BORDER POLITICS

BORDER POLITICS
The Limits of Sovereign Power

Nick Vaughan-Williams

Edinburgh University Press

For Ning

Nick Vaughan-Williams, 2009

Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Palatino Light by
Norman Tilley Graphics Ltd, Northampton,
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the
British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3732 4 (hardback)
The right of Nick Vaughan-Williams to be identified
as author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Introduction
The concept of the border of the state in contemporary
political life
A blind spot in International Relations theory?
The vacillation of borders
The quest for alternative border imaginaries
Map of the book
1 Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be:
Security, Territory, Law
Borders and security: the United Kingdoms new border
doctrine
Borders and territory: the European Union and the rise
of Frontex
Borders and law: the United States naval base in
Guantnamo Bay
The need to rethink what and where borders are
2 The Study of Borders in Global Politics: From Geopolitics
to Biopolitics
Limology: a brief history and current state of the art
Assuming the concept of the border of the state
Acknowledging the concept of the border of the state
Further problematising the concept of the border of the
state

vii
1
2
4
6
8
10

14
16
24
29
32

38
40
44
47
51

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BORDER POLITICS

3 Violence, Territory and the Borders of JuridicalPolitical

Order: Problematising the Limits of Sovereign Power
Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida: cartographies
of violence
Carl Schmitt: sovereignty, territory, limits
Michel Foucault: the how of power
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: the smooth space of
Empire
4 The Generalised Biopolitical Border: Security as the Normal
Technique of Government
Politics, life, and sovereign power
Reconceptualising the limits of sovereign power
Generalised border politics: the case of the shooting of
Jean Charles de Menezes

65
66
72
77
83

96
97
108
117

5 Alternative Border Imaginaries: The Politics of Framing

Thinking in terms of the generalised biopolitical border
Ethicalpolitical implications of the generalised biopolitical
border
The politics of framing

130
132

Conclusion

163

Bibliography
Index

171
185

136
146

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to express my gratitude to the Higher Education

Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) Centre for Border Studies at the
University of Glamorgan for the Research Studentship that funded the
PhD thesis on which this book is based; the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth
University), and the Department of Political Science, University of
Copenhagen, for providing an intellectually challenging yet supportive
environment in which to work on the original thesis; and more
recently the Department of Politics, University of Exeter, for enabling
me to complete the project in final book form.
Additionally, I wish to acknowledge the following colleagues,
mentors and friends. At Aberystwyth I enjoyed four years as both a
doctoral student and temporary Lecturer in International Theory and
Security. I would like to thank: Jenny Edkins, for belief in me and the
thesis, inimitable good humour and company, and outstanding
qualities as a supervisor, mentor, and confidante; Hidemi Suganami,
for taking me on as a supervisee somewhat late in the day, and never
ceasing to challenge and provoke (and talk about causation); Colin
McInnes, for supervisory support in the formative stages of the thesis
and professional advice and encouragement as Head of Department;
Andrew Linklater, who acted as my internal examiner and provided
helpful feedback and advice; Tom Lundborg, for valued discussions
and friendship in Aber and for introducing me to the dark precursor;
Cian ODriscoll for promenade-based pursuits and engaging, though
usually just-war-based, conversation; and Columba Peoples for showing us all how it should be done. Outside Aberystwyth, I owe a huge
debt to: R. B. J. Walker, for his comments on my thesis as external
examiner and intellectual and professional generosity since the viva;
Maja Zehfuss, for introducing me to Jacques Derrida, inspiring me to
vii

viii

BORDER POLITICS

pursue doctoral research, and persuading me that life in West Wales

wouldnt be that bad; Noel Parker, for friendship and intellectual
comradeship in Copenhagen and beyond; and James Brassett, Dan
Bulley, Angharad Closs Stephens, Debbie Lisle, Luis Lobo-Guerrero,
Andrew Neal, Mustapha K. Pasha, Rens van Munster, and Chris
Rumford for their ideas, collegiality, and friendship. Most recently, I
have been exceptionally lucky to have found some excellent colleagues
at the University of Exeter, who offer an enviable intellectual context
and a lively social scene in equal measure. Particular thanks are
extended to: Tim Cooper, Michael De-Lashmutt, Tim Dunne, Robin
Durie, Jonathan Githens-Mazer, John Heathershaw, Bice Maiguashca,
Alex Murray, Andy Schaap, Dan Stevens, and Colin Wight. Also, I
must express my appreciation to Rory Carson, Ollie Deakin, and
Owen Rawlings for reminding me from time to time that life does
exist beyond academia.
The transition to academic life over the past ten years would not
have been possible without the unstinting support of my family.
Thanks are due to my mother and father, and especially to my
grandmother to whom this book is dedicated, for their unconditional
love: they are my backbone and I suspect they do not know how much
I value them. I especially want to thank Madeleine for her patience
and understanding while I was working on the book, her compassionate and intelligent companionship, and most importantly our
relationship.
There are also a number of people who have made this book
possible in a more practical sense. I wish to express my thanks to: John
Williams and Yosef Lapid for providing constructive feedback on draft
chapters and their generous support of the book; two other anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of the manuscript; Nicola Ramsey, Senior Commissioning Editor at Edinburgh
University Press, for her outstanding support and lightness of touch in
seeing this project through to completion; Neil Curtis for his fastidious
attention to detail in the copy-editing process; and Henning Lindahl
for his characteristically excellent work on the jacket design.
Finally, parts of the book have appeared elsewhere at earlier stages
in the project and I would like to acknowledge these publications
as follows. The discussion of Frontex in Chapter 1 was originally
developed in an article I published as Borderwork beyond inside/
outside? Frontex, the Citizen-Detective, and the War on Terror, Space

Acknowledgements

ix

and Polity, 12 (1), (April 2008), pp. 6379. Elements of Chapter 3 were
published as Borders, Territory, Law, International Political Sociology,
4 (2) (December, 2008), pp. 32238. My treatment of the shooting of
Jean Charles de Menezes in Chapter 4 is an abridged version of the
article The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: New Border
Politics?, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 32 (2) (AprilJune 2007),
pp. 17796, which also appears in A. Closs Stephens and N. VaughanWilliams (eds), Terrorism and the Politics of Response (Abingdon and
New York: Routledge). Finally, parts of the exegesis of the work of
Jacques Derrida at the end of Chapter 5 are based on a section in my
article International Relations and the Problem of History,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34 (1), (2005), pp. 11536.
I am also grateful to Thales International and to the London
Metropolitan Police for permission to reproduce Figures 1 and 3.
Falmouth
September 2008

INTRODUCTION

Borders are ubiquitous in political life. Indeed, borders are perhaps

even constitutive of political life. Borders are inherent to logics of
inside and outside, practices of inclusion and exclusion, and questions
about identity and difference. Of course, there are many different
types of borders that can be identified: divisions along ethnic, national
or racial lines; class-based forms of stratification; regional and geographical differences; religious, cultural, and generational boundaries;
and so on. None of these borders is in any sense given but
(re)produced through modes of affirmation and contestation and
is, above all, lived. In other words borders are not natural, neutral
nor static but historically contingent, politically charged, dynamic
phenomena that first and foremost involve people and their everyday
lives.
Ostensibly, this book focuses upon one particular type of border:
the concept of the border of the state. I say ostensibly because, as I
hope will become obvious, different types of borders inevitably fold
into one another: the notion of maintaining sharp, contiguous distinctions between anything is impossible and inevitably breaks down.
In a common understanding of the term, the concept of the border of
the state refers to external, interstate or international borders that
delimit and delineate states as independent entities in the state
system.1 According to what John Agnew has referred to as the modern
geopolitical imaginary, state borders are taken to be territorial
markers of the limits of sovereign political authority and jurisdiction,
and located at the geographical outer edge of the polity.2 Accompanying this imaginary is a well-known historical account of the
emergence and supposed ossification of such borders associated with
the transition from overlapping jurisdictions in medieval Europe to
the emergence of the modern sovereign state characterised by strict
1

BORDER POLITICS

territorial delimitations.3 Irrespective of conceptual or historical

accuracy, there is little doubt that this imaginary, underpinned by the
concept of the border of the state, has had, and indeed continues to
have, significant political and ethical influence on the practice and
theory of global politics.
THE CONCEPT OF THE BORDER OF THE STATE IN
CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL LIFE
Like all concepts in the practice/theory of global politics, the concept
of the border of the state is politically and ethically charged: its usage
in all kinds of discourses must be seen as in part constituting the
modern geopolitical imaginary it purports merely to describe.4 One
obvious example of the work that the concept of the border of the
state does is to allow for a familiar spatial and temporal compartmentalisation of global politics into two supposedly distinct spheres of
activity: history and progress inside, and timeless anarchy outside.5 In
turn, such a compartmentalisation permits a problematic division of
labour between scholars of politics on the one hand and international
relations on the other.6 It is clear that the concept of the border of the
state does a lot of work, epistemologically and ontologically, in
shaping thinking about diverse issues in global politics.
The concept of the border of the state underpins the arrangement
of, and indeed the very condition of possibility for, both domestic and
international legal and political systems. Domestically, it is integral
to conventional notions of the limits of internal sovereignty and
authority, reflected in Max Webers paradigmatic definition of the state
as: a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of
the legitimate use of force within a given territory.7 In the international
sphere it enables the principle of territorial integrity, enshrined in
Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the United Nations (UN) Charter which,
since the end of World War II, has acted as the cornerstone for
regulative ideals such as: the legal existence and equality of all
states before international law; protection against the promotion of
secessionism by some states in other states territory; and territorial
independence and preservation.8 As such, and despite historical and
contemporary examples of derogations of these regulative ideals,
without the notion of territorial integrity reliant upon the concept
of the border of the state there would simply be no domestic

Introduction

and international juridicalpolitical orders to speak of in the first place.

As a central feature of the architecture of global politics, the concept
of the border of the state can be thought of as a sort of compass. It
orients the convergence of people with a given territory and notions of
a common history, nationality, identity, language and culture. In this
way, it is a pivotal concept that opens up but can also close down
a multitude of political and ethical possibilities. Not only does this
particular border delimit states but also different forms of subjectivity
or personhood that are produced by the domestic/international
juridical-political order. Like the modern sovereign state, the modern
political subject is also conceived of as being fundamentally bordered
in terms of autonomy before the law.9 Hence, discourses of rights and
responsibilities presume the subject of contemporary political life to be
an individual whose status is clearly demarcated: a citizen. Seen in
these terms, the concept of the border of the state is central to the
production of citizen-subjects whose identity derived from citizenship
provides a series of convenient answers to difficult questions such as
Who am I? Where do I belong? What should I do?
The concept of the border of the state has also framed the way
global security relations are commonly conceptualised. Although the
study of security is a fundamentally contested terrain, the modern
geopolitical imaginary has had a bearing on the trajectory of the field.
This influence has been especially, though not exclusively, due to the
relative dominance of realist and neo-realist approaches in security
studies. Such approaches, with their emphasis on states survival in an
anarchical self-help system, rely on the concept of the border of the
state in order to frame their reading of the key elements of security:
the referent object of the threat (national security); the source of the
threat (other states in the context of anarchy); and the likely means of
overcoming that threat (interstate warfare). Indeed, the concept of the
border of the state frames dominant notions of who and where the
enemy of the state is. As has been pointed out elsewhere, realist and
neo-realist perspectives understand security in terms of the history of
the defence and/or transgression of states borders.10 Although the
insights of this approach have been questioned over recent years,
particularly so since the end of the Cold War, aspects of such thinking
undoubtedly continue to permeate security practices. Indeed, the
rise of the notion of homeland security in the context of Western
governments attempts to counter the threat of international terrorism

BORDER POLITICS

has led to a reinvigoration of border protection initiatives: the new

age of the wall has begun, writes Guardian columnist Julian Borger,
ramparts and stone fortifications, regarded until recently as national
relics and tourist attractions, are back with a vengeance.11
A BLINDSPOT IN INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS THEORY?
Despite the ubiquity of borders in political life, and the particularly
privileged position of the concept of the border of the state, a number
of writers with very different perspectives have bemoaned what they
consider to be the paucity of reflection on these matters in the
theoretical literature produced by the discipline of International
Relations (IR). For Chris Brown, neither modern political theory nor
IR theory has an impressive record when it comes to theorising the
problems caused by borders.12 Similarly, Robert Jackson has argued
that: it is remarkable that state borders are usually taken for granted
by international relations. They are a point of departure but they are
not a subject of inquiry. 13 Others in IR who have written in a similar
vein include Mathias Albert,14 Yosef Lapid,15 Andrew Linklater and
John MacMillan,16 R. B. J. Walker,17 and John Williams.18 Similar complaints have been made about the strange absence of theoretical
reflection on the role of borders in political life in a number of
other disciplinary contexts such as political anthropology,19 political
sociology,20 and political geography.21 Williams neatly sums up the
basic point made by all these writers: that borders between states are
all too often treated as if they were merely the fixtures and fittings of
the international system.22
One of the purposes of this book is to contribute to efforts to
address this deficiency within the extant literature. My motivation to
write, however, is not only framed by what has hitherto remained
unsaid about borders. It also stems from a dissatisfaction with what I
consider to be the largely unreflective usage of the concept of the
border of the state in diverse claims about global politics. In this
context it is possible to identify two basic, prominent and competing
discourses: the first is the claim that borders between states are a
thing of the past; the second is the assertion that borders between
states are here to stay.
According to the first discourse, the transformation of global

Introduction

production, involving the growth of multinational companies, a

twenty-four hour market and post-Fordist industries, has rendered
the notion of a national economy obsolete.23 On this view, economic
change is said to have ushered in new patterns of governance, in
which the role of the modern, sovereign, territorially bordered state
has also diminished.24 The emergence of the European Union, with its
self-portrayal as a borderless area of freedom, security and justice,
could be cited as an example of this transformation. Consequently, it
is sometimes argued that the erosion of state borders over recent
decades threatens the very idea of the Westphalian territorially defined
international state system.25
By contrast, the second discourse maintains that national
economies have been left intact if not actually strengthened by
globalisation.26 According to this perspective, the modern state
continues to remain the primary political entity in world politics.27
Moreover, especially since the attacks on the twin towers of the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, there have
been challenges to the concept of globalisation and discourses relating
to borderlessness.28 In the face of mounting American military
aggression, and various reassertions of territorial sovereignty, some
writers, as we have already seen, argue that state borders are more
important than ever.29
Despite the fact that an array of evidence can be collected and
mounted in defence of both positions, by now the above debate
has reached something of an impasse. This implies the need for an
alternative approach that does not reify the contours of the debate by
simply arguing in favour of one side over the other. How might this be
done? A preliminary and very straightforward observation concerning
the debate is that, despite the apparent irreconcilability of the two
competing discourses, both rely upon a particular understanding of
the concept of the border of the state. This understanding not only
reflects, but works within and further entrenches, the modern
geopolitical imaginary. What the debate excludes is precisely the
possibility that the concept of the border of the state has undergone
transformation in contemporary political life. A focus on whether
borders between states are merely present or absent is blind to
dynamics in political practices that challenge the very imaginary
within which those claims about presence or absence are able to
make any sense at all.

BORDER POLITICS

THE VACILLATION OF BORDERS

tienne Balibar has written about the way in which borders in contemporary political life are not necessarily where they are supposed to
be according to the modern geopolitical imaginary: We are living in
a conjecture of the vacillation of borders both of their layout and
function that is at the same time a vacillation of the very notion
of the border, which has become particularly equivocal. 30 The
significance of Balibars argument, especially when related back to the
impasse of the debate above, is that the vacillation of borders is not
conflated with their disappearance. On the contrary, for Balibar
borders are being multiplied and reduced in their localisation, []
thinned out and doubled, [] no longer the shores of politics but []
the space of the political itself.31 As such, Balibar offers a provocative
starting point for engaging with the debate about the presence/
absence of borders between states without reifying either side.
Instead, he implies the need to think more imaginatively, and perhaps
even outside the modern geopolitical imaginary, to begin to grasp
what is going on in global politics: borders [] are no longer at the
border, an institutionalised site that could be materialised on the
ground and inscribed on the map, where one sovereignty ends and
another begins.32
In this context, it is difficult to overstate the enormity of what is at
stake, conceptually, historically and politically, in Balibars seemingly
paradoxical formulation that borders are no longer at the border. The
notion that both the nature and location of borders have undergone
some sort of transformation requires a quantum leap in the way we
think about bordering practices and their effects. It also radically
challenges the kinds of orientation hitherto provided by the modern
geopolitical imaginary underpinned by the concept of the border of
the state. In turn, this raises particularly difficult questions about how
issues relating to juridicalpolitical order, citizenship, subjectivity,
identity, security and so on might be framed otherwise. Thus, Balibars
pithy formulation highlights an urgent need for the development of
alternative border imaginaries apposite to the study of the changes he
diagnoses.
In his call for generating different ways of conceptualising borders,
Balibar is certainly not alone. Rather, it is possible to identify similar
concerns expressed by a number of writers working with various

Introduction

perspectives from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. For example, R. B.

J. Walker, who has systematically interrogated the logic of inside/
outside upon which the modern geopolitical imaginary underpinned
by the concept of the border of the state rests, issues a similar
injunction to Balibar throughout many of his texts.33 Walker argues
that: We have shifted rather quickly from the monstrous edifice of the
Berlin Wall, perhaps the paradigm of a securitized territoriality, to a
war on terrorism, and to forms of securitization, enacted anywhere. 34
Likewise, Achille Mbembe has insisted: [I]n [the] heteronymous
organisation of territorial rights and claims, it makes little sense to
insist on distinctions between internal and external political realms,
separated by clearly demarcated boundaries. 35 In the same vein, Eyal
Weizman writes: New and suggestive cartographic representations of
todays world [are required] [] a departure from the traditional view
of a world that consists of a series of more or less homogenous [sic]
nation states separated by clear borders in a continuous spatial flow. 36
Moreover, albeit in different ways and contexts, many other writers
have made equivalent claims about the need for alternative border
imaginaries in the study of global politics, including Didier Bigo,37
David Campbell,38 Zaki Ladi,39 Yosef Lapid,40 Noel Parker,41 Chris
Rumford,42 Gearid Tuathail and Simon Dalby,43 Michael J. Shapiro,44
and William Walters.45
Yet, despite these repeated calls, there has been a noticeable
reticence when it comes to the task of conceptualising such alternative
border imaginaries and then putting them to work against different
backdrops. As Walker has argued, this reticence is perhaps unsurprising given the stakes involved:
Better explanations of contemporary political life are no doubt
called for, but they are unlikely to emerge without a more
sustained reconsideration of fundamental theoretical and philosophical assumptions than can be found in most of the literature
on international relations theory.46
Nevertheless, there is a real danger of a growing disjuncture between
the increasing complexity and differentiation of borders in global
politics on the one hand, and yet the apparent simplicity and lack of
imagination with which borders and bordering practices continue to
be treated on the other. This raises the fundamental question: How

BORDER POLITICS

might it be possible to develop alternative conceptualisations of

borders without reproducing the modern geopolitical imaginary?
THE QUEST FOR ALTERNATIVE BORDER IMAGINARIES
This book responds to the challenge issued by Balibar, Walker,
Mbembe, Weizman and others to develop alternative border
imaginaries. To address the central question above the analysis steps
outside the literature in IR and related disciplines and draws upon
hitherto largely untapped resources for extended thinking about the
problem of borders found in post-structuralist thought. The term
post-structuralism is highly problematical and it is with hesitation
that I use it throughout as a heuristic device to refer to a heterogeneous body of social, political, and philosophical work. Indeed, one
of the many problems with the term is that some of the authors whose
work is often labelled as post-structural simply do not subscribe to or
even recognise it as an approach.47
Nevertheless, with these necessary caveats in mind, I will argue that
the thinkers under consideration, primarily Giorgio Agamben, Jacques
Derrida and Michel Foucault, are particularly apposite to the task
in hand because they all share a common interest in critically
questioning both the logic and practice of borders in a general sense.
By this I mean that an area of overlap between them is an insistence
on detailed analyses of how different entities, such as concepts,
subjects, communities and, indeed, states, become produced as
separate phenomena to begin with. In other words, rather than taking
such entities as somehow distinct from the outset and then merely
analysing the relationships between them, attention is drawn to their
production as supposedly singular entities in the first place.48
Moreover, as subsequent discussions will seek to illuminate, this prior
move to produce entities as distinct relates intimately to questions
about force, violence, power, authority and legitimacy, thus necessitating interrogation in its own right. On this basis, it is precisely how
borders work and how they might be identified, interrogated and
sometimes resisted that is of central concern to the thinkers I have
chosen to focus upon.
From this general theoretical starting point, the insights of the
authors above are used initially to problematise the concept of the
border of the state. Here the use of the term problematisation relates

Introduction

to the method Foucault developed in his various studies of madness,

sexuality, discipline, and surveillance and other aspects of social and
political life.49 Instead of asking questions like What is madness?
Foucault was more interested in exploring how different understandings of madness change over time through an analysis of the
field of relations around the concept.50 As a method, problematisation
interrogates the way that a concept is used in discourse, how that
usage is connected to questions to do with power relations, and the
way in which it is also productive of particular forms of subjectivity.
Therefore, rather than ask What is the concept of the border of the
state?, my analysis draws upon the insights of Agamben, Foucault
and Derrida together with other thinkers, such as Walter Benjamin
and Carl Schmitt, to think about the work that this concept does:
that is to say what is enabled, constrained or even concealed by the
modern geopolitical imaginary it underpins and sustains. In particular,
the analysis seeks to consider the relationship between the concept
of the border of the state and our understanding of practices of
sovereignty, violence and (bio)power in contemporary political life.
As well as problematising the concept of the border of the state,
however, the book also draws on the above thinkers in search of
critical resources for developing alternative border imaginaries. In this
regard, the move from a geopolitical to a biopolitical horizon of
thinking, initially inspired by Foucault and then taken in new and
provocative directions by Agamben, opens up crucial lines of enquiry.
I argue that much promise is to be found in Agambens oeuvre for a
reconceptualisation of the limits of sovereign power: not as fixed
territorial borders located at the outer edge of the state but rather
infused through bodies and diffused throughout everyday life. On the
basis of Agambens analysis, I develop the concept of the generalised
biopolitical border which, as a critique of the modern geopolitical
imaginary, can be read as a response to those who call for a more
pluralised and radicalised view of what and where borders are in
contemporary political life.
Finally, in addition to drawing upon the insights of poststructuralist thought to problematise the concept of the border of the
state and develop alternative border imaginaries, the book also uses
the problem of borders to explore some of the limitations of the poststructuralist work under consideration. While the concept of the
generalised biopolitical border is shown to be one suggestive response

10

BORDER POLITICS

to the need for different thinking about borders, problems with this
approach are identified in the light of aspects of the work of Derrida.
In this way, as well as a contribution to thinking differently about
borders in political life, the book can be considered as a critical introduction to and commentary on some of the key thinkers associated
with a post-structualist perspective.

