Cyborg Work: Borders as Simulation

Abstract

Much recent research has focused on examining various binary contradictions and employing metaphors pertaining to border security. Ultimately, this article argues that existing debates and metaphors are inadequate in describing what is understood and agreed upon in the literature in terms of borders. This article proposes a refinement of existing theory for contemporary borders, employing Baudrillard (1981) concept of 'simulation'. The metaphor of the 'simulated border' functions to avoid debates surrounding geospatiality while also incorporating aspects of risk society and control in concluding that borders are anything but organic security environments, with the 'stretched screens' (Lyon 2009) of border agents serving to produce dividuals that are tested within games of security to govern mobility anywhere in time or space.

Borders as Mirrors: Racial Hierarchies and Policing Migration

“…Such studies have also underscored that border security practices should be explored from the vantage point of actors that are involved in this daily work (Cote-Boucher et al 2014;Hall 2017). The use of metaphors in academic circles has also been critiqued for being unable to reconcile border studies debates which have coalesced around binary pairings of border discourse (e.g., open versus closed, inside versus outside) (Lalonde 2018;Newman 2006;Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2009).…”

“…Based on my research findings and in light of the application of metaphors that are used to describe migration, I found it useful to develop a heuristic device or alternative metaphor of "borders as mirrors" in order to generate intellectual reflection about how bordering processes are as much about ourselves as they are about migrants or those perceived to be "others." The idea of "borders as mirrors" adds to the literature on critical perspectives in criminology by complementing existing scholarship that encourages us to question the socio-political function of borders and their ubiquity, as well as the role of borders in excluding and criminalizing minority ethnic groups and in maintaining racial hierarchies and regulating foreigners across the globe (Aas 2016;Lalonde 2018;Lyon 2005;Preston and Perez 2006). Furthermore, the concept of borders as mirrors contributes to a growing area within critical race studies, which theorizes the mutable, hidden and encoded nature of racism in contemporary societies: "racism is relocating both underneath and at the surface of the skin.…”

Sovereignty, the Hyperreal, and “Taking Back Control”

“…Drawing on the body of work associated with Jean Baudrillard (1976Baudrillard ( , 1978Baudrillard ( , 1980Baudrillard ( , 1983Baudrillard ( , 1988Baudrillard ( , 1994Baudrillard ( , 2004Baudrillard ( , 2006, and multiple interpretations of this work (for example, Debrix 1999;Gane 2003;Hehir 2011;Hussey 2003;Lalonde 2018;Lane 2009;Luke 1991aLuke , 1991bLundborg 2016;Merrin 1994;Rubenstein 2008;Weber 1995Weber , 2017, the hyperreal is broadly understood in this paper as a simulated world coming to replace reality; where a consciousness of things has become corrupted by a perception of something that never existed; and where the image of this world becomes imbued with characteristics it has never had and could not possess (see Hehir 2011Hehir , 1073. A hyperreal interpretation of sovereignty emphasizes its ideal and the ways in which its idealized image distracts and conceals inherent contradictions and hypocrisies.…”

“…Appearance and actuality are no longer poles apart but instead fused together. In such conditions, and drawing on Baudrillard, Tom Lundborg suggests that: "Only when simulation is the master does the desire for total sovereignty become possible; only then can all ambivalence be removed; and only then does the world as such become 'perfectly impossible'" (Lundborg 2016, 264;Baudrillard and Noailles 2007, 47; see also Lalonde 2018).…”

News media representation on EU immigration before Brexit: the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case

“…They are the "folk devils" invoked by the media and political campaigns that articulates "territorial conceptions associated with the crime that, on the one hand, projects notions of 'European' and 'global' territory and, on the other hand, reproduces territorial inscriptions that consolidate criminal associations to populations of particular nationality" (Martins et al, 2016, p. 5). This construction of migrants as a problem on a European scale is not only a way of identifying the rival, but it is also a government technique that seeks to install alarm, anxiety and discomfort (Bigo, 2005;Lalonde, 2017;De Noronha, 2019). Nevertheless, the proportion of the different crimes portrayed represents the reverse of the official statistics represented (Sacco, 1995;Pfeiffer, 2005;Pollak and Kubrin, 2007;Cheliotis, 2010;Boda and Szabo, 2011).…”