Controlling frontiers. Free movement into and within Europe

Abstract:

Does free movement allow for movement of the free, and if so what are they freed from? This book explores aspects of societies which have remained constant throughout history, namely inequalities and patterns of domination and exclusion, and considers the impact of increased migration which has followed the relaxation of borders within Europe.

The book is organised over eight chapters. The first examines the legal position in the European Union to determine who is free to move, and the rights and responsibilities that travel with them. Chapter two deals with frontier controls and who is in control of them - the politicians or the security professionals. The weakness of political professionals in controlling the flow of people is explored in chapter three, which considers the power of major companies seeking to move their employees. Chapter four examines the disappearing nature of the ‘welfare state’ when the relaxation of borders raises the question of where is the state and perhaps the state we are in. Chapter five examines the xenophobic attitude that many political and security professionals display in their demonisation of the migrant as a criminally inclined, potential terrorist gadfly sucking the lifeblood from the benefits system. Chapter six further illustrates the inequalities heaped upon immigrant communities with an example from France and the French police's attitude towards French citizens of foreign origin. The seventh chapter returns to the locus of the state border and the changes that have happened in border controls, which are now informed through databases, prior knowledge, profiling and banks of identification data. The final chapter analyses the distance policing of frontier controls that the sophisticated and speedy technology of today is able to sustain.

The work will interest scholars and students, researchers and policy makers, engaged in human rights issues, European studies, migration and migration control, and European enlargement and integration.

Dider Bigo is Professor of International Relations at Sciences-Po, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris, researcher at the CERI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales), Director of the Centre for Conflict Studies and Editor fof the Journal 'Cultures & Conflits', Paris. Elspeth Guild is Professor of Euroepan Immigration Law at the Centre for Immigration Law, Faculty of Law, University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She is also research partner at Kingsley Napley, London.

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