MAP OF THE BOOK

The book is organised into five chapters. The first chapter seeks to
illustrate tienne Balibars point that borders are vacillating and not
necessarily where they are supposed to be in contemporary political
life. To do this I look at three examples of bordering practices that
challenge the modern geopolitical imaginary underpinned by the
concept of the border of the state: the emergence and implementation
of the United Kingdoms new global border security doctrine; the
recent activities of Frontex, the new European Union (EU) border
management agency, in Africa; and the indefinite detention of
suspected terrorists at the United States Naval Base in Guantnamo
Bay, Cuba. These illustrations provide a crucial empirical backdrop
that demonstrates the overall importance of developing new ways
of identifying and interrogating borders in the light of contemporary
practices.
Chapter 2 then provides a tour dhorizon of the study of borders in
IR, critical geopolitics, and the interdisciplinary subfield of border
studies. The aim is to offer an impression of the current state of the
art of existing literature that deals in various ways with the concept of
the border of the state. To this end, the primary purpose of the survey
is to accumulate, in a positive fashion, different insights and perspectives from a range of writings that can be mobilised to assist in conceptualising emerging practices of the kind outlined in Chapter 1.
I argue that it is possible to detect the beginnings of a shift in border
studies from a geopolitical to a biopolitical horizon of analysis but
that, while this has opened up new and exciting avenues of enquiry,
these have yet to be fully exploited for: 1. interrogating the concept of
the border of the state; and 2. developing different ways of conceptualising what and where borders are. As such, there is still much
work to be done. On this basis, I situate the book as a contribution to

Introduction

11

ongoing interdisciplinary efforts to employ a biopolitical approach to

the study of borders.
Chapter 3 moves away from the IR and related literature to explore
potential resources in post-structuralist thought for an interrogation of
the concept of the border of the state. Developing some of the insights
of the literature outlined in the previous chapter, I seek to highlight
and examine the relation between state borders and practices of
violence, sovereignty, and (bio)power. First, the work of Benjamin and
Derrida is drawn upon to analyse the violent foundations of the
juridicalpolitical order and the work that borders do in upholding
such violence. Second, I use Schmitts paradigmatic account of
sovereignty and later treatment of the relationship between spatial
ordering and law to offer an interpretation of borders as exceptional
spaces. Third, Foucaults treatment of (bio)power and notion of
biopolitics are explored more fully, which offers further scope for a
critical interrogation of the concept of the border of the state away
from the confines of the modern geopolitical imaginary.
Chapter 4 traces Agambens engagement with and development of
Foucaults understanding of the biopolitical structures of the West
in order to explore the possibilities of his approach for developing
alternative border imaginaries. It begins with an exegesis of
Agambens work although departures are made from extant
interpretations in respect of his concept of bare life, the importance of
what he calls a logic of the field, and the spatial dimensions of his
thought more generally. Building upon Agamben, I develop the
concept of the generalised biopolitical border as an alternative to the
geopolitical concept of the border of the state. Thinking in terms of
the generalised biopolitical border unties an analysis of the limits of
sovereign power from the territorial confines of the modern state and
relocates such an analysis in the context of a global terrain that spans
and decentres notions of domestic and international space.
Chapter 5 begins by assessing what the implications of the concept
of the generalised biopolitical border might be and how this differs
from the concept of the border of the state. It does so by returning to
the examples of the work that the latter does in contemporary political
life in respect of framing our understanding of juridicalpolitical order,
the production of identities of citizen-subjects, and global security
relations. By rereading these examples in the light of the concept of
the generalised biopolitical border, I then explore how this alternative

12

BORDER POLITICS

frame might entail new modes of practice/theory. Drawing on

Derridas account of the politics of framing, however, I end on a note
of caution about the way in which thinking in terms of the concept of
the generalised biopolitical border runs the risk of foisting the same
problematic sense of form, shape, and coherence on global politics as
a totality in the same way that the concept of the border of the state
has done.
NOTES
1. See Anderson, Frontiers, 1996; and Prescott, Political Frontiers and
Boundaries, 1987.
2. Agnew, The Territorial Trap, 1994. See also Jackson, The Global Covenant,
2000; and Williams, The Ethics of Territorial Borders, 2006.
3. See Agnew, The Territorial Trap, 1994; Ruggie, Constructing the World
Polity, 1998; Tuathail and Dalby, Rethinking Geopolitics, 1998; Teschke,
The Myth of 1648, 2003; and Walker, Inside/outside, 1993.
4. In this sense it is what William Connolly refers to as onto-political;
Connolly, The Irony of Interpretation, 1992. See also Connolly, The
Terms of Political Discourse, 1993.
5. Bartelson, The Critique of the State, 2001; Walker, Inside/outside, 1993.
6. Camilleri et al., The State in Transition, 1995, pp. 14.
7. Weber, Politics as a Vocation, 1948, p. 78.
8. See Elden, Contingent Sovereignty, 2006 and Blair, Neo-Conservatism
and the War on Territorial Integrity, 2007.
9. See Butler, Precarious Life, 2004, p. 32.
10. Linklater and MacMillan, Boundaries in Question, 1995, p. 12
11. Borger, Security Fences or Barriers to Peace?, 2007, p. 23.
12. Brown, Borders and Identity, 2001, p. 117.
13. Jackson, The Global Covenant, 2000, p. 316.
14. Albert, On Boundaries, 1999, p. 54.
15. Lapid, Introduction: Nudging IR Theory in a New Direction, 2001, pp.
67.
16. Linklater and MacMillan, Boundaries in Question, 1995.
17. Walker, Editorial Note, 2000, p. 2.
18. Williams, Territorial borders, 2003, pp. 2546.
19. Donnan and Wilson, Borders, 1999.
20. Rumford, Introduction: Theorising Borders, 2006.
21. Kolossov, Border Studies, 2005; Newman, Boundaries, Borders and
Barriers, 2001; Paasi, The Changing Discourses on Political Boundaries,
2005.
22. Williams, Territorial borders, 2003, p. 27.

Introduction

13

23. Brown, Globalisation, 2005, p. 167.

24. Strange, The Westfailure System, 1999.
25. Held and McGrew, The Global Transformations Reader, 2002, p. 39; Scholte,
Globalisation, 2000, pp. 1356.
26. Hirst and Thompson, Globalisation in Question, 1996 and The Future of
Globalisation, 2002.
27. Carlson et al., Foreword, 2006, pp. 12.
28. Coward, The Globalisation of Enclosure, 2005, pp. 10534; Newman,
Borders and Bordering, 2006, p. 181.
29. Starr, International Borders, 2006, pp. 310.
30. Balibar, The Borders of Europe, 1998, p. 217.
31. Ibid., p. 220.
32. Ibid., pp. 21718.
33. Walker frequently implies the inadequacy of the inside/outside model
conditioned by the concept of the border of the state. See: Walker,
Inside/outside, 1993, pp. 20, 159, 161; Sovereignty, Identity, Community,
1990, p. 180; Foreword, 1999, p. xii; On the Immanence/Imminence of
Empire, 2002, p. 343.
34. Walker, International/inequality, 2002, p. 17.
35. Mbembe, Necropolitics, 2005, pp. 1140.
36. Weizman, On Extraterritoriality, 2007, p. 13.
37. Bigo, The Mbius Ribbon, 2001.
38. Campbell, Writing Security, 1998; National Deconstruction, 1998; Moral
Spaces, 1999.
39. Z. Ladi, A World Without Meaning, 1998, p. 97.
40. Lapid, Introduction, 2001, p. 2.
41. Parker, A Theoretical Introduction, 2008.
42. Rumford, Introduction, 2006.
43. Tuathail and Dalby, Rethinking Geopolitics, 1996, p. 29.
44. Shapiro, Challenging Boundaries, 1996; Violent Cartographies, 1997; Moral
Spaces, 1999.
45. Walters, Mapping Schengenland, 2002; Border/Control, 2006.
46. Walker, Inside/outside, 1993, p. 159.
47. Jacques Derrida, for example, is eager to maintain [the concept of poststructuralism] as suspect and problematic, see: Derrida, Deconstruction:
the Im-Possible, 2001, p. 16.
48. As Noel Parker puts it: post-structuralism leaves in question the solidity
of entities themselves, see Parker, A Theoretical Introduction, 2008,
p. 11.
49. Foucault, Problematization, 1991.
50. Foucault, Madness and Civilisation, 2001 [1959].

Chapter 1
BORDERS ARE NOT WHAT OR WHERE THEY ARE
SUPPOSED TO BE: SECURITY, TERRITORY, LAW

Borders between states have affected, and continue to affect, peoples

lives in different ways according to their citizenship, economic status,
ethnic background and so on. Moreover, the affects of such borders
on different people do not remain static but may change according to
individual and broader historical and political circumstances. Today,
especially in the West, many people seem to experience what might be
considered a globalised borderless world whereby entering and exiting
a state is a mere formality, and mobility is taken as almost a given.
But for others, such as those in South America or Africa, notions of
borderlessness do not make much sense at all as their movement is
subject to intense scrutiny and methods of control. In other words,
different people experience border politics differently depending on
who they are, where they are coming from and going to, and what
their motivation for travelling might be.
When we think about borders in contemporary political life, a
number of iconic images perhaps come to mind: the Berlin Wall; the
United StatesMexico border; the straight lines dividing the African
continent. According to this picture, paradigmatically represented by
Mercators map, global politics is characterised by territorial borders
that separate states into sovereign political entities. On this view,
the border is a marker of the limits of the sovereign power of the
state located at a fixed site at its geographical outer edge. Such a view
corresponds with what John Agnew has famously referred to as
the modern geopolitical imaginary which, he argues, constitutes a
territorial trap underpinned by three problematical assumptions: that
states have exclusive power within their territories as represented by
the concept of sovereignty; that domestic and international spheres
14

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

15

are distinct; and that the borders of the state define the borders of
society so that the latter is constrained by the former.1
The question of whether borders between states are here to stay or
about to disappear forever has preoccupied many theorists of global
politics over the last fifty years or so. Irrespective of which side of the
debate one might consider most convincing, however, a simple focus
on the presence or absence of such borders is a rather unhelpful
starting point for thinking about border politics to begin with. For
a start, it distracts attention from the politics of different border
experiences according to peoples varying subject positions. Perhaps
more fundamentally still, it is a framing that is blinkered to the
possibility that the concept of the border of the state might be
changing in terms of both its nature and its location in contemporary
political life. Indeed, there are many current bordering practices that
challenge the commonsensical image of what and where borders in
global politics are supposed to be according to the modern geopolitical imaginary, and in many respects the concept of the border of
the state appears to be undergoing spatial and temporal shifts of
seismic proportions.
This Chapter takes as its starting point tienne Balibars pithy
observation that borders [] are no longer at the border.2 My aim
is to illustrate this seemingly paradoxical and otherwise abstract
formulation by investigating emerging reconfigurations of the concept
of the border of the state in current political practices. Such an
empirical focus is significant for the study as a whole because it
establishes from the outset a need for more sophisticated conceptualisations of both the nature and location of borders and
bordering practices. With this in mind I offer three illustrations of
how the concept of the border of the state is being played out in
unexpected directions with significant consequences for thinking
about what studying borders might mean. The first considers how
developments in global border security, with specific reference to the
emergence of the United Kingdoms new border doctrine, decentre
our understanding of borders. The second analyses this decentring in
relation to the territorial location of borders by looking at the recent
activities of the new European Union border management agency
Frontex. The third points to the increasing disjuncture between
territorial limits on the one hand and the limits of law on the other in
the context of the detention of suspect terrorists held at the United

16

BORDER POLITICS

States naval base at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba. Taken together, the

illustrations raise fundamental questions about the interplay between
borders, identity, subjectivity, security, sovereignty, power and
authority, which frame the context of the rest of the book.
BORDERS AND SECURITY: THE UNITED KINGDOMS
NEW BORDER DOCTRINE
Within one month of his accession to the UK premiership on
27 June 2007, and in the aftermath of the attack on Glasgow airport,
Gordon Brown announced a new series of measures designed to
increase national security and combat the threat of international
terrorism.3 At the heart of Browns first Statement on Security was a
reliance on the notion of three lines of defence: the first located
overseas so that terrorist suspects can be identified and stopped
before they board planes, trains and boats to the United Kingdom;
the second to be found at the main points of entry where biometrics
are already in place and a new unified border force will be in
operation; and third within our borders [] to help prevent people
already in the country using multiple identities for terrorist, criminal or
other purposes.4 This emphasis on borders as a central tenet of
emerging UK homeland security policy was further enshrined in the
Borders Act, which came into force in October 2007, and more
recently in the National Security Strategy (NSS) unveiled in March
2008. Furthermore, the establishment of the new United Kingdom
Border Agency (UKBA) in April 2008, with a budget of 2 billion and
eight thousand officers, represents a key milestone in the implementation of nascent border policy.
While Browns first year as Prime Minister has witnessed a feverish
push towards heightened border security, however, this marks a
continuation of, rather than a departure from, Labours policy in
government. Indeed, the primacy of the development of UK border
security can be traced to the days following the attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. This trajectory was, of course,
given added impetus in the wake of the London bombings on 7 July
2005 and subsequent thwarted bombings across Britain. In December
2006 the first in a series of documents outlining radical changes to the
UK border was released: the Borders, Immigration and Identity Action
Plan. This was followed with the publication of Securing the UK

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

17

Border: Our Vision and Strategy for the Future in March 2007 and
the lengthier Security in a Global Hub: Establishing the UKs New
Border Arrangements in November 2007. Emerging from this growing
corpus of literature, which has so far received little academic attention
especially when compared with the study of American homeland and
border security,5 are several key themes that imply a shift in how the
Home Office (HO), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)
and 10 Downing Street conceptualise what and where the UK border
actually is.
Reflecting something of a departure from the modern geopolitical
imaginary, the Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office
invoke what is presented as an outdated model of the border against
which new plans for improved border security are outlined:
The border has been traditionally understood as a single, staffed
physical frontier, where travellers show paper-based identity
documents to pass through.6
This philosophy will not deal effectively with the step change in
mobility that globalisation has brought to our country. We believe
that a new doctrine is demanded.7
As the second of these quotations demonstrates, the need for the
development of a new UK border doctrine is partly framed in terms of
the acceleration of mobility arising from conditions of globalisation.
The exponential growth in global movement is presented as both
a potentially good and bad phenomenon for the UK. On the one
hand, it brings great opportunity, such as the contribution to gross
domestic product of those working legally. On the other hand, it
creates new challenges including identity fraud, illegal immigration,
organised crime and international terrorism.8 Therefore, this duality
is said to necessitate an approach that balances economic prosperity
with security imperatives: The goal is to find the optimal relation
between an appropriate degree of security, and the free flow of people
and goods. 9 In this way, security and prosperity are taken to be
separate from the outset and the new UK border doctrine is tasked
to keep out risky subjects (potential fraudsters, illegal immigrants,
criminals or terrorists) while simultaneously welcoming in profitable
and trusted subjects (business people, tourists, bona fide asylum

18

BORDER POLITICS

seekers, legal economic migrants): The aim of border control is to sort

traffic into legitimate and non-legitimate and maximise the effort
directed against movements that would, without action by the state,
be detrimental to the UK, while minimising the burden on those that
would not. 10 Hence, rather than a barrier or obstacle in the physical
sense, the concept of the border at work here is one that privileges
permeability: a portal that depends upon rather than prevents the
circulation of people, services, and goods.
Yet, as well as increased mobility resulting from globalisation, the
need for a new border doctrine for the UK is also framed and justified
in terms of broader changes to the security environment. Although
it is recognised that threats from immigration, crime and terrorism
are not new, the government argues that what has changed is the
intensity of those threats: the UK faces threats [] of an unprecedented level of virulence, sophistication and variety.11 Against
this backdrop, the attacks on the World Trade Center, Bali, Istanbul,
Madrid, London, and Glasgow are cited as factors both leading to and
reflective of that intensification.12 Crucially, enhanced border security
measures are presented as the most adequate and appropriate
response to international terrorism.13 How has the UK border been
transformed from a static physical frontier and in what ways does it
respond specifically to the threat of terrorism? To address these
questions, it is instructive to identify three key interlinked innovations
reflected in the new UK border doctrine: offshoring; identity capture;
and pre-emption.

Offshoring the border

Throughout the various documents outlining the UKs new border
doctrine are numerous references to the need to offshore bordering
practices:
Border control can no longer be a fixed line on a map. Using new
technologies [] we must create a new offshore line of defence.14
The aim is to create a new offshore line of defence to check
individuals as far from the UK as possible and through each part
of their journey.15

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

19

We want to extend the concept of exporting our borders around

the world.16
The concept of offshore bordering, through not unique to the UK
context, has come to underpin the Brown governments approach to
security in a global hub.17 Central to this concept is the notion that it
is simply too late to wait for risky subjects to arrive at traditional
border crossings, such as ports and airports, on UK territory. Rather,
the stated innovation of the UKs new border doctrine is to take the
border to the perceived locus of threat before it departs in the first
place.
In one sense, there is quite literally an exporting of the border
so that it is physically transported to territory overseas through
juxtaposed controls whereby the UK monitors mobility in other states
and vice versa. For example, since 2001 the UK has taken its border
to sites in Boulogne, Brussels, Calais, Coquelles, Dunkerque, Frethun,
Lille, and Paris to detect and deter potential clandestine illegal
immigrants before they are able to set foot on UK soil, fundamentally
altering the way the UK operates at its border.18 In this context,
as well as traditional forms of border control reliant on paper
documentation, new technologies such as carbon dioxide probes,
X-ray scanners, heart-beat sensors, and heat detectors have been
rolled out in order to detect the illegal entry of people concealed in
freight.19
In another sense, offshore bordering relates to other forms of
control on movement that are increasingly not related to territory
in any straightforward way but rather more ephemeral, electronic
and invisible. These practices enable the expansion of UK border
operations beyond reciprocal ventures with fellow European Union
member states. Indeed, one of the main objectives of the new UKBA
is to reach beyond Europe in an attempt to globalise the UK border.20
One recent innovation in this area is the development of a global
network of overseas border security advisers including Airline Liaison
Officers (ALOs). The role of ALOs, of whom there are fifty-five
working across thirty-two states worldwide, is to work with local
intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to detect and deter
inadequately documented passengers.21 Another dimension of offshore bordering practices is the implementation of the new e-Borders
programme. This initiative, which involves data capture prior to travel

20

BORDER POLITICS

and analysis undertaken at the new Joint e-Borders Operations Centre

(J-BOC), aims to count most foreign nationals in and out of the UK
by December 2008.22

Identity capture and management at the border

At the heart of the range of measures designed to transform UK
border security is risk-based identity capture and management: We
want [] to fix peoples identities at the earliest point practicable,
checking them through each stage of their journey, identifying those
presenting a risk and stopping them coming to the UK. 23
The principle of the integrity of identity underpins new technologies put in place for risk assessment. Whereas paper-based
passports and visas allowed for identity fraud and the use of false
aliases, it is argued that new forms of biometrics lock applicants into
an identity at the earliest possible point in their journey, allowing
authorities to track more easily their previous and future dealings
with the UK.24 By checking biometric data against Immigration and
Asylum databases, it is then possible both to cross-reference back to
any previous application that might have been made and to discover
any history of criminality to allow or refuse travel.25 Such data are
defined as information about external characteristics and can include
fingerprinting and features of the iris or any part of the eye.26 While
these systems are designed primarily to deter some travellers deemed
to be illegitimate, they can also be used to ease the journeys of others.
Thus, Project Iris, for example, is a biometrically controlled automated border entry system that enables preregistered passengers to
proceed through automated gates at the border rather than queuing
to present their passport to an officer at the control.27 Again, in this
way we see the double functioning of the technologies put in place
intended both to hinder and to facilitate movement according to
decisions about the legitimacy of the subject in transit.
The rolling out of identity capture and management systems has
relied heavily upon private enterprise and investment. With a step
change in both the intensity and scope of border security measures,
new business opportunities have coalesced around homeland defence
thereby creating a multimillion pound industry. Contracts for
designing and delivering the technological infrastructure central to
the governments border transformation programme were put out for

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

21

Figure 1 The Thales Identity Life Cycle of a Citizen 30

tender in 2007 and have been won by global multinational corporations such as Trusted Borders, British Telecom and Thales.28 For
example, the international defence firm Thales has developed second
generation digital identity technologies which are designed to supersede current paper-based documentation.29 Whereas the latter is based
on a static capture of physical identity valid for ten years and reliant
upon trust, the former provides constantly updated forms of identity
capture using biometry and cryptography. The life cycle of the citizen
is reflected in the life cycle of the identity smartcards which automatically register changes in physical appearance, status (for example,
if someone has got married, divorced or had children), and can
therefore be read as continually evolving live histories of the subject
(see figure 1).
Anticipating criticism from civil liberties campaigners such as Shami
Chakrabarti, Director of the group Liberty, Thales makes an analogy
between its second generation digital identity solutions and mobile
telephones. The latter is a technology that can be traced and involves a
potential loss of privacy but is deemed by the majority of populations
to be acceptable because of the benefits it affords. Similarly, Thales
argues, the former will be based on the same principle whereby new
digital identity data can be used by customers to assert their identity
and gain access to an array of services (such as health and social
security benefits). On the one hand, this view of identity presupposes
that identity is something that people possess, can be captured, and
then used in particular forms of governance, and clearly this under-

22

BORDER POLITICS

standing permeates recent UK government literature on border

security. On the other hand, there is a sense in which the second wave
of identity technologies, such as those developed by Thales, reflects an
awareness of the challenges faced by the task of capturing something
that does not exist straightforwardly. Moves towards a constantly
updated method of identity capture, in tandem with subjects life
cycles as depicted in figure 1, point towards a recognition of the need
for a less static and more dynamic and contingent understanding of
identity.

