convergence among the different struggles challenging the border regime.

While the fact that the implementation of migration policies fails to perfectly manage migration is well known, the actual dynamics of policy implementation have received little attention to date. A serious engagement with this phenomenon requires a move beyond policy texts and political intentions, and towards a 'migration regime' perspective that pays attention to the inherent contradictions, conflicts of interest and competing logics within migration control practices. This collection posits a multi-actor perspective that includes state agents, migrants and non-state actors alike and proposes three key factors that require a closer examination: competing institutional logics, discretionary practices and migrants' agency. Based on original empirical research, the contributions of this collection 'zoom in' on specific asymmetrical negotiations over the right to enter or remain in Europe, and focus on the institutional logics and interplay between the different actors involved.