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Bio: Professor Karolina Follis teaches in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University in the UK. Her research interests center on the dynamic intersections of border regimes, surveillance technologies and the ideas and practices of human rights. 

Abstract: Between 2004 and 2013 eleven postsocialist countries joined the European Union. EU enlargement was described at the time the rightful ‘return to Europe’ of countries that remained in the Soviet orbit after World War 2. But as the breaking down of old divides was celebrated, new barriers were being constructed. One of the dimensions of EU enlargement was the shift of the EU’s eastern external border from the boundaries of the ‘old’ EU to the eastern frontiers of the Baltic and Central Eastern European states. Western European states invested in the infrastructure and training of border guards in accession states, representing these interventions as technicalities of the implementation of the ‘area of freedom, security and justice’. New members were keen to demonstrate that they were ready to police the outer perimeter of the EU. The transformation of their border services and practices of control initially went under the radar, with attention focused on the southern maritime borders of Europe and irregular arrivals from North Africa and the Middle East. However, as EU politics and policies of border control changed following the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ of 2015, the trajectories of people on the move changed as well, shifting to new land routes, resulting in new large-scale arrivals on eastern EU borders. This talk reflects on this shift, examining how the racial and postcolonial dimension of the ‘migrant crisis’ plays out in the Eastern European region. Based on research over two decades on the European border regime in the East, I reassess EU enlargement from the perspective of the transformation of the eastern borders. I argue that for the societies of ‘new’ member states, the benefits of enlargement came bundled with the legacy of colonial empires, which they must grapple with as they respond to people arriving at their borders from the Global South. 

By: Charlotte Shamoon
Last updated: Wednesday, 18 September 2024