Pre-emptive bordering practices

The emphasis given to fixing identities at the earliest point practicable
through offshore bordering practices points to the emergence of a
broader principle of pre-emption that also underpins the UKs new
border doctrine. Whereas the traditional border philosophy referred
to by the government perceived threats at a single, staffed, physical
frontier at ports, airports, and other border crossings, an alternative
vision has been outlined that tackles these threats before they reach
UK territory.31 According to this vision, the traditional border did not
act early enough in preventing the wrong sort of travellers to the UK:
it can be too late they have achieved their goal in reaching our
shores.32 What does the principle and practice of pre-emption entail
in this context?
The five foundations for the UKs new border doctrine, as outlined
in Security in a Global Hub, comprise: 1. Act early; 2. Target activity;
3. Manage bottlenecks; 4. Maximise depth and breadth of protection;
and 5. Reassure and deter. Pre-empting the arrival of risky subjects by
preventing them from embarking on their journey to the UK most
obviously relates to the first of these foundations: the most effective
[] way of addressing risks to the UK is to identify those movements
which present a threat and to stop or control them before they reach
the UK.33 Indeed, referring back to Browns statement on security,
pre-emptive bordering constitutes the first ring of defence envisaged
by the UK government.34
On this basis, pre-emption involves gathering information and
identifying risk before travel begins: The earlier that risk is identified
and can be acted upon, the greater the chance of it being successfully
resolved, and the less it usually costs to do so. 35 Moreover, inno-

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

23

vations in biometric forms of data capture, together with the rolling

out of the new e-Borders Programme, are also designed to use
deterrence as a form of pre-emption: In addition to the opportunities
to collect data and intervene, border controls represent an important
opportunity to deter criminality. 36 While it is noted that such deterrence is difficult to measure, it is nevertheless a form of pre-emption
considered to be just as, if not more, important than more formalised
methods: Border controls should therefore strike a balance between
actions to improve the effectiveness behind the scenes such as
information and intelligence sharing leading to targeted activity and
actions that provide a visible presence at certain key locations. 37
Pre-emption also connects with the second of the five foundations
above, because the targeting of activity involves the prior construction
of risk profiles out of a single pool of information about suspect
identities and risky individuals.38 While recent documentation from
the Cabinet Office, Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth
Office makes frequent reference to the importance of intelligence-led
risk management, however, it remains unclear precisely on what
grounds an individual or group will be deemed risky under the UKs
new border doctrine. Indeed, the criteria upon which decisions about
the legitimacy of travellers are made have not been made public and
very few clues are given in the relevant policy literature. On the one
hand, assurances have been made that the level of harm posed by
individuals will be determined by reliable forms of intelligence: Our
ultimate vision is to use intelligence, risk assessment and analysis to
apply scrutiny based on individual risk rather than nationality. 39 On the
other hand, there is an obvious presumption that those from inside
the European Economic Area (EEA) are low-risk trusted travellers
whereas non-European Union nationals are automatically treated as
high-risk targeted travellers.40 Such a privileging inscribes a border
that ultimately creates two zones of travel to the UK which, despite
statements to the contrary, necessarily builds nationality inextricably
into the logic of inclusion and exclusion in this context.
As we have seen, new technologies have facilitated innovations
in the ways in which the UK government attempts to secure its
borders both spatially and temporally. Thus, while traditional forms
of border control are still evident at conventional border sites, such
as ports and airports, technology has enabled the rise of different
thinking in government and policy-making arenas about what/where

24

BORDER POLITICS

the border of the UK should be in an interdependent world.41 Recent

literature outlining the new UK border doctrine emphasises that
borders are not necessarily to be found at the outer edge of the state.
In turn, this challenges the idea that the territorial limits of the UK
are somehow coterminous with the location of the UKs borders and,
more significantly still, the governments attempts to control them.
Similar dynamics, which raise significant conceptual issues to be
explored in later chapters, are also evident in the efforts of Frontex to
secure the European Unions borders.

BORDERS AND TERRITORY: THE EUROPEAN UNION

AND THE RISE OF FRONTEX
The main role of Frontex, which was established in Warsaw in 2004 as
a decentralised EU regulatory agency with financial, administrative
and legal autonomy, is to promote a pan-European model of
integrated border security.42 This pan-European model comprises
three basic tiers: tier one involves the exchange of information and cooperation between member states on issues relating to immigration
and repatriation; tier two incorporates border and customs control
focusing on surveillance, border checks and risk analysis; and tier
three encompasses co-operation between border guards, customs
and police in non-EU states. Article Two of the founding Regulation
outlines the principle tasks of Frontex as follows:
(a) To co-ordinate operational co-operation between member states
in the field of management of external borders;
(b) To assist member states on training of national border guards,
including the establishment of common training standards;
(c) To carry out risk analyses;
(d) To follow up on the development of research relevant for the
control and surveillance of external borders;
(e) To assist member states in circumstances requiring increased
technical and operational assistance at external borders;
(f) To provide member states with the necessary support in
organising joint return operations.43
The intention here is not to provide a detailed account of the

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

25

establishment of Frontex or its areas of legal competence but rather to

outline and illustrate: 1. how the notion of integrated border security
has emerged as one of the European Unions responses to the threat
of international terrorism since 11 September 2001; and 2. how the
recent activities of Frontex in this context challenge what and where
the borders of the European Union are.44 In this way parallels will be
drawn between the United Kingdom and European Union cases as
illustrations of the increasing complexity of borders in contemporary
political life.

Integrated border security in Europe

According to the Frontex website, the origins of the agency lie in
the broad context of a series of moves designed to implement the
principle of the free movement of people as originally provided for
under Article Three of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. In 1985, France,
Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed the
Schengen Agreement, pledging to apply the free movement principle
by abolishing controls within their common borders. Two years later
the Single European Act (SEA) came into effect stipulating that:
the internal market should consist of an area without internal
frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services and
capital is ensured in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty.
A Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement was drafted
and signed in June 1990, and in the following six years Italy, Spain,
Portugal, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Finland and Sweden joined the
original five member states. It was not until the realisation of the
Amsterdam Treaty in May 1999, however, that the Schengen acquis
was incorporated into the first pillar of the European Union. This
incorporation went hand in hand with the expressed aim of establishing the Union as a borderless area of freedom, security and justice
(Article 2, Treaty of the European Union).
Accompanying the abolition of internal borders was a series of
compensatory measures, including closer co-operation between the
police, customs and judiciary across member states via the Schengen
Information System (SIS), the implications of which for immigration
and asylum have been covered extensively.45 Thus, freedom and
security have been established as antithetical values requiring a
balanced approach, and it is in precisely these terms that the

26

BORDER POLITICS

operation of Frontex has been framed: Frontex complements and

provides particular added value to the national border management
systems of the member states and to the freedom and security of their
citizens.46 In this way, the security imperatives of Frontex are
supposedly tempered by the Unions commitment to freedom.
On the one hand, the development of Frontex can be located within
this broad historical trajectory of the Europeanisation of member
states borders: a further institutionalisation in the ongoing process of
a technocratically-driven integration project.47 On the other hand, the
role of Frontex and integrated border security has also been presented
as a specific solution to the problem of the need to respond to the
threat of terrorism in the European Union since 11 September 2001. In
the Declaration on Combating Terrorism, published on 25 March
2004 in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings, Article Six stresses that
the solidarity of the Union must go hand in hand with the need to
strengthen border controls. Similarly, the Council Declaration on the
EU Response to the London Bombings declared that its immediate
priority is to build on the existing strong EU framework for pursuing
and investigating terrorists across borders. Moreover the Revised EU
Terrorism Action Plan of 9 March 2007 refers to the role of Frontex in
conducting effective risk analysis of Europes borders (Article 2.5) and
impeding terrorists movement by maximising the capacity of existing
border systems to monitor, and, where relevant, counter the movement of suspected terrorists across our internal and external borders
(Article 3.2). Moves towards integrated border security have nevertheless complicated how the traditional separation between internal and
external realms referred to above plays out in practice.

Is the border of the European Union no longer at the border?

According to one news report, there were 16,404 documented cases of
illegal immigrants arriving from Africa into Spanish territory between
January and September 2006.48 On average during this period between
a hundred and four hundred Africans were attempting to enter the
European Union via the Canary Islands every day. Many travelled (and
continue to travel) on overcrowded cayucos Senegalese fishing
boats each carrying seventy to a hundred and fifty people. Lists
compiled by UNITED of some of those who did not make it alive into
the Union are accessible by typing dead refugees in fortress Europe

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

27

into Google. The headline style makes for particularly uncomfortable

reading and offers a stark illustration of the way in which border
politics is not an abstract phenomenon but one that involves peoples
experiences, their bodies and often ultimately deaths:
Found dead: 16/12/06
Number: 126
Name: Not known
Country of origin: West Africa
Cause of death: Reportedly drowned, missing, boat capsized on way
from Djiffer (Senegal) to Spain.
Found dead: 5/10/06
Number: 24
Name: Not known
Country of origin: Maghreb
Cause of death: Drowned after their rubber boat broke up trying to
reach Canary Islands.
Found dead: 17/9/06
Number: 1
Name: Not known (man)
Country of origin: Sub-Saharan Africa
Cause of death: Died of lack of medical care in police custody after
his boat landed in Los Cristianos.49
As Sergio Carrera has pointed out, the situation in the Canaries
was presented by the European Union and Spanish officials as an
unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the whole of Europe.50 The
institutional response to this crisis was the deployment of Frontex
personnel from France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands,
Norway and the UK between 17 July and 31 October.51 This operation,
known as HERA I, was intended to support the Spanish authorities in
[the] identification of the migrants and [the] establishment of their
countries of origin.52 In this way, the first phase of Frontex activity
in the Canary Islands reflects what might be considered to be
conventional borderwork at traditional border sites associated with
the implementation of a control on movement of subjects at airports,
ports and the geographical outer edges of sovereign territory.

28

BORDER POLITICS

The second phase of the Frontex operation from 11 August to

15 December departed from this orthodoxy, however. HERA II
brought together technical border surveillance equipment from several
member states with the expressed aim of preventing migrants from
leaving the shores on the long sea journey.53 To achieve this, Frontex
mobilised patrol boats supplied by Italy and Portugal off the West
African coast near Mauritania, Senegal, and Cape Verde.54 Moreover,
surveillance planes from Finland and Italy were flown along the coast
and deeper into African territory in an attempt to deter would-be
migrants from making the journey to the European Union in the first
place.55 In his analysis of Frontex operations in Africa, Carrera refers to
this deterrence of movement as a form of pre-border surveillance.56
Nevertheless, as a control on the movement of subjects into or within
the Union, it is perhaps more accurate to see these missions as
European border performances, albeit hundreds of miles away from
member states territory and the geographical outer edge of the
Union.
What is interesting about the HERA II operation is that it highlights
the way in which borderwork undertaken by Frontex not only occurs
at what might usually be understood to be typical border sites. Rather,
as the pre-emptive measures in African territory illustrate, Frontex
increasingly polices the EUs borders by taking its bordering practices
directly to the populations it deems to pose the greatest threat.
This offshoring of the border, reminiscent of the UKs new border
doctrine, complicates the straightforward notion of an alignment
between the territorial limits of the Union on the one hand and the
limits of its ability to attempt to control movement on the other. This
disaggregation illustrates that the relationship between borders and
territory is not static but increasingly dynamic. That is to say, the
territories that borders supposedly delimit are not necessarily the only
territories within which borders can control movement. The case of
Americas detention of suspected terrorists in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba,
offers another illustration of the increasing complexity of the relation
between borders and territory as well as a provocative case for
thinking about the implications of this for law.

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

29

BORDERS AND LAW: THE UNITED STATES NAVAL BASE

IN GUANTNAMO BAY
The United States government established the detention centre at
Guantnamo Bay in January 2002 to hold suspected terrorists captured
in Afghanistan. Since its establishment, approximately 520 detainees
from forty different countries have been held there, including cab
drivers, farmers, and thirteen-year-old children.57 A recent United
Nations report on the Situation of detainees at Guantnamo Bay
highlights the conditions under which they are detained. Detainees
are housed in 8-foot by 8-foot cells with wire walls, metal roofs and
permanent electric lighting. Interrogation methods, approved by the
Secretary of Defense, consist mainly of: the use of stress positions (like
standing) for up to four hours; isolation for up to thirty days; sensory
deprivation; removal of comfort items; forced grooming; use of individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress.58 Other policies
include: degrading treatment (such as the removal of clothing
sometimes in the presence of women); cultural and religious harassment (such as using female interrogators to perform lap dances and
deliberately mishandling the Holy Koran by kicking it); and beating
detainees who resist.59 Moreover, the uncertainty generated by the
indeterminate nature of confinement has, according to the United
Nations, led to serious mental health problems: as of 13 June 2006
there have been three suicides and many more attempted suicides.

Legal challenges to indefinite detention

Detainees in Guantnamo are held in what Amnesty International
calls a legal blackhole.60 Under the Military Order on the Detention,
Treatment and Trial of Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism of
13 November 2001 (the Military Order), the United States government has denied most detainees the right to challenge the lawfulness
of detention before a court and the right to a fair trial by a competent,
independent and impartial court of law.61 According to the US Defense
Department, the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists in
Guantnamo is a military and security necessity in the context of the
global War on Terror:
The law of war allows the United States and any other country
engaged in combat to hold enemy combatants without charge or

30

BORDER POLITICS

access to counsel for the duration of the hostilities. Detention is

not an act of punishment but of security and military necessity. It
serves the purpose of preventing combatants from continuing to
take up arms against the United States.62
As the UN report points out, however, detention without charges or
access to counsel for the duration of hostilities amounts to a radical
departure from established principles on human rights law.63 Further
still, as far as the United Nations is concerned, the global struggle
against international terrorism does not, as such, constitute an armed
conflict for the purposes of the applicability of international humanitarian law.64 Yet, despite these findings, human rights lawyers acting
on behalf of detainees and their families continue to find it difficult to
mount effective defences.
Seeking grounds on which the camp might be closed down, the
report of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention sets out
the international legal framework that its assessment of the United
States treatment of detainees is based upon. According to this
document, the relevant provisions under international law to which
the United States is party fall under two main categories: first, a series
of human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture) and the International Convention on the
Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD); second,
international humanitarian law treaties, such as the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Third Convention) and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of
Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Convention).65
On the issue of the scope of the United States obligation to
international law, the report invokes Article Two of the ICCPR, which
declares: each State Party [] undertakes to respect and to ensure all
individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights
recognized in the ICCPR without distinction of any kind.66 Prima facie
the applicability of the provisions of this Article could be called into
question owing to the seemingly anomalous territorial and juridical
status of the United States naval base at Guantnamo Bay. After all,
this land, which has been the site of colonial struggle for almost a
century, is not strictly part of US territory but has been leased from

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

31

Cuba since February 1903 for any and all things necessary to fit the
purposes of coaling and naval stations only, and for no other purpose.67
Therefore, it might be suggested that, while the provisions of Article
Two of the ICCPR apply in the rather more conventional context of
sovereign practices within bounded territorial states, they make little
sense in the case of Guantnamo Bay.
Seeking to clarify the phrase all individuals within its territory and
subject to its jurisdiction, however, the report refers to two recent
international legal opinions that challenge this commonsensical view.
First, the authors note the view of the Human Rights Committee that
monitors the implementation of the Covenant that: a State Party must
respect and ensure the rights laid down in the Covenant to anyone
with the power or effective control of that State Party, even if not
situated within the territory of the state party.68 Second, the United
Nations report highlights the position of the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall
in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.69 On the one hand, the ICJ
recognised that the jurisdiction of states is primarily territorial. On the
other hand, the ICJ also acknowledged that the ICCPR extends to acts
done by a State in the exercise of its jurisdiction outside of its own
territory.70 On this basis, the UN report concludes that the United
States government has the same obligations under Human Rights law
in Guantnamo Bay as it does within its own territorial borders.

The folded limits of territory and law

The case of the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists by the
United States on Cuban territory, and the legal arguments deployed
for and against their release, are fascinating for thinking about the
contemporary relationship between state borders, territory and law.
One dimension of this relationship in the context of Guantnamo is
obviously the way in which the United States government has relied
upon, and attempts to maintain, the principle that limits in law and
territory are coterminous (in other words, the idea that a state cannot
be held legally responsible for actions that take place on another
states territory). Such a view, reinforced by military capability, has
allowed for the treatment of detainees in Cuba in ways that would
otherwise be considered unlawful within the traditional territorial
borders of the United States. Indeed, it is because of the seemingly

32

BORDER POLITICS

anomalous nature of the naval base, with its own complicated colonial
history, that detainees held indefinitely there do not have the same
recourse to domestic and international law that either Cuban or
American citizens enjoy.
Another interesting dimension of the Guantnamo case, however,
is precisely the way in which the UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention has sought to erode the grounds of the United States
position by mobilising international legal opinion that the relationship
between law and territory makes no difference to states obligations
under human rights treaties and humanitarian law. The notion that a
state is obliged to uphold international standards of human wellbeing only in relation to those within its own territory is challenged by
the United Nations ruling. Rather, the argument put forward by the
United Nations is that if states exert control over subjects beyond their
territorial borders then, irrespective of the location of those subjects, a
given state is still responsible for them under international law.
The situation of detainees in Guantnamo Bay is therefore
interesting because it indicates that the limits of territory are not
necessarily coextensive with limits in law in contemporary political
life. Indeed, the case points to a disaggregation between juridical
space on the one hand and the space of the sovereign territorially
delimited state on the other. Such a disjuncture, which may also apply
to the United Kingdom and European Union cases as offshore
bordering becomes an integral part of homeland security, challenges
dominant assumptions about the nature and location of authority
in global politics as reflected in the norm of territorial integrity
enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
THE NEED TO RETHINK WHAT AND WHERE
BORDERS ARE
The three examples considered demonstrate that a commonsensical
picture of the concept of the border of the state as something fixed
territorially at the geographical outer edge of the sovereign state is
somewhat chimerical. In each case, this concept has been shown to
shape, enable and constrain practices across domestic and international terrains in ways that imply a thickness to borders that
thin lines on maps do not otherwise represent. Furthermore, each
illustration points to interesting divergences between the limits of

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

33

security, law, and authority on the one hand, and the territorial limits
of the sovereign state on the other hand.
To some extent it might be objected that borders between states
have never conformed to the commonsensical image of them
associated with the modern geopolitical imaginary. Nevertheless,
irrespective of its historical accuracy, as an idealised picture of global
politics this imaginary has had, and continues to have, significant
symbolic value with important ethical and political implications as I
will go on to consider in greater detail in Chapter 2. Another objection
might be that the bordering practices looked at here are not actually
new but rather continuations of broader historical modes of inclusion
and exclusion. Prima facie, the UK governments designation of its
new border doctrine as something new is perhaps dubious when
considered against the backdrop of colonial and imperial legacies.
Indeed, given the historic work of British Embassies and Consulates
overseas in upholding the global visa regime, together with travel
advisories and foreign policy more generally, it could be argued that
recent notions of offshore bordering in the UK and EU contexts
reflect much older bordering practices. Similarly, the extent to which
Guantnamo Bay is an innovation is equally questionable in light of
the history of the projection of American influence abroad, for
example, in the context of the regulation of transnational economic
activities and extension of rights to citizens overseas.71 Taking a broad
historical view, the attempt to striate space, create territory and
produce b/ordered subjects is arguably something rather familiar to
the modern geopolitical imaginary and marks more a continuation
than a departure from it.
Nevertheless, while it would be churlish to overstate the novelty
of the logic in the examples under consideration, technological
developments have enabled the proliferation of new kinds of bordering practices. Moreover, these practices are increasingly electronic,
invisible and ephemeral and, while not completely de-territorialised,
complicate straightforward understandings of the relationship
between borders and territory. This is illustrated most vividly with the
development of second generation biometric ID cards that actively
track the life cycle of the subject. When these new forms of identity
capture and management are allied with moves to offshore borders as
in the UK case, then it is possible to see how the concept of the border
of the state is in some sense being reconfigured. Such reconfiguration,

34

BORDER POLITICS

which reflects Balibars comments about the vacillation of borders

multiplied and reduced in their localisation, [] thinned out and
doubled, [] no longer the shores of politics but [] the space of the
political itself raises two sets of questions that frame subsequent
chapters of this book.72
First, the concept of the border of the state has acted and continues
to act as a lodestar for diverse aspects of the practice/theory of global
politics, as outlined in the Introduction. The reconfiguration of this
concept radically calls into question some of the most settled and
comforting assumptions, narratives and logics in contemporary
political life. This inevitably generates a series of questions about the
implications of a critique of the modern geopolitical imaginary: Is
this imaginary being replaced or is it coexistent with other ways of
thinking? What is at stake in the vacillation of the concept of the
border of the state for ethicalpolitical practice? How does the
vacillation of this concept necessitate changes to theorisations of
global politics that otherwise depend upon it?
Second, as well as a critique of the modern geopolitical imaginary,
the reconfiguration of the concept of the border of the state in current
political practice necessitates the development of alternative border
imaginaries. In turn, this begs questions such as: What resources exist
to conceptualise the reconfiguration of the concept of the border of
the state? What epistemological, ontological and methodological
insights are apposite to the task of rethinking what and where borders
are in contemporary political life? How is it possible to radicalise and
pluralise what studying borders in global politics might mean?
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Agnew, The Territorial Trap, 1994.

Balibar, The Borders of Europe, 1998, p. 217.
Brown, Statement on Security, 2007.
Ibid.
Extant treatments of the phenomenon of integrated border management
systems have tended to focus on the EU and US contexts. See: Amoore,
Biometric Borders, 2006 and Vigilant Visualities, 2007; Bigo, When
Two Become One, 2000; Carrera, The EU Border Management
Strategy, 2007; Doty, States of Exception on the MexicoUS Border,
2007; Guild, Danger: Borders Under Construction, 2005; Walters,
Border/control, 2006.

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.

18.
19.
20.
21.
22.

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.

28.

29.

35

Home Office, Securing the UK Border, 2007, p. 3.

Ibid., p. 3 (emphasis added).
Home Office, Borders, Immigration and Identity Action Plan, 2006, p. 7.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, p. 28.
Ibid., p. 48.
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid., p. 7.
Ibid., Home Office, Borders, Immigration and Identity Action Plan,
2006; Home Office, Securing the UK Border, 2007.
Home Office, Securing the UK Border, 2007, p. 2.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, p. 31.
Home Office, Borders, Immigration and Identity Action Plan, 2006,
p. 11.
There are obvious parallels between the offshoring of the UKs border
and US Homeland Security initiatives as well as the activities of the new
EU border management agency, Frontex.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, p. 38.
Ibid., p. 38.
Home Office, Borders, Immigration and Identity Action Plan, 2006,
p. 11.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, p. 38.
Tom Dowdall, Director, European Operations Border Force, presentation
at the Homeland and Border Security 08 conference. For further
information on the e-Borders Programme, see: http://www.ukba.
homeoffice.gov.uk/managingborders/technology/eborders/ (accessed 9
July 2008).
Home Office, Securing the UK Border, 2007, p. 3.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, pp. 323.
Ibid., p. 33.
UK Borders Act, 2007, p. 10.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, p. 42. For further
information on Project Iris, see: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/
managingborders/technology/iris/ (accessed 9 July 2008).
These observations and those that follow about the relationship between
border security and corporate enterprise are based on my experiences as
a delegate at the conference Homeland and Border Security 08: Working
Together, Securing the Nation, 3 July 2008, QEII Conference Centre,
London.
All references to Thales are based upon a presentation given by Paul
Fenton, Denise Walker and Olivier Monsacre, entitled Thales: The
Identity Integrator Assuring Identity, Protecting People, at the
Homeland and Border Security 08 conference.

