Huub Dijstelbloem - Borders as Infrastructure: The Technopolitics of Border Control

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Borders as Infrastructure

The Technopolitics of Border Control

Huub Dijstelbloem

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license.

Subject to such license, all rights are reserved.

The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadiaa charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dijstelbloem, Huub, 1969 author.

Title: Borders as infrastructure : the technopolitics of border control / Huub Dijstelbloem.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2021] | Series: Infrastructures series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020045143 | ISBN 9780262542883 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Border securityTechnological innovationsEurope. | Infrastructure (Economics)Europe. | RefugeesEurope. | EuropeBoundaries. | EuropeEmigration and immigrationGovernment policy. | EuropePolitics and government1945

Classification: LCC JV7590 .D55 2021 | DDC 320.1/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045143

d_r0

Contents

List of Illustrations

Calais shelter, February 2009.

Source: Henk Wildschut.

Preface

Borders on the Intersection of States, Technology, and Politics

At this time, borders of all kinds are emerging around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes this disease, has leaped across national boundaries, gripping populations and paralyzing social and economic activities. Where the virus appears, an unrelenting trail of victims follows. Countries, regions, cities, and villages are in lockdown, semilockdown, so-called intelligent lockdown, and less intelligent lockdown. People are in quarantine or isolation. While the virus seems to travel unrestrained, human mobility is governed by models, social distancing rules, and technical applications to prevent contamination. Borders are reappearing as new boundaries are spreading as rapidly as the virus itself. Although this book focuses primarily on borders in relation to human migration, I hope that its technopolitical and morphological analysis will also offer a valuable perspective for understanding the development of other kinds of borders and the mobility of other entities.

For anyone interested in the relationship among states, technology, and politics, and in questions concerning the inclusion and exclusion of persons, borders are almost inescapable. Coming from a philosophy of science and technology and a science and technology studies background, I became interested in the changing nature of borders around 2005. My interest intensified after a dramatic event that fueled my concerns and my curiosity. On the night of October 27, 2005, a fire broke out in the detention center in Amsterdams Schiphol International Airport. Eleven detainees perished in the tragedy. Schiphols detention center is at the airports original location, in Schiphol East. When an individual arrives at the airport and is deemed not to have the right to stay, he or she will be held at this center as an irregular migrant, most likely awaiting repatriation.

This disaster and the subsequent investigation by the Dutch Safety Board triggered my interest in the tensions among globalization, technological development, and the ways that states select different sorts of persons. It appeared to me, and to many others, that a strange paradox had arisen in Europe: whereas more and more refined technologies such as iris scans at airports were being introduced to facilitate traveling and connect security to service, migrants were increasingly failing to reach their destinations, forced into taking risky routes or ending up in the shadow zones of Europe.