Introduction

Abstract

Until recently, one of the most popular catchwords in migration debates was “Fortress Europe”. Borrowed from World War II military history, the term referred to European governments’ aspiration tofully control their borders. The European continent was, in this respect, at the forefront of the “global migration crisis” (Weiner, 1995): Since the 1990s, the developed world in general has been characterized by increasing fears over the consequences of human mobility; the reaction has been the erection of “walls around the west” (Andreas and Snyder, 2000) and, more generally, a dramatic intensification and diversification of control strategies. While much has been said about the desirability and feasibility of such a political project¹, this book² attempts to shed light on the ways in which the objective of controlling migration has unfolded in a broader endeavour to discipline the cross-border movements of people. What this volume proposes to call the “disciplining of transnational human mobility” has, at first sight, little in common with the militarization of borders or the surveillance of foreigners. This is not to say that the fixation with control has disappeared, or that immigration and border policies have fundamentally changed. Rather, it is to recognize that the objective of defending receiving states from unwanted migrants is both embedded in, and complemented by, the larger goal to organize human mobility and discipline people’s movements and behaviours.