36
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.

45.

46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.

BORDER POLITICS

Thales: The Identity Integrator.

Home Office, Securing the UK Border, 2007.
Ibid., p. 3.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, p. 9.
Home Office, Borders, Immigration and Identity Action Plan, 2006, p. 6.
Cabinet Office, Security in a Global Hub, 2007, p. 48.
Ibid., p. 53.
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 48.
Home Office, Securing the UK Border, 2007, p. 9 (emphasis added).
Home Office, Borders, Immigration and Identity Action Plan, 2006,
p. 11; Securing the UK Border, 2007, p. 5.
Cabinet Office, The National Security Strategy, 2008.
http://www.frontex.europa.eu/ (accessed 6 August 2008).
Frontex, Council Regulation, 2004.
For more on the background to the establishment of Frontex see:
Carrera, The EU Border Management Strategy, 2007; Guild, Danger:
borders under construction, 2005; Jorry, Construction of a European
Institutional Model, 2007.
See, for example: den Boer, Moving between bogus and bona fide, 1995;
Geddes, Immigration and European Integration, 2000; Huysmans, Migrants
as a Security Problem, 1995; Walters, Mapping Schengenland, 2002.
Frontex, Annual General Report, 2005.
Neal, Securitization and Risk, p. 24.
Bailey, Stemming the Immigration Wave, 2006.
http://www.united.non-profit.nl/pages/campfatalrealities.htm (accessed
6 August 2008).
Carrera, The EU Border Management Strategy, 2007, p. 12.
http://www.frontex.europa.eu/ (accessed 6 August 2008).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Bailey, Stemming the Immigration Wave, 2006.
Ibid.
Carrera, The EU Border Management Strategy, 2007.
Response of the United States of America 2005, p. 52.
UNESCCHR, Situation of Detainees in Guantanamo Bay, 2006, p. 24.
Ibid., pp. 245.
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng (accessed 8
August 2008).
In June 2004 the Supreme Court held that US courts have jurisdiction to
consider challenges to the legality of detention of foreign nationals in
Guantnamo. As the UN report highlights, however, not a single habeas

Borders are Not What or Where They are Supposed to Be

62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.

37

corpus petition has been decided on the merits by a US Federal Court.

UNESCCHR, Situation of Detainees in Guantnamo Bay, 2006, p. 15.
Ibid., p. 3 (emphasis added).
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 4 (emphasis added).
Quoted in Gregory, The Black Flag, 2006, p. 411.
Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 31, 2004.
International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences, 2004.
Ibid. (emphasis added).
Gregory, The Black Flag, 2006, p. 407.
Balibar, The Borders of Europe, 1998, p. 220.

Chapter 2
THE STUDY OF BORDERS IN GLOBAL POLITICS:
FROM GEOPOLITICS TO BIOPOLITICS

Bordering practices that are seemingly at odds with the modern

geopolitical imaginary, such as those explored in Chapter 1, demand
a stocktake of what critical resources might be available for new ways
of thinking about what borders are, where they come from, and what
they do in contemporary political life. A first port of call for such an
enquiry is the interdisciplinary subfield of border studies, known as
limology, a tradition of thought encompassing the work of anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, and political scientists.1 Especially
over the past three decades or so, paradoxically at a time when
pronouncements of globalised borderlessness have been at their
loudest, there has been a remarkable growth in border studies.
Hastings Donnan and Thomas Wilson attribute this dramatic increase
to defining border events of the period, such as the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, and the trajectory of
European integration.2
Any attempt at making generalised comments about a field or
subfield of study is fragile and open to dispute. Nevertheless, many
writers have commented that there has traditionally been a primarily
empirical focus in border studies. Moreover, of the two to three
hundred land borders between states recognised over the past century,
certain sites have tended to attract most attention. These include: the
British/Irish border; the United States/Mexico border; the post-World
War I borders of central Europe; the borders of Africa; and more
recently the borders of the European Union. Scholars from a range
of disciplinary backgrounds echo the complaint made by some IR
theorists, however, as we saw in the Introduction, that the concept
of the border of the state has typically lacked adequate theoretical
38

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

39

attention. David Newman argues that the bulk of material has been
descriptive and case study oriented and has not translated into
the construction of meaningful boundary/border theory.3 Similarly,
Vladimir Kolossov writes: despite the accumulation of abundant
information and important theoretical publications, border studies
have suffered from a lack of theoretical reflection.4 For John Agnew,
boundary studies [have] long been one of the most torpid sub-fields
[] largely oblivious to theorising about geographies of political
identity and the spatialities of power.5 On this basis, according to
Anssi Paasi, the major challenge is to develop critical approaches to
understand the changing contextual meanings of boundaries.6
Superficially, it is perhaps understandable why so many writers not
only in IR but other related disciplines in the humanities and social
sciences have pointed to a lack of theorisation of the concept of the
border of the state. For many scholars of border studies the border is
all too clearly defined as an area for study located at the geographical
outer edge of the state. Consequently, the prospects for finding critical
resources apposite to the task of characterising and grappling conceptually with some of the practices identified in Chapter 1 appear
somewhat slim. On the other hand, when taken collectively, the
comments on the paucity of theoretical literature on borders generally
are in danger of somewhat overstating the case, particularly in light of
more recent scholarship. Indeed, especially over the past five to ten
years or so, there have been notable attempts at acknowledging and
offering theoretically reflective accounts of borders in global politics,
not only in border studies but in the overlapping literature in political
geography, critical geopolitics, and IR as well. In many ways, as I shall
seek to outline, this advance can be usefully characterised in terms of a
shift, albeit one that is far from complete, from the study of borders as
primarily geopolitical institutions to an understanding of bordering
practices as biopolitical phenomena. In other words, rather than fixed,
static lines on maps, borders are increasingly theorised as portable
machines of sovereign power that are inseparable from the bodies
they performatively produce and sort into different categories.
Nevertheless, as well as outlining such a shift, in this chapter I will
ultimately argue that more work needs to be done in this area: first, to
develop the move towards a biopolitical theorisation of borders even
further; and, second, to reflect on the implications of such a move for
thinking about global politics more generally.

40

BORDER POLITICS

LIMOLOGY: A BRIEF HISTORY AND CURRENT

STATE OF THE ART
According to Vladimir Kolossov the formal study of borders emerged
during the late nineteenth century.7 Early limologists, such as Jacques
Ancel, Richard Hartshorn and Ewald Banse, were primarily interested
in the evolution and contemporary characteristics of specific land
borders.8 As such, their focus was almost exclusively on the collection
of empirical data, mapping economic and social structures through
case studies. Later, in the early twentieth century, Lord Curzon,
Charles Fawcett and Thomas Holdich sought to develop border
typologies and classifications for the purposes of applied geopolitical
strategy.9 By the 1960s border studies scholars, such as J. R. V. Prescott,
Julian Minghi and Gerald Blake, broadened their analysis to include
flows of people, services and goods as well as the relationship between
natural and social landscapes.10 Nevertheless, in this scholarship, the
understanding of what and where borders are epitomises the
assumptions of the modern geopolitical imaginary. For example, at
the heart of Prescotts landmark texts, The Geography of Frontiers and
Boundaries (1965) and Political Frontiers and Boundaries (1987), is a
focus on the boundary as a line that delimits state jurisdiction and
territory: the only function of the boundary is to mark the limits of
sovereignty.11 Moreover, according to Prescott, the primary role of the
boundary scholar is to study different cases because first and foremost
boundaries are concrete empirical phenomena.12 Indeed, Prescott
largely confines theoretical discussion to the rather more prosaic
matter of typologies and vocabularies: boundary is his preferred term
for the line of demarcation between states; frontier refers to the
region surrounding the boundary; while border denotes a narrower
zone. On these matters, Prescott argues that each term has a precise
meaning and warns there is no excuse for geographers using the
terms frontier and boundary as synonymous.13 Nevertheless, other
border scholars, such as Malcolm Anderson, have since disagreed with
Prescott, pointing to the historically and culturally contingent (and
ultimately somewhat arbitrary) usages of such terms.14
The growth of the subfield of border studies is tied inherently
to developments in the discipline of geography. Whereas, until the
1960s border scholarship was mainly characterised by positivist
epistemology, empiricist methodology and/or historical mapping, the

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

41

increasing influence of political science, philosophy, sociology and

social psychology had a significant bearing on the subsequent
trajectory of the subfield.15 The 1970s saw the emergence of political
geography, and writers such as Ted Gurr and Harvey Starr began
examining the social construction of borders and their relationship
to international conflict.16 This was followed a decade later with the
application of world systems and geopolitical approaches, associated
with David Newman, Anssi Paasi and others, with an emerging focus
on territorial identities, the impact of globalisation and integration on
borders, and the impact of debates about culture and security.17 From
the 1990s onwards the rise of post-positivist, social constructivist and
post-structural perspectives in limology, pioneered by writers such as
Henk van Houtum and Olivier Kramsch, have drawn attention to the
symbolic value of borders, the work they do in various social, political
and economic discourses, and the dangers of territorially determined
state-centric spatial logics.18 Indeed, as van Houtum has put it, since
the 1960s the attention has moved away from the study of the
evolution and changes of the territorial line to the border, more complexly understood as a site through which socio-spatial differences are
communicated.19 Hence, there has been a move away from boundary
to border studies reflecting a shifting research focus, no longer about
where the border is but how it is socially constructed and (re)produced in terms of symbols, signs, identifications, representations,
performances and stories.20
In many ways the shifts from boundary to border studies, to which
van Houtum refers, cannot be divorced from the broader rise of critical
geopolitics as an interface between geography, political geography,
politics and IR. Over the past decade or so, the characteristics and
assumptions underpinning the modern geopolitical imaginary have
been the subject of intense scrutiny in the interdisciplinary field of
critical geopolitics. Part of the critical geopolitical turn has involved a
diagnosis of precisely what this imaginary consists of in the first place,
whom it benefits and what is at stake in an unexamined reliance upon
it. Gearid Tuathail, one of the leading figures of critical geopolitics,
emphasises that, although the discourse of geopolitics is shifting
and unstable, it is nevertheless possible to identify certain tropes and
priorities underlying the common usage of the term in both practices
of statecraft and the academic study of it.21 Tuathail problematises
the modern geopolitical imaginary as a perspective that observes the

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BORDER POLITICS

world as if it were a singular eye removed from the rest of the body.22
This eye supposedly witnesses rather than interprets the twodimensional field of vision it performatively produces: a geopolitical
gaze that surveys the worldwide stage as if it were somehow
separate.23 Despite its seemingly natural and neutral outlook, however,
this gaze reflects a deliberate construction of a perspectivist triangle
of vision with the sovereign monocular eye/I at its base and the
stage/spectacle/scene of history or international politics at the far
wall of the triangle.24 Indeed, the vision to which Tuathail refers is
colonial through and through, since the geopolitical envisioning of
the global scene is inseparable from the desire to use the displayed
scene for its own purposes.25 On this basis, Tuathail characterises
the modern geopolitical imaginary as privileging Western forms of
knowledge to inform a particular type of geography that relies
systematically on the forgetting of the violence and struggles that
enable it to make any sense at all.26
It is precisely this connection between knowledge and power that
informs John Agnews critique of the territorial trap of the modern
geopolitical imaginary referred to in Chapter 1. According to Agnew
the main problem of thinking about the spatiality of power in terms of
blocs and territorial presence as fixed identities, as typified by the
idealised myth of the Westphalian system, is that it takes the coercive
power of territorial states for granted as a fixed feature of the modern
world rather than seeing it as the outcome of a number of historical
contingencies.27 Such an account not only dehistoricises but implies
a notion of power as monopoly of control exercised equally over
anywhere within a given territory. According to Agnew this fundamentally glosses over the fragility of such power upon which the very
legitimacy of the state rests. It has, he argues, something of the we
came, we knew, we conquered mentality; one that political geography
has long serviced in a purportedly objective manner for the sake of
upholding modern statecraft.28
As well as problematising the modern geopolitical imaginary,
critical geopolitics scholars have sought to put forward an alternative
research programme. One of the earliest articulations of such a programme can be found in an article published in 1992 by Tuathail
and Agnew called Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical
Reasoning in American Foreign Policy.29 In this piece international
politics is treated as a spectacle, and four theses are advanced: first,

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

43

that the stage of statecraft is not simply a backdrop but an active

component of the drama of world politics; second, that practical
reasoning is just as important as formal reasoning in the conduct of
statecraft; third, that such reasoning constitutes a spatialised form of
practice linked to different knowledge communities; and fourth, that
rule making and rule following are more significant in the study of
statecraft than an analysis of blind state power.30 Tuathail refers to
this formative article as the beginning of a wider disorientation of
(imperial) geopolitics. In this context he cites the work of Simon
Dalby whose article Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference and
Dissent has come to define the distinctiveness of the subfield:
To construct critical political geographies is to argue that we must
not limit our imagination to a study of the geography of politics
within pre-given, taken-for-granted, commonsensical spaces, but
to investigate the politics of the geographical specification of politics.
That is to practice critical geopolitics.31
The focus on the politics of the geographical specification of
politics means that critical geopolitics is intrinsically interested in
borders and bordering practices. Its critique of the modern geopolitical
imaginary calls into question the work that the concept of the border
of the state does in upholding arrangements that benefit those who
have most to gain from maintaining the status quo. Critical geopolitics
scholars thus raise important connections between that concept and
questions about violence, sovereignty and power which an unproblematised reliance on that imaginary otherwise ignores. Hence, for
example, Tuathail is less interested in supporting or refuting theses
about the continued presence or imminent obsolescence of state
borders but rather how different discourses are implicated in various
relations of power/knowledge. On his view, the discourse of the
borderless world prevalent in the 1990s, together with its related
vocabulary of globalisation, glocalisation, post-nationalism and
transnationalism, constitute a neo-liberal ideology attempting to
denaturalise and limit the power of states in order to bolster the
virtues of friction-free markets.32 Thus, Tuathail counter-argues:
Borderless world discourses are the fantasies of the few that can
dream of becoming digital in a world where just being is a persistent
struggle for so many. 33 Moreover, he argues that, instead of the simple

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BORDER POLITICS

demise of borders, territory or even the end of geography, we are

witnessing the restructuring, rearrangement, and rewiring of all
three.34 On this basis, echoing Balibars argument, for Tuathail
borders are not vanishing so much as being reinscribed in different
ways and at various locations in global politics. Therefore, as well as
recognising that the modern geopolitical imaginary rests upon highly
problematic assumptions about space and time, Tuathail claims that
new imaginaries are called for:
This is not to suggest that world politics has necessarily
transcended the imaginary of the territorial state but it is to admit
the disintegration of its traditional mythic Euclidean forms and to
acknowledge strange new (con)fusions of de-localised transnations [] 35
ASSUMING THE CONCEPT OF THE BORDER OF THE STATE
The discipline of IR was born amid violent cartographic change
following World War I and, since then, there has been a tradition,
especially among international historians and analysts of global
security practices, of the study of the defence and transgression of
borders between states.36 More generally, the concept of the border of
the state is central to IR in terms of permitting the very notion of international relations: it allows for the conceptualisation and analysis of
relations between entities that are taken to be separate from each
other to begin with. Further still, as I have already noted, this concept
not only provides an important ontological, but also epistemological,
framework within which some of the most familiar understandings of
core terms, such as territory, sovereignty, power and authority, make
sense. On this basis, it might be expected that the theoretical literature
produced by the discipline of IR, perhaps even more so than other
disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, can provide critical
resources for developing alternative ways of thinking about borders to
the modern geopolitical imaginary. While, as we shall see, such
resources certainly do exist, however, it is notable that, for much of the
earlier mainstream literature in IR, borders between states have often
been assumed, and the work that the concept of the border of the
state does occupies something of a blind spot within those analyses.37
Thomas Biersteker refers to the way in which one of the prob-

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

45

lematic features of neo-realist writings, dominant in the 1970s and

1980s in Anglo-American IR, was the tendency to treat states as
fundamentally similar units across time and space.38 In this context
Biersteker cites Kenneth Waltz, for whom, in Theory of International
Politics (1979), the anarchical structure of international politics
accounts for its history of striking sameness.39 Indeed, as John Gerard
Ruggie noted in his 1983 review of Waltzs book, the assumption of
the idealised Westphalian system as a given rather than as a particular
historically contingent articulation of spacetime relations meant that
neo-realism offered few prospects for an account of change.40 As a
feature of the Westphalian system, the concept of the border of the
state is equally neglected in Waltzs Theory despite his reliance upon it
to distinguish states as separate units positioned in relation to one
another within the international system to begin with. Nevertheless,
as Biersteker also points out, these problematical assumptions are not
exclusive to Waltz but permeate the work of other neo-realists, such as
Robert Gilpin, and neo-liberals such as Robert Keohane.41
More promise for an appreciation of the historically contingent
nature of the international system, and especially the relationship
between borders, territory and sovereignty, can be found in the work
of Hedley Bull. In The Anarchical Society (1977) Bull claims that
the starting point of international relations is the existence of states,
or independent political communities each of which possesses a
government and asserts sovereignty in relation to a particular segment
of the human population.42 Whilst Bulls starting point seems similar
to Waltzs, however, the former rejects the idea that the history of
international politics is the history of striking sameness: Other forms
of universal political organization have existed in the past []; in the
broad sweep of human history, indeed, the form of the states system
has been the exception rather than the rule. 43 On the contrary, Bull
opens up the possibility of a fundamental change to the Westphalian
order: it is reasonable to assume that new forms of universal political
organization may be created in the future.44 In the final part of his
book Bull explores five possible alternative paths to world order: a
system but not a society; states but not a system; a world government;
a form of medievalism; or an entirely new arrangement beyond our
own imagination.45 Each of these conjectures relies upon different
configuration of the status and function of borders between states
respectively: fewer activities across state borders; strict adherence to

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BORDER POLITICS

state borders as limits with little or no cross-border activity; the

decline or absence of borders between states; indistinct or porous
territorial borders; or possibly a more fundamental change in the
concept of the border of the state (although Bull does not say this
explicitly). Nevertheless, despite these tantalising glimpses of thinking
otherwise, Bull tempers his remarks about possible alternative paths
by concluding:
The argument is an implicit defence of the state system. []
Despite the existence in principle of alternatives [] there [is] no
clear evidence that the states system [is] in decline, or that it [is]
dysfunctional in relation to basic human purposes.46
At the end of The Anarchical Society Bull argues that one of the reasons
for the continued vitality of the state system as he defines it is the
tyranny of concepts and normative principles associated with it.47
Ultimately, it would seem that the concept of the border of the state
constitutes as much of an unexamined tyrannical concept in Bulls
writing as it does in Waltzs.
Unlike Waltz and Bull, Alexander Wendt does acknowledge the
concept of the border of the state as it relates to the social construction
of territory. In Social Theory of International Politics (1999) Wendt argues
that borders are required if territory is to be anything other than land.48
He notes that borders are not natural but historically contingent
phenomena that vary in breadth, depth and degree of completion:
the construction of state boundaries is never a finished affair, even if
it becomes unproblematic in some cases.49 Despite these insights,
however, Wendt argues that his pursuit of a sociology of the states
system means that a fuller problematisation of the relationship
between borders and territory is beyond the scope of his analysis:
an enquiry among states must take territory as in some sense given.50
Indeed, the limited degree to which Wendt takes the implications of
his own insights about borders seriously is illustrated in his portrayal
of exchanges between two fictitious states alter and ego, designed to
show how identities and their corresponding interests are learned
and then reinforced in response to how actors are treated by
significant others.51 According to Wendt, if ego begins with a gesture x
this will prompt alter to ask questions like: What does this mean?
How does it affect my relationship with ego? Consequently, alter will

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

47

make inferences that lead to counteraction y. If gesture x is the laying

down of arms, then other outcomes may emerge. In this way ego and
alter construct a definition of a given situation on the basis of their
representations of Self and Other. For Wendt, states identities and
interests are not only learned but sustained through such interactions:
Constructivism emphasizes that egos ideas about alter, right or
wrong, are not merely passive perceptions that exist independently of
ego, but actively and on-goingly [sic] constitutive of alters role vis-vis ego. 52 Thus, it is only through its interaction with ego that alter
derives its identity and interests and vice versa. Yet, indicating the
limits of his own argument, Wendt ultimately assumes ego and alter to
be separate entities from the outset. In other words, Wendts analysis
of the formation of identities and interests of states depends upon the
prior existence of those states as modern sovereign bordered territorial
units in the same way as Waltzs does. No attention is paid to the ways
in which alter and ego are produced as separate entities through the
(re)inscription of borders between them. Therefore, the concept of the
border of the state is treated as something of a given in Social Theory: it
establishes the elements of the system Wendt takes for granted as a
ground on which his analysis can then proceed.
ACKNOWLEDGING THE CONCEPT OF THE
BORDER OF THE STATE
One of the most significant book-length treatments of borders
between states, spanning the disciplines of politics and IR, is Malcolm
Andersons Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World
(1996). In this text, Andersons focus is what he calls the inter-state
frontier, which is taken to be different from other sorts of borders on
account of the doctrine of sovereignty and the territorial principle
accompanying it.53 For Anderson, frontiers are both an institution and
a process [] established by political decisions and regulated by legal
texts and are central to global politics: no rule-bound economic social
or political life in complex societies could be organized without
them.54 He diagnoses four main dimensions to frontiers: 1. as instruments of state policy; 2. as constraints on governments control; 3. as
markers of a nations identity; and 4. as a term of discourse constantly
reconstituted by those human beings who are regulated, influenced
and limited by them.55 On this view, as social constructions, frontiers

