Death by ‘nature’: The European border regime and the spatial production of slow violence

Abstract

The logic and temporality of the ‘border spectacle’ have dominated public reception of the violence endured by migrants and refugees on their journey to Europe, thus occluding the manifold ways in which daily, silent, slow violence unfolds through the EU border regime. The claim of this essay is that border assemblages are involved in the deployment of spatialized slow violence, especially through what I define as the political production of exposure to the elements. Scholars have shown how geographic and topographic factors are included in the strategies of border control and have become active factors in the policies of deterrence and ‘neo-refoulement’. Building on this work, I elaborate on the mediated agency of the environmental or ‘natural’ forces in the production of border-related violence. This is a violence that expands in space beyond the location of the geographical state border and extends in time beyond the concrete instance of border crossing. Here, sovereign violence operates not only through an unconditional power of death but also through the abandonment and exposure of migrants to the elements and therefore the production of a zone of mere biological survival, while accountability chains are concealed. What in the Western view is understood as ‘nature’ can be produced, mobilized and instrumentalized as an active factor in the infrastructures of border enforcement, producing spatialized forms of slow violence. This operation does not imply, however, that the possibilities of agency and resistance are neglected. Rather, it points to the allegedly neutral dimension of ‘nature’ towards which border struggles are being displaced.

The Border Harms of Human Displacement: Harsh Landscapes and Human Rights Violations

“…These practices are not simply territorial lines but encompass internal border checks, closures, sieges, walls, pushbacks, deportations, immigration and border policies, and regional initiatives to shape population movements (e.g., Bauder 2016; de Vries and Guild 2019; Karamanidou et al 2020;Mountz 2020;Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012;Rumford 2012). They can induce harm and mistreatment in direct or subtle ways and over time violate human rights (e.g., Cuttitta 2018;Jones 2016;Schindel 2019;Walters 2011). The Syrian conflict provides a useful context for studying the border harms of human displacement, the negotiation of bordering practices and harsh landscapes, and human rights violations.…”

“…Such practices may include returning individuals to countries of war, such as Syria, whether directly or via a third country (AI 2014) and pushing boats back and leaving them stranded at "some wild area of the coast, with little possibility of reaching an inhabited area and looking for help" (Schindel 2019, p. 6). Such harm, violence, and racism have been associated with various agencies, such as Croatian border forces (Isakjee et al 2020), the Greek Coast Guard (Schindel 2019), Turkish border guards (HRW 2020), and diverse border-island authorities (Mountz 2013).…”

“…However, Schindel warns that the 1951 Convention does not prohibit specifically "expulsion of refugees into zones of exposure to environmental dangers or to psycho-physical collapse" (Schindel 2019, p. 6). This situation is disconcerting: most border deaths in Europe are related to increased exposure to environmental conditions (Schindel 2019), which raise crucial questions concerning the border harms of human displacement and the foundering of international human rights agreements.…”

Forced (im)mobilities en route: ‘Justified’ violence of the border regime in Balkans

“…By using Galtung's and related interpretations of violence in analyzing securitization, migration, and borders, we could observe lawful mechanisms through which violence becomes either hidden or legitimized (e.g. Isakjee, Davies, Obradović-Wochnik & Augustová 2020, Augustová 2021, Zorn 2021; on using Rob Nixon's concept of "slow violence" in the analysis of the EU border regime see Schindel 2019). Certain practices of border control aiming to reduce migration, such as deportation (Gibney 2013, Bužinkić 2020, are not usually perceived as violent because they are lawful.…”

Nombrando lo que no tiene nombre: pensando la “desaparición” de migrantes en la frontera mexicano-estadounidense (Arizona)

“…Algunas personas llegan en efecto a su destino, lo comunican a sus familias y se incorporan al mercado de trabajo como mano de obra barata, generalmente, indocumentada. Otras mueren en el desierto por "exposición natural" a los elementos (Rubio-Goldsmith, McCormick, Martínez, y Duarte, 2006;Schindel, 2018Schindel, , 2019a ). Otras más son capturadas por los agentes de control fronterizo (Boder Patrol/Patrulla Fronteriza) y enviadas a centros de detención de migrantes o deportadas al otro lado de la frontera, a menudo a lugares diferentes al punto de cruce, donde han de hacerse invisibles a las autoridades gubernamentales y el narco.…”