Europe Under Siege. Ethnographic Perspectives on Fear and Security

In the summer of 2015, the Dublin regulations have been virtually suspended. As a result, more and more states have been reinstating border controls and started building fences at internal Schengen borders, sometimes openly contradicting the principles of the Schengen zone. Simultaneously, right wing movements and threat scenarios are on the rise, increasing an already ongoing securitization of the Muslim Other. 

One of most important symbolic function of national borders is based on the fact that they promise security to the inhabitants of a specific territory. Border controls and the idea of the nation state are inextricably intertwined. Crossing the border thus for the nation state becomes an instrument of power as one of the main purposes of borders is to categorise and to classify travellers, migrants, those who are welcome and those who are not.

Against the backdrop of the so-called refugee crisis, the presentation will elaborate on the meaning of borders and border functions and on imaginations, institutions and performances of European security and fear. Drawing upon the anthropology of emotions, the paper argues that to understand the securitization of migration and the way imaginations and institutions of security and fear operate and are being instrumentalized it is helpful to understand how security, fear and borders are intertwined in reciprocal, relational and multiple ways.