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BORDER POLITICS

are not static and part of an immutable natural order but rather
historically contingent phenomena: different kinds of frontier existed
before the modern state, and other kinds will emerge after its
demise.56 To illustrate this argument Anderson traces the development
of the familiar understanding of frontiers associated with the modern
geopolitical imaginary. The fall of Rome led to a period of overlapping
loyalties and jurisdictions in Europe until the Middle Ages: a village
could depend on more than one lord; lords could owe allegiance to
more than one ruler; manorial courts, royal courts and ecclesiastical
courts dispensed customary, statutory and church law to the same
populations.57 With the strengthening of authority came the simplification of territorial organisation, however, and Early Modern Europe
saw the rise of the state independent of the Pope and Holy Roman
Emperor. Although Anderson notes that competing authorities were
common until 1789, he argues that the development of the state
system in Europe went hand in hand with the emergence of the
concept of sovereignty and the notion of single, supreme and
independent rule over a given territory.58 Accordingly, the purpose of
the frontier was to ensure that the sovereign could exercise exclusive
legal, administrative and social control over its population in a given
territory. On the one hand, Andersons historical and theoretical
approach provides a rich resource for defining salient features of
borders, which enables a framework for empirical border studies along
the lines suggested in his own case studies of Africa, the United States
and Europe. On the other hand, while Anderson notes the increased
permeability of frontiers as he defines them, ultimately his analysis
focuses more on the desirability of the implications of such changes
rather than on how they challenge the modern geopolitical imaginary
and demand alternative theorisation of borders.59
In IR theory more generally, the importance of the concept of the
border of the state is emphasised by Robert Jackson in The Global
Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (2000): We could not get
very far in trying to make sense of [] issues without an underlying
assumption about territorial limits of specified normative significance
which mark the divisions between independent states: international
boundaries. 60 Like Wendt, Jackson asserts that borders between states
are artificial social constructs designed to mark the furthest extent of
the territorial jurisdictions of sovereign states.61 Illustrating this point,
and echoing Andersons method of analysis, Jackson points to the way

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

49

in which, historically there have been sociopolitical arrangements

that did not rely upon such borders.62 Jackson builds on the idea of
state borders as institutions, however, by focusing on the normative
role they play in international life.63 He draws on Bull to argue that
such borders are a fundamental aspect of international society: The
sanctity and stability of inherited boundaries is [sic] a fundamental
building block of international society and a principle behind which
the vast majority of sovereign states rally. 64 On this view, borders
between states not only delimit the spheres of national interests and
security but also define sovereign rights and duties, such as those
relating to non-intervention.65 Moreover, Jackson argues that state
borders perform a key normative role in terms of distinguishing
what he calls insider groups and outsider groups in international
relations.66 Insider groups are said to exist on the plane of independence as sovereign members of international institutions such as
the United Nations. Outsider groups, on the other hand, are those
residential groups which enjoy no legal existence as independent
states.67 According to Jackson, the fact that not every group is satisfied
with its borders should not serve to obscure the overall point that
borders between states represent a generally accepted point of
reference.68
A related line of argument is pursued by John Williams in his book
The Ethics of Territorial Borders: Drawing Lines in the Shifting Sand
(2006) which also draws on Bull as well as Hannah Arendt to argue
that borders between states play an important ethical role in world
politics. For Williams, the study of territorial borders in IR and related
disciplines has been impoverished because of an excessive empirical
focus and positivist reification.69 According to Williams, state borders
are ubiquitous and embedded in international politics precisely
because they are in some sense a necessary facet of human existence:
The durability and depth of sedimentation of territorial borders as
fences suggest that division, and division on a territorial basis, speaks to
a deep-seated need of human identity and also in human ethics. 70 On
Williamss view, borders between states perform a normative role by
acting as fences between neighbours in such a way that tolerates
diversity rather than stifling difference.71 Moreover, the ethical significance of territorial borders derives from their ability to act as limits on
violence:

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BORDER POLITICS

The role of territorial borders is in defining, temporarily and

dynamically rather than eternally and fixedly, political space,
playing institutional and normative roles that help to limit and
restrict the politically mute voice of violence and that allows
individuals to build, through their plurality, a distinctive political
community.72
Without state borders, Williams claims, the international juridical
political system would not be able to ensure state independence,
limits on violence, the sanctity of agreement or the stability of
possession.73 Therefore, his argument is ultimately a defence of
territorial borders in contemporary political life: We need territorial
borders and we should have and defend territorial borders because
they are a part of the ways in which human beings confer meaning
on their lives []. 74 Hence, Williams argues, to remove, or even to
re-conceptualise, territorial borders would mean the end of IR []
requiring a shift in the conduct of politics on the planet that is
unimaginable. 75
Moving away from the focus on the normative dimension of
borders between states towards a wider analysis of the role that
they play in the theory and practice of global politics is the volume
Identities, Borders, Orders: Re-Thinking International Relations Theory
(2001), co-edited by Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, and Yosef Lapid.
In his introduction to the book, Lapid reflects on some of the insights
of the critical geopolitics literature for IR theory, arguing that the
modern geopolitical imaginary, identified and problematised by
Tuathail, Agnew and Dalby, has led to a particular territorialist
epistemology in IR: one that transposes the historically unique Westphalian system into a generalised model of sociospatial organisation.76
As Lapid puts it, IR scholars have come to treat territoriality as a fixed,
ahistorical parameter.77 Yet, like Tuathail, he argues that this
entrenched territorialist epistemology is increasingly at odds with
contemporary notions of flows and flux and so a reworking of the old
coordinates is required, which is precisely the aim of the book.78 In
response, Lapid develops what he calls an analytical triad formed by
the concepts of identities, borders, orders (IBO) upon which this
reworking is based: the dynamic nexus constituted by interrelated
processes of bordering, ordering, and collective identity building
opens a uniquely well-situated analytical window to observe issues of

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

51

mobility, fluidity, and change in contemporary world politics.79

According to Lapid, the IBO triad consists of key concepts in current
social practice that are intrinsically interrelated and therefore best
defined and used in relation to one another:
Processes of collective identity formation invariably involve
complex bordering issues. Likewise, acts of bordering (i.e., the
inscription, crossing, removal, transformation, multiplication
and/or diversification of borders) invariably carry momentous
ramifications for political ordering at all levels of analysis.
Processes of identity, border and order construction are therefore
mutually self-constituting.80
For Lapid, however, the IBO triad is a model that can be applied transhistorically, so that it is only in the context of the Westphalian
geopolitical imaginary that identities are understood in terms of
national states, borders in terms of sharply drawn territorial lines
between states, and orders in terms of the international juridical
political system of modern sovereign states. On this view, thinking
through the IBO triad is intended to allow for a more dynamic
approach to theorising global politics that challenges the binary
between fixity (the continued presence of borders between states)
and flux (the imminent obsolescence of borders between states):
IBO analysis [] seems promising because identities, borders, orders
signify three vital nodes of arrestation, where the moving sands of
international relations come to be variably and temporarily stabilised.81 As such, with the IBO model, Lapid aims to nudge IR theory
away from the Westphalian territorialist epistemology towards one
that can potentially monitor reconfigurations between identities and
borders, identities and orders, and borders and orders.

FURTHER PROBLEMATISING THE CONCEPT OF THE

BORDER OF THE STATE
Over the past two decades, the work of R. B. J. Walker has offered the
most sustained engagement with the problem of borders, especially
the relationship between the concept of the border of the state and
sovereignty, at the intersection of IR and political theory. In his

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BORDER POLITICS

introduction to Inside/outside: International Relations as Political Theory

(1993), Walker writes:
Theories of international relations [] are interesting less for the
substantive explanations they offer about political conditions in
the modern world than as expressions of the contemporary
political imagination when confronted with persistent claims
about and evidence of fundamental historical and structural
transformation.82
The move Walker makes is to treat IR theory as something that
is fundamentally part of, rather than divorced from, global politics
so that the examination of texts reveals some of the dominant
assumptions underpinning the way we think about contemporary
political life. Once this move is made, the notion, discipline and
practice of international relations, defined by the presence of
sovereign states and the absence of sovereign authority, can be recast
as in many ways constitutive of that which it seeks to explain.83 On
this basis, the theories, concepts and logics used in the study of global
politics, such as the concept of the border of the state, are not immune
from, but indeed are complicit in, this act of constitution.
For Walker, theories of international relations reflect ways in which
we try to make sense of and/or resolve some of the mysteries of
human existence and the problems they pose. At the heart of these
attempted resolutions in IR theory is the historically and philosophically significant, but highly problematic, concept of sovereignty.
According to Walker, sovereignty seems to be quite uninteresting, the
preserve of legal scholars and constitutional experts rather than the
subject of heated exchanges among social and political theorists.84
Often, he claims, IR theorists simply adopt the principle of state
sovereignty as a relatively straightforward starting point in the analysis
of contemporary political life:
Sovereignty is read as an achieved condition, the inevitable
destination of a road already traveled, a normative aspiration
already become irresistible reality, the reality of the sovereign
state, whose effects can then be read in the categories made by its
achievement.85

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

53

Running throughout Walkers oeuvre, however, is an emphasis on and

a commitment to demonstrating the way in which sovereignty, or
rather the problem of sovereignty, is anything but straightforward.
Rather, as he argues with Richard K. Ashley, the question of
sovereignty [] is an intrinsically paradoxical problem that can never
be named, rationally deliberated, and solved.86 In part, sovereignty
relates to practices that attempt to create something out of nothing:
for example, the attempt to secure the presence of the state as a
particular form of political community in the absence of any
foundations. Yet, Walker emphasises: The principle of state sovereignty did not appear out of thin air. It embodies an historically
specific account of the ethical possibility in the form of an answer to
questions about the nature and location of political community. 87 On
his view, the principle of state sovereignty crystallised in early modern
Europe amid growing cultural crises. The medieval world of
hierarchies and continuities gave way to a modern one of autonomies
and separations. Alongside the gradual dissolution of Christendom
came the dissolution of spiritual frameworks in the face of the
scientific revolution. An alternative was required to the so-called
Great Chain of Being (the Western medieval conception of the order
of the Universe characterised by strict hierarchical links to God).
According to Ashley and Walker, the principle of state sovereignty
emerged as such an alternative somewhere between Machiavelli and
Hobbes: it came to act as a fundamental principle, a supporting
structure, a base on which society rests, a fund of authority capable of
endowing possibilities, accrediting action, and fixing limitations.88 Yet,
they argue, as a historically contingent resolution, ultimately it can
only ever be considered unstable and tentative.89
More specifically, Walker argues that the principle of state
sovereignty offers both a spatial and a temporal resolution to
questions about what political community can be, given the priority
of citizenship and particularity over universalist claims to a common
human identity.90 The principle of state sovereignty gives a double
resolution to the problem of universality and particularity. On the one
hand, the existence of an international sovereign states system permits
cultural particularity (citizenship) within a broader framework of
universal norms of interaction (common human identity). On the
other hand, the generalisation of the sovereign state as a particular
cultural form cuts across all cultures in terms of human necessity. In

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BORDER POLITICS

other words the issue of one and many is resolved through the single
formula one world many states. Moreover, this resolution enables
and depends upon a spatial demarcation between inside and outside
which, in the context of the Westphalian system and modern
geopolitical imaginary, can be read as the concept of the border of the
state. Spatially, according to Walker, the principle of state sovereignty
fixes a clear demarcation between life inside and outside a centred
political community.91 This allows for the human aims of reason,
justice, democracy and so on to be aspired to inside the sovereign
state against the backdrop of perpetual warfare and barbarism outside
in the sphere of the international. It also permits notions of here and
there, us and them, and affirms the presence of a political community.
Temporally, these demarcations provide the condition of possibility for
notions of progress and development inside states as defined against
what happens outside them: between states [] the lack of community can be taken to imply the impossibility of history as
progressive teleology, and thus the possibility of merely repetition
and recurrence.92 As such, Walker argues it is precisely this spatial
temporal resolution provided by the logic of inside/outside that
makes international relations and its theories distinctive.
Walkers diagnosis of the relationship between sovereignty and the
inside/outside problmatique adds an important dimension to any
attempt to examine the concept of the border of the state. Following
his argument, the many paradoxes and contradictions glossed over by
the principle of state sovereignty can be read as points, lines, and
planes, as monopolies of power and authority, borders and territories.93 These points, lines and planes reflect the emergence in postRenaissance Europe of the link between the principle of state
sovereignty and a sense of inviolable and sharply delimited space.94
Such points, lines and planes are often taken for granted as we have
already seen, but Walker emphasises that as historical constructs,
conceptions of space and time cannot be treated as some uniform
background noise, as abstract ontological conditions to be acknowledged and then ignored.95 Indeed, the problematisation of these
conceptions raises the stakes as far as the importance of the concept
of the border of the state is concerned. The recognition that notions of
inside and outside are merely Cartesian coordinates that have allowed
us to situate and naturalise a comfortable home for power and authority calls into question the politics of global space more generally.96

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

55

As William E. Connolly notes, once global space is reconsidered as

ambiguous, contested and unstable, the function of artificially imposed borders becomes highly dubious.97 Against views that read
borders between states act as limits on violence, it becomes easy to
see how state borders are connected to violence in an altogether
different sense (a matter to which the analysis will return in Chapter
3). Historically, the transition from a system of overlapping loyalties
and allegiances in favour of sharp borders did not happen peacefully.
Hence, Walker comments, One has to ask how have we so easily
forgotten the concrete struggles that have left their traces in the clean
lines of political cartography and the codifications of international
law. 98 Instead of reading borders between states and the principle of
state sovereignty together as a form of airbrushed achievement
Walker thus challenges us to reappraise this relationship as a site of
struggle.99
Overall, Walker provides a series of important insights that offer
critical resources for an analysis of the concept of the border of the
state. Significantly, he adds to this analysis by highlighting the
importance of the connection between the concept of the border of
the state and sovereignty, authority and violence. Moreover, his
diagnosis of the inside/outside logic underpinning IR theory leads to a
critical appreciation of the work that the concept of the border of the
state does in texts that otherwise merely take it for granted. As we
have already seen, authors of such texts rely on the concept of the
border of the state to produce the inside/outside dichotomy that
frames and also enables their theorisations. Further still, as well as
diagnosing the logic underpinning these texts, Walker also shows
what is common between discourses claiming the decline/continued
importance of state borders as discussed in the Introduction to this
book. Despite their outward dissimilarity, both discourses rely upon
the inside/outside model conditioned by the concept of the border of
the state: The imaginary of the thin line that divides our political
presences and absences in spatial terms is reproduced in a political
imaginary that poses a sharp temporal choice between the lasting
presence or immanent absence of thin lines. 100 Therefore, Walkers
diagnosis of the logic of inside/outside offers an important starting
point in the task of opening up the terms of the hackneyed debate
about the simple presence or absence of borders between states.
One problem that has led to the impasse in this debate is that both

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BORDER POLITICS

sides work precisely within rather than question the terms of the
parameters of the inside/outside model and the broader modern
geopolitical imaginary. In addition to identifying and problematising
this model and imaginary, Walker calls both into question throughout
his work.101 Walker claims that ours is an age of speed and temporal
accelerations,102 and often, echoing Balibar, Tuathail, Agnew, Dalby,
and Lapid, he implies that the inside/outside model conditioned by
the concept of the border of the state is in some sense no longer
adequate to contemporary conditions:
There is little doubt that the sharp distinction between the
internal and the external spaces of modern politics [] is now
extraordinarily difficult to sustain.103
Neither the spatial boundaries of the territorial state nor the
geographic points of the compass [] provide much help in
understanding how patterns of stratification, inclusion and
exclusion are being transformed on a global basis.104
It is unlikely that the historical experience of sharp territorial
borders at the edge of states [] would do much to help us
understand the complexity, the constant mutation or the
productive/destructive capacities of such boundaries.105
As already noted in the Introduction to this book, many other writers
have implied the same basic point: namely that alternative border
imaginaries are needed. Despite these observations, however, there
remains considerable work to be done in terms of identifying critical
resources apposite to the task of conceptualising such imaginaries,
illustrating how they might elicit a more sophisticated understanding
of what and where borders are, and evaluating what the implications
for the practice/theory of global politics might be. Nevertheless, some
clues about where it might be possible to find such resources and
where they might lead in thinking differently about borders can be
found in recent work that focuses on bordering practices in the
context of the war on terror.
Didier Bigo has expressed a similar dissatisfaction with current
thinking about borders predicated on the inside/outside model. Bigo
argues that new forms of transnational governmentality in global

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

57

politics have led to the blurring [of the] distinction between the
internal and the external which, in turn, has destabilised notions of
sovereignty, territory, [and] security.106 Bigo explores the increasing
intertwinement between internal and external security through an
analysis of policing. Whereas formerly the realms of the police and the
military had very little in common, Bigo points to the ways in which it
is increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two. This does not
lead to an erasure of the inside/outside distinction, however, but
rather to its reworking:
The core of this new securitization is related to trans-national
flows and to the surveillance of boundaries (physical, social, and
of identity), and can be seen as attempts to re-draw a border
between an inside and an outside, a border different from state
frontiers.107
On this view, which reads inside and outside as indistinguishable,
internal security is projected beyond the borders of the state. Thus,
reminiscent of the case of the United Kingdoms new border security
doctrine and the recent activities of Frontex in Africa discussed in
Chapter 1, Bigo argues that: Internal security [] implies collaboration with foreign countries and dissatisfaction with clear lines or
borders between inside and outside, state and society, sovereignty and
identity. 108 Bigo notes that traditionally security has been considered
within the context of a given territory delimited by state borders but
claims that the blurring of internal and external has given rise to new
forms of securitisation that complicate this model:
Security checks are no longer necessarily done at the border on a
systematic and egalitarian basis, but can be carried out further
downstream, within the territory, within the border zone or even
upstream with police collaboration in the home country of immigrants, through visa-gathering systems and through readmission
agreements.109
Moreover, these new forms of securitisation necessitate alternative
topologies and ways of conceptualising borders. With this in mind,
Bigo develops the notion of a field of security that aims to transcend
simplistic understandings of social and political space in terms of

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BORDER POLITICS

internal/external, domestic/foreign, national/international, and so

on.110 Borrowed from Pierre Boudieu, the concept of the field is used
by Bigo to refer to an interconnected network of security relations that
not only involves the material blurring of inside/outside but also
concomitant changes in forms of knowledge.111 In the context of the
war on terror, Bigo argues that this semantic continuum is used to
cultivate a globalised (in)security and field of unease management
characterised by practices of exceptionalism, acts of profiling and
containing foreigners, and the normative imperative of mobility.112
On this basis, Bigo traces the way in which changing articulations
of the relationship between inside and outside enable new forms
of governance otherwise constrained by the modern geopolitical
imaginary.
Illustrating many of Bigos insights, and reflecting developments in
integrated border security in the UK and EU cases referred to in the
previous chapter, Louise Amoore has examined the re-articulation of
the inside/outside relation in the context of emerging United States
homeland security initiatives.113 Amoore traces the rise of new bordering practices designed to counter the threat of international terrorism
in the United States since the attacks on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon on 11 September 2001. She refers to the establishment of
the so-called Smart Border Alliance by the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) in 2004 as a departure in the way that the United
States conceptualises its borders as a form of risk management. As in
the UK case, Amoore shows how the United States has developed
modes of pre-emptive bordering practices aimed at assessing risky
subjects before they arrive at what has traditionally been considered
its territorial borders, thus reflecting a new imagining of what and
where the US border is:
The management of the border cannot be understood simply as
a matter of the geopolitical policing and disciplining of the
movement of bodies across mapped space. Rather, it is more
appropriately understood as a matter of biopolitics, as a mobile
regulatory site through which peoples everyday lives can be
made amenable to intervention and management.114
Amoore captures these developments, which involve a turn to digital
technologies and the involvement of private enterprise, with the

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

59

concept of the biometric border.115 The biometric border refers to the

encoding of the bodies of travellers before they move to enable the
fixing of identities, classification according to perceived levels of risk,
and filtration into legitimate/illegitimate flows of traffic.116 It is biopolitical a term coined by Michel Foucault discussed at greater
length in Chapter 3 precisely because of this focus on the body of
the population which enables, as Amoore has shown, innovations in
the way borders of political community are (re)produced and secured
both spatially and temporally. Furthermore, reiterating Bigos assessment of the interweaving of internal and external realms of security,
Amoore argues that the biometric border is not geographically fixed
but as mobile as the subjectivities it attempts to govern:
The biometric border is the portable border par excellence,
carried by mobile bodies at the very same time as it is deployed
to divide bodies at international boundaries, airports, railway
stations, or subways or city streets, in the office or the neighbourhood.117
The shift towards a biopolitical horizon in contemporary bordering
practices and in academic border studies, though arguably far from
complete in either context, raises a number of significant questions
pertinent to the task of developing alternative border imaginaries.
First, the relationship between the modern geopolitical imaginary and
biopolitical modes of thinking requires further fleshing out: Has the
latter displaced the former or are the two coexistent? Is the nature of
the shift conceptual, historical or both? Alternatively, how might it be
possible to grasp the coexistence of the two? What kind of view of the
philosophy of history even makes thinking in these terms possible?
Second, if such a shift has taken place, then this surely has
implications for fields of study such as IR predicated upon the modern
geopolitical imaginary: How does a biopolitical framework lead to
different insights about the practice/theory of global politics? In what
ways does this challenge some of the dominant assumptions upon
which contemporary political life is conceptualised? Third, the move
towards biopolitical border studies raises numerous issues regarding
the added value of such an approach: What happens to the concept of
the border when it is reframed biopolitically? How does a biopolitical
approach reconfigure the way we think about the connection between

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BORDER POLITICS

borders and bodies? Do bodies confront borders anymore or is it more

accurate to see borders as in some sense constituted by and through
bodies? How might this be conceived of and where does it take place?
What critical theoretical/philosophical resources are available to think
this through?
More generally, as well as highlighting the necessity of further
reflection on the relationship between geopolitical and biopolitical
framings, in this chapter I have also suggested that there are a number
of other dimensions to the current study of borders that require more
theoretical work. First, the connection between the concept of the
border of the state and violence has interested a number of diverse
writers whose work has been surveyed. The nature of this connection,
however, has ranged from a view of borders as limits on violence
(Jackson, Williams) to claims about the violence of borders themselves
(Walker, Connolly). This implies the need for a more detailed
examination of the work that borders do on the one hand and the
issue of violence in/of juridicalpolitical order on the other. Second,
the theme of borders and sovereignty has also emerged as an area of
the field requiring deeper examination. Whereas earlier border studies
scholars (Prescott, Anderson) working within the modern geopolitical
imaginary viewed borders between states as markers of the limits of
sovereign power located at the geographical outer edge of the state,
more recent work, especially written in the context of the so-called
war on terror (Bigo, Amoore), has emphasised that borders are more
mobile than this model implies. This later scholarship challenges an
assumption underpinning debates about the presence/absence of state
borders that the relationship between sovereignty and those borders
resembles a zero-sum game whereby, as levels of globalisation
increase, so sovereignty and state borders decrease. As Walker has
pointed out, however, the popularity of this assumption highlights a
weakness in the literature that reads the principle of state sovereignty
with sovereignty per se.118 Rather, if sovereignty, understood as a series
of discourses and practices through which political authority is
constituted and legitimised, is untied from statist principles, then how
might it be possible to (re)conceptualise borders as limits of sovereign
power?
Third, closely related to this series of problems is the link between
borders and the limits of authority and power. Traditionally the state
has been considered as a container within which, for example, the

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

61

monopoly of the legitimate use of force has been theorised. Yet, as the
critical geopolitics literature, together with Walker, Bigo and Amoore,
have all pointed out, practices relating to the exercise of authority and
power are increasingly shown to overflow the territorial borders of the
state. A growing critical literature has begun to address the possibility
that to understand the constitution, operation and legitimation of
political authority it is necessary to disaggregate sovereignty from
traditional statist paradigms favoured in IR and elsewhere in the social
sciences. In Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics (2004), for example,
Jenny Edkins, Vronique Pin-Fat and Michael J. Shapiro (and other
contributors including R. B. J. Walker), seek to demonstrate that
sovereign power and authority are far from dead under conditions of
globalising order. Rather, as Edkins and Pin-Fat argue in their
introduction to the volume, the interesting question is not whether a
system or even a society of states has been replaced by an empire or
by some other institutional configuration, but rather, what relations
or grammars of power persist and how they operate.119 On this basis,
it seems that more is needed to explore what happens to our understanding, conceptualisation and theorisation of the limits of sovereign
power and authority once these concepts are disaggregated from the
concept of the modern bordered territorial state.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

Kolossov, Border Studies, 2005, p. 606.

Donnan and Wilson, Borders, 1999, p. 1.
Newman, Boundaries, Borders and Barriers, 2001, pp. 1378.
Kolossov, Border Studies, 2005, p. 612.
Agnew, Book Review, 1996, pp. 1812.
Paasi, Changing Discourses, 2005, p. 27.
Kolossov, Border Studies, 2005.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Prescott, Political Frontiers, 1987, p. 80.
Paasi, Generations and the development of border studies, 2005,
p. 663.
13. Prescott, Political Frontiers, 1987, p. 36.
14. Anderson, Frontiers, 1996, p. 10.
15. Kolossov, Border Studies, 2005.

62
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.

38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.

BORDER POLITICS

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
van Houtum, The Geopolitics of Borders and Boundaries, 2005, p. 672.
Ibid., p. 675.
Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics, 1996, p. 64.
Ibid., p. 24.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 30.
Ibid., p. 34.
Ibid., p. 53.
Agnew, Geopolitics: Re-Envisioning World Politics, 2003, p. 60.
Ibid.
Tuathail and Agnew, Geopolitics and Discourse, 1992, pp. 190204.
Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics, 1996, p. 61.
Dalby, Critical Geopolitics, 1991, p. 274, (emphasis added).
Tuathail, Borderless Worlds?, 1999, p. 147.
Ibid., p. 150.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Linklater and MacMillan, Boundaries in Question, 1995, pp. 1213.
John Williams makes a similar point: Certainly, dominant theories of
international relations, whether neo-realism or liberal institutionalism,
could not function without a reified notion of territorial borders,
Williams, Ethics of Territorial Borders, 2006, p. 22.
Biersteker, State, sovereignty and territory, 2002, p. 158.
Ibid.
Ruggie, Continuity and transformation in the world polity, 1983.
Biersteker, State, sovereignty and territory, 2002, p. 158.
Bull, The Anarchical Society, 2002 [1977], p. 8.
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 247.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 275.
Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 1999, p. 211.
Ibid., p. 213.
Ibid., p. 211.
Ibid., p. 327.
Ibid., p. 338.
Anderson, Frontiers, 1996, p. 5.
Ibid., p. 1.

The Study of Borders in Global Politics

55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.

63

Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 1.
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 19.
Ibid., p. 178.
Jackson, The Global Covenant, 2000, p. 316.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 318.
Ibid., p. 333.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 319.
Ibid., p. 322.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 333.
Williams, Ethics of Territorial Borders, 2006, p. 6.
Williams, Territorial Borders: International Ethics and Geography, 2003,
p. 39 (emphasis added).
Ibid.
Williams, Ethics of Territorial Borders, 2006, p. 114.
Williams, Territorial Borders, toleration and the English School, 2002,
pp. 73940.
Williams, Ethics of Territorial Borders, 2006, pp. 11819.
Williams, Territorial Borders: International Ethics and Geography, 2003,
p. 27.
Lapid, Introduction, 2001, p. 8.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 2.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 7.
Ibid., p. 17.
Walker, Inside/outside, 1993, p. 5.
Ibid., p. 171.
Ibid., p. 62.
Walker, After the Future, 2002, p. 10.
Ashley and Walker, Reading dissidence/writing the discipline, 1990,
p. 375.
Walker, Inside/outside, 1993, p. 62.
Ashley and Walker, Reading dissidence/writing the discipline, 1990,
p. 382.
Ibid.
Walker, Inside/outside, 1993, p. 62.
Ibid.

64
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.

102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.

BORDER POLITICS

Ibid., p. 63.
Walker, After the Future, 2002, p. 10.
Walker, Inside/outside, 1993, p. 129.
Ibid., p. 131.
Ibid., p. 178.
Connolly, Tocqueville, territory and violence, 1996, p. 12.
Walker, Sovereignty, identity, community, 1990, p. 159.
Walker, After the Future, 2002, p. 22.
Walker, After the Globe/Before the World, p. 5.
Walker frequently implies the inadequacy of the inside/outside model
conditioned by the concept of the border of the state, see: Walker,
Inside/outside, 1993, pp. 20, 159, 161; Walker, Sovereignty, Identity,
Community, 1990, p. 180; Walker, Foreword, 1999, p. xii; Walker, On
the Immanence/Imminence of Empire, 2002, p. 343; and Walker, After
the Globe/Before the World, p. 1.
Walker, Inside/outside, 1993, p. 2.
Walker, After the Globe/Before the World, p. 7.
Walker, Sovereignty, identity, community, 1990, p. 180.
Walker, Europe is not where it is supposed to be, 2000, p. 28.
Bigo, When two become one, 2000, p. 171.
Ibid., p. 172.
Ibid., p. 173.
Ibid., p. 185.
Bigo, Globalised (in)security, 2006, p. 30.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 6.
Amoore, Biometric borders, 2006.
Ibid., p. 337.
Ibid., p. 338.
Ibid., p. 348.
Ibid., p. 338.
Walker, Conclusion, 2004, p. 243.
Edkins and Pin-Fat, Introduction, 2004, p. 3.

Chapter 3
VIOLENCE, TERRITORY AND THE BORDERS OF
JURIDICALPOLITICAL ORDER: PROBLEMATISING
THE LIMITS OF SOVEREIGN POWER

While some inroads have certainly been made into probing the
connections between the concept of the border of the state and
questions about violence, sovereignty and power, especially as border
studies has shifted in its focus from geopolitics to biopolitics, the
richness of bordering practices in contemporary political life stands in
contrast to the relative poverty with which borders continue to be
conceptualised and theorised. For this reason my analysis of the
concept of the border of the state now turns away from the literature
in IR and related disciplines to investigate the prospects for gathering
critical resources from elsewhere. In many ways following the broader
trajectory towards biopolitical border studies, I will suggest that there
is a wealth of hitherto underexploited resources for problematising the
concept of the border of the state, as well as the concept of the border
itself more generally, within what is often referred to as poststructuralist thought. Indeed, as this and subsequent chapters will
show, despite the diverse and heterogeneous nature of poststructuralism, it is possible to identify a common interest concerning
border problmatiques in a general sense throughout a range of critical
social, political and philosophical thinkers associated with that term.
With this in mind, the analysis aims both to highlight the insights of
post-structuralism for thinking about border politics as well as using
this theme to encounter, push and illustrate the limitations of the
thinkers under consideration.
The discussion begins by further problematising the relationship
between borders and violence. Drawing on the work of Walter
Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, I examine the violent foundations of
65

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BORDER POLITICS

the juridicalpolitical order and the work that borders do in upholding

such violence. I suggest, however, that Benjamin and Derrida to some
extent still take the modern sovereign territorially bordered state as
the tacit ground upon which their analyses proceed. The earlier work
of Carl Schmitt on sovereignty falls prey to the same criticism
although an alternative frame is implied in one of his later texts. Some
promise for pushing Schmitts insights further are to be found in the
work of Michel Foucault whose influential account of power, and
more specifically what he calls bio-power, challenges the idea of the
bordered state as a container of sovereign power and authority.
Moreover, Foucaults work provides much of the inspiration for
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris book Empire [2000] which
attempts an alternative, if highly problematical, model of the spatiality
of sovereign power. Ultimately, however, I argue that the prospects for
thinking beyond the modern geopolitical imaginary, underpinned by
the concept of the border of the state and a conventional inside/
outside logic, demand an even more radical problematisation of the
limits of sovereign power than the above thinkers can offer on their
own.
WALTER BENJAMIN AND JACQUES DERRIDA:
CARTOGRAPHIES OF VIOLENCE
Complicating the view that borders between states are harmless
fences between neighbours that serve to delimit violence, William
Connolly points to the rather more Janus-faced character of borders
when he argues that boundaries form indispensable protections
against violation and violence; but the divisions they sustain also carry
cruelty and violence.1 On the latter, Connolly refers to the etymology
of the concept of territory as deriving from the Latin root terrere, which
means to frighten or to terrorise.2 Connolly suggests that territory can
be thought of as land occupied and bounded by violence.3 On this
view, to territorialise is to establish boundaries around [territory] by
warning other people off.4 This etymological connection between
territory and violence is also made by Barry Hindess: While terror may
sometimes pose a threat to the territorial order of state, the possibility
that territory and terror derive from the same Latin root suggests that
it might also be an integral part of this orders functioning. 5 For
Hindess, terror and territory are intrinsically linked not just because

Violence, Territory and the Borders of JuridicalPolitical Order

67

territorial impulses imply violence to those who are deemed not to

belong; the threat of violence is also imminent to those who do
belong through the regulation of conduct using fear.6 Indeed, as
Hindess reminds us, the territorial order of states often fails to
domesticate terror: when states do not have a monopoly on the
legitimate use of force; when terror is used as an instrument of policy
by a state against its own or other states populations; when there are
disputes over the government of a population that are under the
jurisdiction of another state.7 Thus, Connolly and Hindess, echoing
Walker in the previous chapter, emphasise a deep connection between
borders and violence that is not only etymological but historical,
structural and colonial. This connection is taken further and, in the
work of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, is related to territory,
authority and law.
In his essay Critique of Violence [1921], Benjamin considers the
relationship between law and violence.8 More specifically, Benjamin
analyses the foundations of justifications for the use of certain forms
of violence and the designation of such violence as legitimate.
Indeed, it is precisely the assumed distinction between what counts
as legitimate and illegitimate violence that he seeks to interrogate
overall. His hypothesis is that the interest of law in having a monopoly
of violence over a population within a given territory is not simply
to preserve legal ends but rather to preserve the very foundational
structure of the juridicalpolitical order of the state itself. Thus, in an
extended passage, Benjamin argues:
For if violence, violence crowned by fate, is the origin of the law,
then it may be readily supposed that where the highest violence,
that over life and death, occurs in the legal system, the origins of
the law jut manifestly and fearsomely into existence. [] For in
the exercise of violence over life and death, more than in any
other legal act, the law reaffirms itself. But in this very violence
something rotten in the law is revealed, above all to a finer
sensibility, because the latter knows itself to be infinitely remote
from conditions in which fate might imperiously have shown
itself in such a sentence.9
As this passage indicates, Benjamins analysis refers to a separation
between law-making violence on the one hand (the origin of the law is

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BORDER POLITICS

violent) and law-preserving violence on the other (the law reaffirms

itself through the exercise of violence). According to Benjamin, however, both types of violence merge in a spectral mixture in the
authority of the police: police violence is both law-making because
its characteristic function is not the promulgation of laws but the
assertion of legal claims for any decree and law-preserving because it is
at the disposal of these ends.10 The police, he argues, often intervene
where there is no clear legal situation and as such their power can
be thought of as formless, [] [a] nowhere-tangible, all pervasive,
ghostly presence in the life of civilised states.11 Nevertheless, the key
point Benjamin emphasises is that these interrelated forms of violence
are inextricably implicated through the problematic of law. According
to Connolly, this argument has provided an important point of
departure for a number of critical twentieth-century thinkers who
have sought to theorise the ways in which violence is bound up in the
juridicalpolitical order of the modern sovereign territorial state and
state system.12 One of these engagements which, as I will go on to
suggest, is instructive for any attempt to interrogate the relationship
between borders and violence, is that given by Jacques Derrida.
In Force of Law: the Mystical Foundations of Authority [1992],
Derrida engages with Benjamins text to offer a deconstructive critique
of the interrelationships between the law and justice, authority, and
violence and authorisations of authority and mystery.13 At first, Derrida
invokes and elucidates the Benjaminian distinction between lawmaking and law-preserving violence to claim that the law rests on
non-law through these two types of violence. Derrida explains the
former type of violence (law-making or originary violence) in terms of
the attempt of the authority behind the law to establish itself by a
pure performative act that does not have to answer to or before
anyone.14 The latter type of violence (law-preserving or secondary
violence) works to secure originary violence in order to conserve,
maintain and insure the permanence and enforceability of law.15
Because the origin of the authority behind the law cannot rest upon
anything but itself, it is understood by Derrida to be a violence
without a ground: a state of suspense beyond the conventional
opposition between legal and illegal. Derrida calls the moments
when the authority of a new law tries to establish itself the pokh: a
Greek word, meaning pause.16 These moments, supposing that they
may be isolated, are said to be terrifying moments because of the

Violence, Territory and the Borders of JuridicalPolitical Order

69

sufferings, the crimes, the tortures that rarely fail to accompany

them.17 On this basis, Derrida argues that no matter how distant
it may feel, the foundation of all states occurs in a situation that
we can call revolutionary.18 For each revolution to be successful in
the founding of a new authority behind law it is necessary for that
authority to create aprs coup what it was destined in advance to
produce, namely, proper interpretive models to give sense [and]
legitimacy to the violence it has produced.19 Elsewhere, Derrida
claims: successful unifications or foundations only ever succeed in
making one forget that there never was a natural unity or a prior
foundation.20 These interpretive models and imperatives to forget are
all bound up in what Derrida calls a discourse of self-legitimation.21
The justification for the violent origins of the foundation of authority
behind the juridicalpolitical order of every state can only ever be
justified retrospectively.22 According to Derrida, one only has to look at
revolutionary situations with their accompanying discourses throughout the twentieth century to get a sense for the way in which the
recourse to violence is always justified by alleging the founding, in
progress or to come, of a new law.23
While Derrida takes his lead from Benjamin, however, the argument
presented in Force of Law is that the oppositions set up in the
Critique of Violence between law-making and law-preserving
violence do not hold in the final analysis. Derrida claims that this
conclusion is reached implicitly within Benjamins own text in his
discussion of the police referred to earlier: it is precisely because the
police are everywhere that the separation between law-making and
law-preserving violence becomes indiscernible. Thus, in an important
section, Derrida writes:
The very violence of the foundation or positing of the law must
envelop the violence of the preservation of the law and cannot
break with it. It belongs to the structure of fundamental violence in
that it calls for the repetition itself and founds what ought to be
preserved, preservable, promised to heritage and to tradition, to
partaking. A foundation is a promise. [] Consequently, there is
no more pure foundation or pure position of law, and so a pure
founding violence, than there is a purely preserving violence.
Positing is already an iterability, a call for self-serving repetition.
Preservation in turn refounds, so that it can preserve what it

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BORDER POLITICS

claims to found. Thus there can be no rigorous opposition between

positing and preserving, only what I call a differential contamination
between the two, with all the paradoxes this may lead to.24
Illustrating the point that it is impossible to maintain a rigorous
opposition between positing and preserving violence, Derrida cites
the case of a Kurdish man. He had been granted asylum by a French
tribunal in 1999 and was living legally in Paris but was deported to
Turkey by the Gendarmerie when he failed to produce his papers on
the street.25 For Derrida such cases indicate not only the irreducible
gap between the law and justice but also the undesirable consequences of police without borders [] without indeterminable
limit, who become all pervasive and elusive.26 The case of the Kurdish
refugee highlights the way in which the police can be said to undertake to make the law instead of merely applying it, thereby blurring the
very distinction Benjamins analysis upholds.27 Yet, Derridas usage of
the concept of the police not only refers to uniformed officers as such
but also to something far more spectral:
The police are present or represented everywhere there is force of
law. They are present [] wherever there is preservation of the
social order. [] The police become hallucinatory [] because
they haunt everything; they are everywhere even where they are
not.28
Derridas engagement with Benjamins Critique of Violence opens
up a series of insights into the connection between the borders,
territory, law triad on the one hand, and violence on the other.
Force of Law permits a reading of borders between states as spatial
instantiations of the pokh or moments when the authority of a new
law establishes itself. On this reading, borders between states can be
said to represent traces of the violent foundations of the juridical
political order they supposedly delimit: scars in the territorial landscape that act as reminders of the sufferings, the crimes, the tortures
that rarely fail to accompany the founding of states as distinct entities.
To do as Walker suggests and treat state borders as sites of struggle is
to politicise the way we think about them: not only as merely socially
constructed phenomena but the outcome of violent encounters.
Moreover, to remember the pokh, the anxiety-ridden moment of

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71

suspense [or] interval of spacing in which [] revolutions take place,

is also to remember the deconstructibility of the foundations upon
which juridicalpolitical orders rest.29 In short, it is to remember
Walkers axiom that once upon a time things were not as they are
now.30 The memory of the pokh is potentially revolutionary: state
borders may serve to uphold the status quo but, paradoxically, they are
equally a reminder of the ability to challenge authority, enact change,
and act politically. After all, following the BenjaminDerrida line of
argument, the border of the state can be considered a product of the
violent attempts to establish authority in the lack thereof. Hence, there
is a locus of possibility at the heart of the concept of the border of the
state. To recognise this locus of possibility is to remember the
possibility of politics and therefore the potential for alternative forms
of political arrangements.
Crucially, the authority of the state relies upon practices of forgetting the memory of the pokh which threatens to reveal the radical
contingency of the juridicalpolitical order. As Michael J. Shapiro has
highlighted, revelations of such contingency are obviously not in the
interests of the state.31 This is precisely because they provide grounds
for challenging the status quo. Hence, Derrida writes:
What the state fears (the state being law in its greatest force) is
not so much crime or brigandage, even on the grand scale of
the Mafia or heavy drug traffic []. The state is afraid of
fundamental, founding violence, that is violence able to justify, to
legitimate, or to transform the relations of law.32
The mystique with which the state cloaks itself, readily displayed
at royal or civic ceremonies, is part and parcel of the discourse of
retrospective self-legitimisation referred to earlier. On this view, the
state abdicates responsibility for the traumas of the structural violence
underpinning its juridicalpolitical authority by forgetting that they
ever existed.33 Benjamin and Derrida, on the other hand, urge a teasing
out of this structural violence so that it might be interrogated
politically.
While Benjamin and Derridas analyses of the violence of the
foundation and reproduction of the juridicalpolitical order deepen
some of the insights of Connolly, Hindess and Walker earlier, however,
there is a sense in which more critical work is necessary to untie an

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interrogation of the relation between borders, violence and authority

from an assumed correlation between fixed territorial and juridical
limits. Both Benjamin and Derrida take the juridicalpolitical order of
the modern sovereign territorially bordered state precisely as the
ground for thinking about the borders, territory and law triad on the
one hand, and violence on the other. Yet, as we have already seen in
Chapter 1, for example, one of the interesting aspects of the legal
arguments mobilised by the United Nations in response to the
position of detainees in Guantnamo is precisely the problematisation
of the dominant inside/outside framing of this relationship. In search
of an alternative frame, the next section investigates the thought of
Carl Schmitt and in particular his later work on spatial structures and
order.
CARL SCHMITT: SOVEREIGNTY, TERRITORY, LIMITS
German legal theorist Carl Schmitt wrote his influential book Political
Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty [1922] against the
backdrop of successive governments almost continuous use of emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar constitution. According
to this text:
If security and public order are seriously disturbed or threatened
in the German Reich, the president of the Reich may take the
measures necessary to re-establish security and public order, with
the help of the armed forces if required. To this end he may
wholly or partially suspend the fundamental rights established in
Articles 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153.34
On Schmitts view, under emergency situations there are often no
norms or principles on the basis of which a response may be
formulated. A decision has to be made in order to close the gap
between existing codes of practice and any given situation. Thus, for
Schmitt, the essence of sovereignty is understood to be a monopoly
on the ability to decide on the exception: For a legal order to make
sense, a normal situation must exist, and he is sovereign who
definitely decides whether this normal situation actually exists. 35
Indeed, such a decision involves two steps: first the decision that an
emergency actually exists beyond the scope and provisions of the

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73

existing legal order; and second the decision about what can be done
to remedy the situation. It is through this analysis of the figure of the
sovereign that Schmitts formula recognises that the operation of the
juridical order is actually grounded in the realm of the non-juridical.
The sovereign, he who makes a double decision on the exception, has
an unusual relationship to the juridicalpolitical order: Although he
stands outside the normally valid legal system, he nevertheless
belongs to it, for it is he who must decide whether the constitution
needs to be suspended in its entirety. 36 At once the sovereign both
belongs to and stands above or outside that order in his capacity to
decide when the constitution no longer applies. According to this
formula, the law is outside itself, since the sovereign who is outside
the law declares that there is nothing outside the law. Schmitt refers
to the strange situation arising from the suspension of existing legal
norms and practices in this way as the state of exception. The
strangeness of this situation stems in part from a blurring of the
normal lines between the legal and the political within the day-to-day
operation of the juridicalpolitical order of the sovereign state. Such
a situation characterised most of the Weimar era, save one or two
periods of relative normality between 1925 and 1929, as well as the
entire twelve-year duration of the Third Reich. What is perhaps more
striking about Schmitts book, however, is the realisation that the state
of exception seems to provide the condition of possibility for the
normal operation of the juridicalpolitical order as such.
Following Schmitts treatment of the logic of norm/exception, it can
be said that to define the normal territory of the juridicalpolitical
order some notion of exceptional territory is required. One way of
thinking about this exceptional territory is to interpret it as precisely
the site of state borders, located, according to the inside/outside
model, at the geographical outer edge of the sovereign state. Paradoxically, borders between states can be seen to be simultaneously
exceptional territory, a zone of anomie devoid of law and excluded
from the normal juridicalpolitical territory of the state, but nevertheless an integral part of that juridicalpolitical territory (in fact, the
very condition of its possibility). The characterisation of state borders
as exceptional territory perhaps clarifies why border sites between
states are sometimes spoken about in quasi-mythical terms: a nomans-land; a void; a place of nothingness neither strictly inside nor
outside the state.37 This characterisation also resonates with images of

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BORDER POLITICS

state borders as sites of exceptional measures, practices and rules

(such as passport control, body searches and a sense of lawlessness).
Understood as exceptional territorial sites, borders between states
mark a threshold between the inside and the outside, the normal
situation and an exceptional situation, where these distinctions
become impossible to maintain. Indeed, this point has been recently
illustrated by Mark Salters discussion of the global visa regime in
which he comments on the paradoxical situation at borders between
states where one may claim no rights but is still subject to the law.38
Salter sees state borders as the space where exceptional decisions are
made: the sovereign decides the political status of the individual as
they cross the frontier: national, stateless, refugee, foreigner, alien. This
decision is absolute. [] Thus, state actions at the border are a special
case of law. 39 Following Salter, it can also be argued that exceptional
activities associated with state border sites reveal the realm of the
non-juridical as the ultimate ground of the normal juridical order of
the state. As such there is a certain nakedness about the territory
occupied by borders between states where the violent and extra-legal
foundations of the state are revealed.
Schmitts paradigmatic treatment of sovereignty as the decision on
exception enables some interesting claims about the relationship
between borders, territory and law. Like Benjamin and Derrida, however, Schmitt presupposes the modern territorially bordered sovereign
state as the basic ground for analysing this relation, and also seems to
read territorial and juridical limits as congruent. While, as Hidemi
Suganami notes, Schmitt is unclear about whether sovereignty resides
in the person of the head of state, the government, or in a particular
regime as a whole, we are left in little doubt that his analysis privileges
the state as the supreme sovereign political entity. Hence, Suganami
writes:
In short, the state, when it functions and qualifies as a sovereign
political entity, is the supreme authority in the sense of the
authoritative-entity-in-decisive-cases that makes decisions to
resort to war against its enemy, internal or external, when it
judges it necessary to do so.40
The result of this privileging is that Schmitt reads the notion of
juridicalpolitical order as something that is synonymous with the

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75

state. In this way, there is a sense in which an interrogation of the

relation between borders, territory and law based on his understanding of sovereignty in Political Theology remains already caught
within a conventional inside/outside rendering of that relation. On
this reading, the limits of territory and the limits in law appear
coextensive and yet, as the Guantnamo example in Chapter 1
illustrates, practices in contemporary political life call this framing into
question. Nevertheless, despite the limitations of Schmitts analysis
as developed in Political Theology, his later work on the spatial
consciousness of law is suggestive of the possibility of developing an
alternative frame without the state at its centre.
The stated aim of Schmitts later book The Nomos of the Earth in the
International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, written in Berlin
during World War II and first published in 1950, is to understand the
normative order of the earth.41 Schmitts argument develops around
the central concept of nomos: a derivation of the Greek word nemein
meaning to take or appropriate.42 In German, nemein translates as
nehmen which is linked to the verbs teilen (to divide or distribute) and
weiden (to pasture).43 Schmitt explores planetary division and order
in the light of these three dimensions: the appropriation of land
(nehmen); the division and distribution of the appropriated land
(teilen); and the utilisation, management and usage of that taken land
(weiden). On this basis, nomos can be understood as the visible form of
a social and political order derived from the measure and division of
pasture:
Nomos is the measure by which the land in a particular order is
divided and situated; it is also the form of political, social and
religious order determined by this process. Here, measure, order,
and form constitute a spatially concrete unity.44
For Mitchell Dean the emphasis Schmitt gave to nomos can be understood as a corrective to strands of thought within jurisprudence that
fail to consider how land appropriation is constitutive of law and the
spatial character of the socio-economic and legal order.45 Dean
explains that, if Michel Foucault wanted to shift the focus from the
who to the how of power, then Schmitts reformulation was from the
who to the where of law.46 For this reason Schmitt uses the concept
of nomos to grasp the geographically situated nature of law: it creates

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territory, defines locality, marks places, separates backyards and

defines households.47 Schmitt argues that there has always been some
kind of nomos or spatial consciousness of the earth: history consists
of land appropriation, division and cultivation. Respublica Christiana
constituted the first nomos, a spatial order characterised by divisions
between the soils of the medieval West, the soil of heathens and the
soil of Islamic empires. Later, in the sixteenth century, discoveries of
vast new spaces and the appropriation of uncultivated land conditioned the possibility of the emergence of a second nomos: an international law based upon centralised, spatially self-contained states in
Europe. According to Schmitt:
The core of the nomos lay in the division of European soil into
state territories with firm borders, which immediately initiated an
important distinction, namely that this soil of recognized European states and their land had a special status in international
law.48
European appropriation, division and utilisation of the earth extended
through protectorates, leases, trade agreements and spheres of
interests, and culminated in the division of Africa. The Eurocentric
nomos, however, is said to have come to an end following World War II
which ushered in a new planetary division between East and West.
Although this nomos characterised the period in which Schmitt was
writing, his conclusion to Nomos of the Earth points to three possible
futures: the complete unity of the world resulting from the victory of
either East or West; the attempt to retain a balanced structure between
East and West; or the combination of several independent entities
(grossraume) constituting a new order and orientation of the earth.
Schmitts account of the appropriation, division and management
of the earth from the Middle Ages through the Jus Publicum Europaeum
to the Cold War is a highly contestable grand narrative. Nevertheless,
what is interesting about the argument of Nomos of the Earth is the
way it ultimately seems to question an earlier assumption Schmitt
makes in Political Theology: namely that limits in territory and law
are necessarily coterminous. An approach predicated upon this
assumption considers borders to be fixed and located at the outer
edge of the state as markers of the limits of sovereign authority. Such
an assumption, according to Schmitts historical narrative, made sense

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77

in the context of the division of European soil into state territories

during the sixteenth century. Schmitt challenges this inside/outside
framing of the relationship between borders, territory and law, however, by arguing that the changing economic trends of the nineteenth
century meant the demise of state borders as sharp delimitations of
sovereignty and neat containers of order and orientation: over, under,
and beside the state-political borders of what appeared to be a purely
political international law between states spread a free, i.e. non-state,
sphere of economy permeating everything: a global economy.49
Schmitt connects the declining importance of the concept of the
border of the state with the development of modern technology and
the advent of a new technical-industrial-economic order. As an
illustration of this trend, Schmitt points out that, on the one hand, the
United States is spatially delimited but, on the other hand, its political,
legal and economic reach has far surpassed these spatial delimitations.
On this basis, Schmitt seems to problematise the concept of the
border of the state as a frame for understanding the relationship
between sovereignty and territory in favour of thinking more in terms
of magnetic power fields of human energy and work.50 Overall,
Schmitt offers a tantalising glimpse of an alternative way of thinking
about the relationship between borders, territory and law but this is
ultimately left undeveloped in his work.
MICHEL FOUCAULT: THE HOW OF POWER
In Power/knowledge Foucault argues that we need to cut off the
kings head; in political theory that has still to be done.51 By this he
suggests, contra Schmitt, that power and authority cannot be profitably analysed as if it were a top-down phenomenon dispensed by the
sovereign:
Rather than asking ourselves what the sovereign looks like
from on high we should be trying to discover how multiple
bodies, forces, energies, matters, desires, thoughts, and so on are
gradually and materially constituted as subjects, or the subject.52
Thus, for Foucault, power in global politics is not something that can
be approached as if it were a possession divided between those who
have it and hold it exclusively and those who do not have it and are

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subject to it.53 Instead, following late seventeenth-/early eighteenthcentury French historian Henri de Boulainvilliers, Foucault argues that
power is never anything more than a relationship that can, and must,
be studied only by looking at the interplay between the terms of the
relationship.54 In other words, an analysis of power should not begin
with a central source such as the sovereign, but rather
its infinitesimal mechanisms, which have their own history,
their own trajectory, their own techniques and tactics, and then
look at how these mechanisms of power [] have been and
are invested, colonized, used, inflected, transformed, displaced,
extended, and so on by increasingly general mechanisms and
forms of overall domination.55
While Foucault has not devoted an entire text solely to the concept
of power, he has studied what he calls the how of power by looking at
relations of power through an analysis of asylums, madness, prisons,
sexuality and policing in their historical contexts.56 The histories
Foucault wrote in, for example, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology
of Medical Perception [1963], Madness and Civilization: A History of
Insanity in the Age of Reason [1967] and The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences [1970], are not works of history
in the conventional sense, however, but transgressive analyses of
accidents, abrupt interruptions, and the play of surfaces.57 In his essay
Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History Foucault describes his later work
as that of the genealogist, who does not pretend to go back in time to
restore an unbroken continuity that operates beyond the dispersion of
forgotten things.58 Rather, as he goes on to explain, genealogy, as an
analysis of descent, is [] situated within the articulation of the body
and history. Its task is to explore a body totally imprinted by history
and the process of historys destruction of the body. 59 Because, on
Foucaults view, the forces at work in history are not controlled by
destiny, such an analysis of the relationship between the body and
history is a study of relations of power.60
Yet, for Foucault, the relationship between history, power and the
body is dynamic in an important sense. That is to say, historically,
different forms of power have affected the body differently. In the
course of lectures published as Society Must Be Defended [197576],
Foucault moves from a discussion of the emergence of what he calls

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79

disciplinary power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the

analysis of power relations focusing on individual bodies and, for
example, surveillance techniques) to an examination of the emergence
of what he calls bio-power in the latter half of the eighteenth century
(the exploration of power relations in the more expansive context of
populations, the concept of life and living beings).61
While the sovereign/subject relationship was perhaps an adequate
means of analysing power relations in feudal societies, Foucault
argues that this method becomes increasingly unable to capture
emergent practices in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At
this time, different forms of power relations emerged that entailed
very specific procedures, completely new instruments, and very
different equipment.62 This new type of power relation relied on a
closely meshed grid of material coercions involving almost constant
surveillance.63 Such a power, according to Foucault, is therefore not a
sovereign power as such but a form of disciplinary power in the sense
that it attempts to render visible the spatial distribution of bodies for
control over them. Disciplinary power structures space by enclosing
and hierarchically arranging elements within it: the first action of
discipline is in fact to circumscribe a space in which its power and the
mechanisms of its power will function fully and without limit.64
Towards the mid-eighteenth century, however, as Western societies
came to accept the human being as a species, Foucault discerns the
rise of a secondary technology of power, a form of power he refers to
as bio-power.65 This type of power, which is applied not to man-asbody but to the living man, to man-as-living-being [] to man-asspecies, has a massifying, as opposed to an individualising, effect:
After the anatomo-politics of the human body established in the
course of the eighteenth century, we have at the end of that
century, the emergence of something that is no longer an
anatomo-politics of the human body, but what I would call a
biopolitics of the human race.66
By the term biopolitics, Foucault refers to the way in which the
biological features of the human species became the target for political
strategy.67 With the emergence of the population as a political subject,
new techniques of governance were enabled.68 Foucault sees the rise
of this new technology of power alongside increases in birth and

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mortality rates and the use of statistics about longevity as objects of

statistical measurement by the first demographers. Concomitantly,
these developments gave rise to new biopolitical fields of public
hygiene, insurance schemes and other mechanisms to control
relations between the human race, or human beings insofar as they
are a species, insofar as they are living beings.69
Whereas disciplinary power isolates, concentrates and is essentially
protectionist, by contrast biopower is said to be centrifugally oriented
in favour of expansion, circulation and movement:
We see the emergence of a completely different problem that
is no longer that of fixing and demarcating the territory, but
allowing circulations to take place, of controlling them, sifting the
good and the bad, ensuring that things are always in movement,
constantly moving around, continually going from one point to
another, but in such a way that the inherent dangers of this
circulation are canceled out.70
Therefore, Foucaults understanding of the mechanisms of biopolitical
security is one that no longer focuses on the safety (sret) of the
Prince and his territory but rather the security (scurit ) of the
population and, consequently, those who govern it.71 Nevertheless,
Foucault presents disciplinary power and biopower as complimentary.
The latter did not eclipse the former: it does dovetail into it, integrate
it, modify it to some extent, and above all, use it by sort of infiltrating
it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques.72 Foucault
reaches some interesting conclusions when these trends are considered against the backdrop of sovereignty.
In classical theories of sovereignty, including Schmitts as advanced
in Political Theology, the decision over the right of life and death is one
of the basic attributes associated with the figure of the sovereign.
Foucault notes a paradox relating to this right, however, because the
sovereign cannot grant life in the same way that he can sentence a
person to death.73 There is an imbalance: sovereign powers effect on
life is exercised only when the sovereign can kill.74 On this basis, the
very essence of the right of life and death is actually the right to kill: it
is at the moment when the sovereign can kill that he exercises his
right over life. [] It is the right to take life or let live. 75 Yet, with the
advent of the emergence of biopower as a secondary technology of

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81

power, Foucault argues that a new right emerged: the power to

make live and let die.76 In other words, whereas sovereignty
formerly involved the decision over life, Foucault sees in the emergence of scientific, continuous, biopolitical technology an optimisation of human life as a state of life, not for its disciplining as such but
for its regularisation: a technology which aims to achieve a sort of
homeostasis, not by training individuals, but by achieving an overall
equilibrium that protects the security of the whole from internal
dangers.77 Thus, as Foucault wryly remarks, we have become so good
at keeping people alive that biologically they should have died years
ago.78
As we have already seen, Foucaults reconfigured treatment of
power is not in terms of something that can be possessed, or kept in
a container such as the modern sovereign territorially bordered state,
but rather as something that circulates through networks, capillaries,
bodies, actions, attitudes, discourses, learning processes and everyday
lives.79 On the one hand, Foucault argues that power always requires
space and this, reflecting Agnew and Connolly earlier, is what defines
territory: Not only can the exercise of power only be performed in a
certain space, but it is the presence of power that defines a territory
territory is what is controlled by a certain type of power. 80 Thus, as the
quotation suggests, Foucault does not disaggregate his analysis of
power relations from concepts of space or territory as such. On the
other hand, he also calls into question the idea that that space or
territory can somehow be bordered or easily separated into distinct
areas. Thus, in an interview about the implications of his work for the
discipline of geography in 1976, Foucault points to the ways in which
relations of power always necessarily extend beyond the limits of the
state.81 In other words, while the territory of the juridicalpolitical
order of the state undoubtedly constitutes space within which power
relations may be identified and analysed, such power relations always
exceed the space/territory that state borders are said to delimit
according to the conventional inside/outside model.
In this way, the concept of the border of the state is challenged as a
frame for thinking about the limits of power and authority from a
Foucauldian perspective. Yet, the fact that power relations necessarily
extend beyond the limits of the state does not mean that Foucault
seeks to in any way minimize the importance and effectiveness of
state power.82 On the contrary, Foucault seeks to understand precisely

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how this works, but argues that approaching power as if it were

somehow centred and delimited would not assist him in this task:
In reality, power in its exercise goes much further, passes through
much finer channels, and is much more ambiguous, since each
individual has at his disposal a certain power, and for that very
reason can also act as the vehicle for transmitting a wider
power.83
Further still, this approach to power accompanies a broader shift in
how we view the state, not as something essentially defined by its
territory but rather as a series of practices:
We cannot speak of the state-thing as if it was a being developing
on the basis of itself and imposing itself on individuals as if by a
spontaneous, automatic mechanism. The state is a practice. The
state is inseparable from the set of practices by which the state
actually becomes a way of governing, a way of doing things, and
a way too of relating to government.84
Therefore, Foucault has significant implications for any attempt at
interrogating the link between the concept of the border of the state
and power in world politics. From the point of view of the inside/
outside model, the concept of the border of the state frames power in
the manner suggested by Agnew, Edkins and Pin-Fat, and Walker
earlier. This framing itself relies, however, upon a prior (and particular)
understanding of power as something that is somehow fixed, static,
locatable and containable within the territorial demesne of the state.
Once Foucaults alternative view of power is adopted, then different
border imaginaries are required to characterise the way in which the
limits of power and authority in global politics do not coincide
with the geographical outer edges of the modern sovereign state.
One attempt at outlining what this could look like, and what a
Foucauldian-inspired perspective could mean for thinking differently
about borders in global politics, can be found in the recent work of
Hardt and Negri.

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MICHAEL HARDT AND ANTONIO NEGRI:

THE SMOOTH SPACE OF EMPIRE
In Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism [1916] Lenin attempted
to unite the worlds proletariat against the imperialist forces of the
West. According to Lenin, imperialism was not a policy or ideology
pursued by Western forces as Nikolai Bukharin had argued in
Imperialism and World Economy [1915]. Neither, in Lenins view, was
imperialism simply the rule of financial capital, as Rudolf Hilferding
had suggested in Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of
Capitalist Development [1910]. Rather, Lenin argued that imperialism
could be understood only as a specific stage of capitalism:
Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which
the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established;
in which the export of capital has acquired profound importance;
in which the division of the world among the international trusts
has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe
among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.85
The motivating hypothesis of Hardt and Negris Empire [2000] is
that, while Lenins theory of imperialism as decaying capitalism was
relevant to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it has somewhat lost its purchase on global politics today. According to Hardt and
Negri, the contemporary global order can no longer be understood
adequately in terms of imperialism as it was practiced by the modern
powers.86 Whereas the imperialist order was primarily based on the
sovereignty of the nation-state extended over foreign territory a new
form of sovereignty is said to have emerged: a network power that
includes nation-states but also supranational institutions, major
capitalist co-operations, and other powers.87 As a single logic of rule,
Hardt and Negri argue that this nascent global order is best summed
up by the concept of empire. This is not to be confused with imperialism. Rather, empire must be understood as a completely new
concept within the lexicon of discussions of global politics.
In the preface to Empire, Hardt and Negri summarise their understanding and usage of the concept. First and foremost, the concept
of empire is characterised fundamentally by a lack of boundaries:
Empires rule has no limits.88 Second, empire attempts to fix the

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current state of affairs by suspending history in order to extend the

longevity of its reign: it is a regime with no temporal boundaries and
in this sense outside of history or at the end of history.89 In other
words, empire presents the status quo as the immutable end product
of historical development: the pinnacle of progress outside or beyond
time. Third, the object of the rule of empire is nothing short of social
life in its entirety, the paradigmatic form of biopower as understood by
Foucault. Empire does not merely adopt populations then to subjugate
them but actively produces the world it inhabits through technologies
of power.90 Fourth, empire is bathed in blood, but, nevertheless,
committed to peace. Perpetual policing constitutes a deferment of
the problems and contradictions inherent to empires rule: hence its
borderlessness and timelessness. On this basis, the task of empire is
not simply to resist these processes but to reorganise them and
redirect them toward new ends.91
On the one hand, Hardt and Negri accept the hypothesis
commonly associated with globalisation theory that the growth of
economic and cultural exchanges has led to the partial decline of the
nation-state:
The primary factors of production and exchange money,
technology, people, and goods move with increasing ease
across national boundaries; hence the nation-state has less and
less power to regulate these flows and impose its authority over
the economy.92
On the other hand, they deny that the decline in sovereignty of the
nation-state has led to the decline of sovereignty per se. Rather, the
central argument advanced in Empire is that: Sovereignty has taken
a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational
organisms united under a single logic of rule. This new global form
of sovereignty is what we call Empire. 93 At the heart of the old
imperialist paradigm, according to Negri, was a powerful specification
of sovereignty, whereby people, territory and authority were bound
together through the figure of the sovereign.94 The characteristics of
this order included the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical
force, the ability to mint money, a singular structuring of the means
of communication and an absolute process of territorialisation.95
Imperialism consisted of the exporting of these characteristics beyond

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85

the confines of the nation-state through the occupation of zones of

the world and the exploitation of those to whom sovereignty had been
denied.
Accordingly, the function of the concept of the border of the state
was to delimit the centre of power from which rule was exerted over
external foreign territories through a system of channels and barriers
that alternately facilitated and obstructed flows of production and
circulation.96 As such, the concept of the border of the state was
indispensable to the imperialist project: Wherever modern sovereignty
took root, it constructed a Leviathan that overarched its social domain
and imposed hierarchical territorial boundaries, both to police the
purity of its own identity and to exclude all that was other. 97
Moreover, fulfilling the ends of imperialism, the importance of the
concept of the state was gradually codified in international law (the jus
gentium), institutions (such as the United Nations), and norms (for
example the territorial integrity of states).
Negri argues, however, that there is currently an earthquake
shaking this old paradigm of sovereign order in its most intimate
aspect: the relation to space.98 Underpinning the new scenario are:
the development of nuclear technologies (where the notion of the
monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force no longer makes any
sense); the construction of a world market (where national monies
lose their own autonomy associated with sovereignty); and the dissolution of the substance of sovereign prerogatives into the airwaves.99
In Negris view, the key implication of these new characteristics
(referred to in shorthand as the bomb, money and the ether
respectively) is that the space of politics is said to have become
increasingly undefinable.100 Indeed, it is said to have become undefinable to the extent that:
We find ourselves looking at a space which is smooth, with
occasionally a few variously striated zones, a space that is unified,
and periodically identifiable by the hierarchies which run through
it; a space that is invested by a continuous circulatory movement,
within which one can occasionally perceive resistances.101
In this way, it is possible to detect a shift away from some of the key
assumptions of the modern geopolitical imagination underpinned by
Euclidean geometry and the concept of the border of the state.

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BORDER POLITICS

Crucially, the earthquake to which Negri refers does not imply

a lessening or dilution of the sway of sovereign power, as some
globalisation theorists suggest. Rather, what Hardt and Negri refer to
as empire is a decentred and de-territorialising apparatus of rule that
progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open,
expanding frontiers.102 While the former imperialist system operated
by and within spatial and temporal delimitations associated with the
discourse of first, second and third worlds, the distinct national
colours of the imperialist map of the world have [now] merged and
blended in the imperial global rainbow.103 On this basis, the concept
of empire is defined precisely by the increasing absence of territorial
limits to sovereign power. In this way, Hardt and Negris use of the
concept of empire can be read as a substitution for the concept of the
border of the state and as a challenge to the inside/outside model it
conditions.
Theoretically, Hardt and Negri claim to achieve this reframing
through their historical reading of the abandonment of the inside/
outside dialectic. According to Hardt and Negri, the decline of borders
between states results from the continuous attempt of empire to
overcome the former limits of imperial sovereign rule. In their view,
the creation of an open space, a universal suburb characterised by
variations of speed,104 derives from what they see as a particular
historical transformation: in the passage from modern to postmodern
and from imperialism to Empire there is progressively less distinction
between inside and outside.105 Whereas modern sovereignty has
typically been conceived of in terms of a real or imagined territory and
the relation of this territory to its outside, the external order of nature,
the new imperial order has rendered obsolete the distinction between
civil order or interior space and the external spaces of nature: We have
no nature in the sense that these forces and phenomena are no longer
understood as outside, that is, they are not seen as original and
independent of the artifice of the civil order. 106 On this basis, Hardt
and Negri claim that the inside/outside dialectic has been abandoned
in favour of a play of differences and intensities, of hybridity and
artificiality.107 In other words, there is no more outside only an inside:
in this smooth space of Empire, there is no place of power it is both
everywhere and nowhere.108
Empire is not threatened by difference or hybridity. Rather, as
Michael Hardt has explained, empire rules precisely through a kind of

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87

politics of difference, managing hybrid identities in flexible hierarchies.109 On this basis, Hardt and Negri argue that imperial
sovereign rule has a triple imperative: Incorporate! [] Differentiate!
[] Manage! 110 First, empire does not seek to exclude in the same
way that the inside/outside model of political community has
historically presupposed:
[] Empire does not fortify its boundaries to push others away,
but rather pulls them within its pacific order, like a powerful
vortex. With boundaries or differences suppressed or set aside,
the Empire is a kind of smooth space across which subjectivities
glide without substantial resistance or conflict.111
Second, cultural differences are celebrated under empire, not stifled.
Although imperial rule does not seek to create differences, it takes
what it is given and works with it.112 Third, antagonisms within the
workforce along racial lines are not so much a hindrance for empire
as a motor for better production, because divisions of this nature
facilitate rather than hamper control: the imperial solution will not
be to negate or attenuate these differences, but rather to affirm them
in an effective apparatus of control.113
It is through social institutions such as the factory, the home, the
school and the army that subjectivities are produced and managed by
empire. Whereas these institutions were formerly separated from each
other under the old imperialist order, however, Hardt and Negri argue
that they now merge to form the fabric of social and political life: the
limited space of the institutions has broken down [] and consequently [] the logic that once functioned within the institutional
walls now spreads across the entire social terrain.114 It is in this sense
that Hardt and Negri claim that the politics of space has changed
dramatically under conditions of empire. The new form of sovereign
rule is said to depend upon the blurring of inside and outside to create
subjects that are amenable to its sway.115
For Hardt and Negri, the abandonment of the inside/outside dialectic resolves a crucial tension between the creation and maintenance
of fixed borders among territories, populations and social functions
under the old imperialist paradigm of sovereign order, on the one
hand, and the operation of capital on a plane of immanence that has
no respect for such borders, on the other.116 On this basis, they argue:

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BORDER POLITICS

What has changed is that, along with the collapse of the institutions,
the disciplinary motifs (i.e. mechanisms, apparatuses, methods of
deployment) have become less limited and bounded spatially in the
social field. 117 As such, in Foucauldian terms, the passage to a society
of control has not led to the end of disciplinary society but rather to
the accentuation and generalisation of its immanent aspects. On this
basis, the immanent production of subjectivity in a society of control
now corresponds with the logic of capital so that the tension above is
resolved to the benefit of imperial rule: we get a new and more
complete compatibility between sovereignty and capital.118
As we have seen, Hardt and Negri claim that the changing logic
of sovereignty, together with the abandonment of the inside/outside
dialectic, produces a smoothing over of the spatiality of empire:
The establishment of a global society of control that smooths over the
striae of national boundaries goes hand in hand with the realisation of
the world market and the real subsumption of global society under
capital. 119 Whereas imperialism is said to have been a machine of
global striation, channeling, coding, blocking, and territorializing the
flows of capital, empire is defined by uncoded and deterritorialised
flows.120 This smooth space does not entail the disappearance of social
inequalities or other segmentations, however. On the contrary, Hardt
and Negri argue that, in many ways, these have been exacerbated
under empire, but in a different form. Thus, the old coordinates of
north and south and centre and periphery no longer make much
sense because empire is characterised by:
[T]he close proximity of extremely unequal populations, which
creates a situation of permanent social danger and requires the
powerful apparatuses of the society of control to ensure separation and guarantee the new management of social space.121
As noted already, these powerful apparatuses of the society of control
are no longer through the disciplinary modalities of the state but
rather through the modalities of biopower. As such, they extend
beyond, and thereby render increasingly meaningless, the notion of
territorial borders at the geographical outer edge of the state within
which it was formerly assumed that sovereignty was exercised.
On the one hand, Empire arguably assists in the task of rethinking
the character of power in contemporary global politics, not as some-

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89

thing contained within the state but rather more dispersed in global
politics along the lines suggested by Foucault. On the other hand,
however, as Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes have pointed out, there is a
sense in which, despite seemingly offering an alternative conceptualisation of global politics to the modern geopolitical imaginary, in
other ways [Hardt and Negri] too remain stuck up a Westphalian blind
alley.122 On Laffey and Weldess view, the key characteristics of Empire
the changing logic of sovereignty, the abandonment of the inside/
outside dialectic and the production of a smooth space have a
dependence (albeit in a negative sense) on the very sovereignty
narrative Hardt and Negri purport to overcome. On this basis, Laffey
and Weldes conclude: the Other against which Empire is defined is, in
short, modern territorial sovereignty.123
Laffey and Weldess argument, that Hardt and Negri rely upon the
sovereignty narrative in order to define what empire is not, opens up
a related line of critique concerning the work that the concept of
the border of the state does in Empire as a whole. Hardt and Negri
argue that, while the presence of state borders once defined the
old imperialist order, it is precisely the absence of them that now
characterises contemporary political life. Thus, in their preface, Hardt
and Negri write: the concept of Empire is characterised fundamentally
by a lack of boundaries: Empires rule has no limits.124 The changing
logic of sovereignty, so their argument goes, means that empire
perpetually overcomes its own territorial limits which, in turn,
progressively collapses the inside/outside dialectic resulting in a crisis
of political space. Simply because Hardt and Negri argue that state
borders are no longer relevant to the new logic of imperial rule does
not mean that Empire is not dependent upon the concept of the
border of the state, however. On the contrary, the concept of the
border of the state remains pivotal to the claims they want to make
about global politics. In a similar vein to Laffey and Weldess critique,
it is possible to see how the concept of the border of the state creeps
back into the text as the Other against which their fundamental
argument about smooth space is determined. Empire begins by
excluding the importance of the concept of the border of the state, but
it is this very exclusion that animates the argument of the book
throughout. In this way, the extent to which Hardt and Negri offer a
genuinely alternative border imaginary to the inside/outside model is
called into question.

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BORDER POLITICS

R. B. J. Walker opens up a second, albeit related, line of critique of

the theoretical/philosophical assumptions underpinning Hardt and
Negris Empire, focusing on two main theoretical concerns with their
argument as a whole.125 First, for Walker, the central thesis of Empire is
an old thesis.126 In Walkers view, Hardt and Negris overall argument is
reminiscent of the literature that identified potentialities for new
forms of political arrangements in the context of a perceived decline in
sovereignty at the height of the Cold War.127 Walker notes that the key
difference between this literature and Hardt and Negris text is the
way in which the latter do not argue for a decline in so much as a
change in the logic of sovereignty. In Walkers view, this signals that, for
Hardt and Negri, sovereignty is considered to be an ongoing problem
in contemporary political life.128 Having recognised sovereignty as a
problem, however, Hardt and Negri then undermine this recognition
by arguing for the existence of a new form of sovereign power
conceptualised as empire. On this basis, Walker argues that as with so
many other texts, a version of history as modernisation is deployed to
solve problems identified in a reading of modernity as history.129 Thus,
Walker reiterates the need to view sovereignty precisely as a continuing problem rather than as an achieved condition as implied by
Hardt and Negri.
Second, according to Walker, Hardt and Negris analysis relies upon
a double reading of the history of modernity as a specific revolution
and counterrevolution, in which immanence is pitted as a revolution
against transcendence and sovereignty as a counterrevolution against
immanence.130 For Walker, the effect of this binary allows Hardt and
Negri then to claim that there is no more outside but, he argues, this
actually conflates two claims: first, that there has been a shift from a
specifically modern articulation of relations of identity and difference
associated with a territorially bounded space to a different kind of
order; and second, that this different kind of order is radically immanent with no outside or Others but merely techniques of control.131
As far as Walker is concerned, the former claim is more or less
plausible though difficult to articulate with much coherence, while
the latter can be considered as an overdetermined interpretation of
the former.132 Moreover, the latter is itself reliant upon a prior claim
about the radical immanence of modernity which reflects the familiar
story about capitalism eventually incorporating the entire world and
thereby undermining the logic of a pluralistic states system.133 Hardt

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91

and Negri argue that there is no more outside but this move does not
displace the inside/outside model: this model is precisely the condition of possibility for bringing everything inside in an immanentist
way. Hence, Walker argues:
One can no more move inside an inside/outside problem than
move outside of it. In any case, such a move would involve a
reversion to a notion of an inside separate from an outside that
much of Hardt and Negris historical commentary on sovereignty
and imperialism effectively undermines.134
Thus, for Walker, Empire is at once a creative and provocative
intervention into debates about the character and possibility of
contemporary political life as well as a source of considerable irritation
and disappointment.135
Walkers discussion above highlights the way in which Hardt and
Negris claim that the smooth space of empire has resulted from the
abandonment of the inside/outside dichotomy is not strictly correct. It
is not that the inside/outside model has been entirely abandoned but
rather that borders between states have been overcome through the
bringing in of everything to the inside. As Walker shows, however, the
move inside inside/outside leads only to a reproduction of the inside/
outside model. Therefore, in this way, Hardt and Negris discourse
shares another similarity with the discourse of globalisation theory:
both discourses seem to privilege immanentism over transcendentalism so that the decline of borders between states is not so much an
empirical observation but a teleological outcome of a particular version of philosophy of history. Thus, to offer an alternative theorisation
of global politics to the conventional inside/outside model and the
modern geopolitical imaginary it reflects, a different genealogical
account of the problem of sovereignty is required without borderlessness between states as its telos. With this task in mind, Chapter 4
investigates the work of Giorgio Agamben who develops Foucaults
analysis of the biopolitical structures of the West in different directions
from Hardt and Negri.

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BORDER POLITICS

NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.

Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, 1995, p. 163.

Ibid., p. xxii.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Hindess, Terrortory, 2006, p. 244.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Benjamin, Critique of Violence, 2004 [1921].
Ibid., p. 242 (emphasis added).
Ibid., p. 243.
Ibid.
Connolly, The Complexity of Sovereignty, 2004, p. 24.
Derrida, Force of Law, 1992.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 31.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Derrida, Negotiations, 2002, p. 115.
Derrida, Force of Law, 1992, p. 36.
Derrida, Negotiations, 2002, p. 115.
Derrida, Force of Law, 1992, p. 35.
Ibid., p. 35 (emphasis added).
Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, 2002, pp. 1314.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid.
Derrida, Force of Law, 2002 [1992], pp. 27880 (emphasis added).
Derrida, Force of Law, 1992, p. 20.
Walker, Inside/outside, 1993, p. 179.
Shapiro, Risky businesses, 2005, p. 9.
Derrida, Force of Law, 1992.
Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, 2003.
Quoted in Agamben, State of Exception, 2005, p. 14.
Schmitt, Political Theology, 2005 [1922], p. 13.
Ibid., p. 7.
Bennington, Frontiers: of literature and philosophy, 1996.
Salter , The global visa regime, 2006, p. 169.
Ibid., pp. 1712.
Suganami, Understanding Sovereignty, 2007, p. 517.

Violence, Territory and the Borders of JuridicalPolitical Order

41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.

93

Schmitt, Nomos of the Earth, 2003 [1950], p. 39.

Ibid., p. 67.
Ibid., pp. 3445.
Ibid., p. 70.
Dean, A Political Mythology of World Order, 2006.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 7.
Schmitt, Political Theology, 2005, p. 148.
Ibid., p. 235.
Ibid., p. 30.
Foucault, Power/knowledge, 1980, p. 121.
Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 2003, p. 28.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 168.
Ibid., p. 30.
Fontana and Bertoni, Situating the lectures, 2003, p. 274.
Banchard, Introduction, 1977, p. 17.
Foucault, Nietzsche, genealogy, history, 1977, p. 146.
Ibid., p. 148.
Ibid., p. 155.
Fontana and Bertoni, Situating the lectures, 2003, p. 273.
Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 2003, p. 35.
Foucault, Power/knowledge, 1980, p. 39.
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 2004, p. 45.
Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, pp. 2423.
Ibid., p. 243.
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 2004, p. 1.
Ibid., p. 42.
Ibid., p. 245.
Ibid., p. 65.
Ibid.
Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 2003, p. 242.
Ibid., p. 240.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 2401.
Ibid., p. 241.
Ibid., p. 249.
Ibid., p. 248.
Foucault, Power/knowledge, 1980, p. 39.
Foucault, Questions to Michel Foucault on Geography, 1980, p. 116;
Questions on Geography, Power/knowledge, 1980, p. 68.
81. Foucault, Power/knowledge, 1980, p. 122.

94
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.

BORDER POLITICS

Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid.
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 2004, p. 277.
Lenin quoted in Abu-Manneh, The illusions of Empire, 2003, p. 162.
Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 2004, p. xi.
Ibid., p. xi.
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 2000, xiv.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. xv.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. xi.
Ibid., p. xii.
Negri, The Crisis of Political Space, 2003, p. 190.
Ibid., p. 191.
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 2000, p. xii.
Ibid.
Negri, The Crisis of Political Space, 2003, p. 191.
Ibid., pp. 1925.
Ibid., p. 195.
Ibid.
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 2000, p. xii.
Ibid., p. xiii.
Negri, The Crisis of Political Space, 2003, p. 195.
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 2000, p. 187.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 188.
Ibid., p. 190.
Hardt and Dumm, Sovereignty, Multitudes, Absolute Democracy, 2004,
p. 172.
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 2000, pp. 198200.
Ibid., p. 198.
Ibid., p. 199.
Ibid., p. 200.
Ibid., p. 196.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 187.
Ibid., p. 330.
Ibid., p. 331.
Ibid., p. 332.
Ibid., p. 3323.
Ibid., pp. 3367.
Laffey and Weldes, Representing the International, 2004, p. 127.

Violence, Territory and the Borders of JuridicalPolitical Order

123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
135.

Ibid., p. 129.
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 2000, p. xiv.
Walker, On the Immanence/imminence of Empire, 2002, p. 341.
Ibid., p. 341.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 3423.
Ibid., p. 343.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 3434.
Ibid., p. 344.
Ibid., p. 337.

95

Chapter 4
THE GENERALISED BIOPOLITICAL BORDER:
SECURITY AS THE NORMAL TECHNIQUE
OF GOVERNMENT

In this chapter I will argue that there are potentially useful critical
resources for developing alternative border imaginaries to the conventional inside/outside model conditioned by the concept of the
border of the state to be found in the work of Italian philosopher
Giorgio Agamben. The discussion begins with a detailed exegesis of
some of Agambens key arguments, building on the thought of Walter
Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt discussed in Chapter 3,
as articulated in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life [1998],
Means Without End: Notes on Politics [2000], State of Exception [2005]
and several key essays and interviews. By now, Agambens work has
been taken up by a range of writers in politics, IR, and related
disciplines dealing with questions of: sovereign power, violence and
resistance in the context of the War on Terror; 1 practices associated
with security as the new paradigm of global governance; 2 trauma, time
and practices of memorialisation; 3 migration and patterns of global
movement; 4 the politics of humanitarianism and human rights; 5
and debates about the rule of law and sovereign exceptionalism.6
Agambens treatment of sovereignty and the generalisation of
exceptional practices associated with it, together with secondary
appropriations of such ideas, have not gone without criticism.7 Several
departures will be made from current interpretations of Agambens
work, however, in respect of his central concept of bare life, the
importance of what he calls a logic of the field and, perhaps most
importantly, the implications of his oeuvre for an understanding of
political space. Building upon this distinctive reading, I will argue that
Agambens reconceptualisation of the way we think about the limits
96

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

97

of sovereign power leads to what I call the concept of the generalised biopolitical border, which challenges many assumptions of the
modern geopolitical imaginary.
POLITICS, LIFE, AND SOVEREIGN POWER
Over the past two decades, Agamben has critiqued the dominant
treatment of the relationship between politics and life in political
philosophy.8 According to Agamben, this treatment has been shaped
by the thought of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. At the heart of
Aristotles conception of the state is the distinction between natural
life and the good life. Agamben claims that this distinction reflects
the way in which the Greeks had no single word for life. Rather, he
claims, two terms were used in its place: zoe (the biological fact of life)
and bios (political or qualified life).9 Agamben notes that Aristotles
opposition between the biological fact of life and qualified life and his
distinction between private and public spheres have had a lasting
impact on the political tradition of the West. Nevertheless, Agamben
argues that these insights concerning the relationship between politics
and life have largely been assumed rather than interrogated within
political thought. For Agamben, however, one important exception is
the work of Michel Foucault.
In The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: The Will to Power [1976]
Foucault refers to the process by which biological life (zoe ) has become
included within the modalities of state power (bios) as the transition
from politics to biopolitics. As we saw in the previous chapter, the
term biopolitics is used to describe the emergence during the
seventeenth century of attempts to govern whole populations through
the institutionalisation of medicine, the use of vaccinations and other
methods of curing and preventing disease. Foucault argues that,
whereas for Aristotle life and politics are treated as separate, biopolitics calls into question the idea of life itself: modern man is an
animal whose politics calls his existence as a living being into
question.10 In other words the entry of zoe into bios constitutes a
fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and life where
the simple fact of life is no longer excluded from political calculations
and mechanisms but resides at the heart of modern politics.
At certain points in Homo Sacer it seems as though Agamben agrees
fully with Foucaults historical schematisation. For example, in the

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BORDER POLITICS

introduction, Agamben writes: the entry of zoe into the sphere of the
polis [] constitutes the decisive event of modernity and signals a radical
transformation of the political-philosophical categories of classical
thought.11 In a crucial sense, however, Agamben makes a different
claim from Foucaults about the historical-philosophical structure of
the West. He argues that the Foucauldian thesis will [] have to be
corrected, or at least completed because a historical shift to biopolitics
has not actually taken place.12 Rather, the production of a biopolitical
body is the original activity of sovereign power.13 In other words,
whereas Foucault reads the movement from politics to biopolitics as a
historical transformation involving the inclusion of zoe in the polis, for
Agamben the political realm is originally biopolitical. On Agambens
view, the Wests conception of politics has always been biopolitical but
this relation between politics and life has become even more visible in
the context of the modern state and its sovereign practices.14
According to Agamben, the originally biopolitical element of politics
can be detected in Aristotles definition of the polis in terms of the
exclusion of zoe from bios. The exclusion of zoe in this context is not
entirely exclusive. This is because zoe remains in a fundamental
relation with bios. Indeed, zoe is included in bios through its very
exclusion from it. As Jenny Edkins puts it, natural life or zoe is there as
that which is excluded, the outlaw that haunts the sovereign order:
it is thus included by the very process of exclusion.15 In other words
we are not dealing with a straightforward exclusion but rather an
inclusive exclusion. To explain what he means by inclusive exclusion,
Agamben introduces the notion of the ban which is borrowed from
Jean-Luc Nancy.16 If someone is banned from a community, he or
she continues to have a relationship with that group of people: it is
precisely because of the ban that there continues to be a connection.
The figure of the banned person complicates the notion of a clear
separation between inclusion and exclusion: he or she who is
excluded is included by virtue of their very exclusion. The idea of an
inclusive exclusion is fundamental to Agambens thought because, as
we shall see, it is central to his account of the Western paradigm of
sovereignty.
Agambens approach to sovereignty is influenced by Schmitts
definition of the sovereign as he who decides on the exception.17
According to Schmitt, as discussed in Chapter 3, such a decision
declares that a state of emergency exists and suspends the rule of

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

99

law to allow for whatever measures are deemed to be necessary.

Agamben, however, also invokes Benjamins critique of Schmitts
theory of sovereignty that: the tradition of the oppressed teaches us
that the state of exception in which we live is the rule.18 Agamben
draws on Benjamins insight, written in a period when emergency
powers were repeatedly invoked during the Weimar Republic era in
Germany, in an attempt to move the notion of the exception away
from the issue of emergency provisions towards a more relational and
original function within the Western political paradigm.19
The diagnosis of the relationship between politics, life and
sovereign power put forward by Agamben brings together Nancys
concept of the ban, Schmitts definition of sovereignty, and Benjamins
notion of the permanence of the state of the exception. For Agamben,
the activity of sovereign power relies on a decision about whether
certain forms of life are worthy of living. Such a decision, which is a
sovereign cut or dividing practice, produces an expendable form of life
that Agamben calls bare life. The sovereign decision bans bare life
from the legal and political institutions to which citizens normally
have access. This ban renders bare life amenable to the sway of
sovereign power and allows for exceptional practices such as torture,
rendition or execution. Bare life is neither of what the Greeks referred
to as zoe nor bios. Rather, it is a form of life that is produced in a zone
of indistinction between the two. On this basis, Agamben argues that
it is necessary to isolate and analyse the way in which the classical
distinction between zoe and bios is blurred in contemporary political
life: Living in the state of exception that has now become the rule has
[] meant this: our private body has now become indistinguishable
from our body politic. 20 Thus, elaborating on his correction of the
Foucauldian thesis, Agamben claims that the key feature of modern
politics is not the simple inclusion of zoe in bios, but rather:
The decisive fact is that, together with the process by which the
exception everywhere becomes the rule, the realm of bare life
which is originally situated at the margins of the political order
gradually begins to coincide with the political realm, and exclusion and
inclusion, outside and inside, bios and zoe, right and fact, enter into a
zone of irreducible indistinction.21
This zone of irreducible indistinction is precisely that which sovereign

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power relies upon producing to sustain its own operation. What

Agamben ultimately seeks to show is that the production of bare life is
the originary (if concealed) activity of sovereign power. Before dealing
with this central claim about the relationship between sovereignty
and subjectivity, however, it is first necessary to unpack and illustrate
aspects of Agambens central thesis. His understanding and usage of
key terms such as zones of indistinction and bare life are not always
clear or even consistent: it must be stressed that there is a need to take
them as areas for debate rather than as simple givens.

The politics of indistinction: towards an alternative

topological register
The recent work of Claudio Minca has pointed to the way in which,
despite Agambens well-known ideas about sovereignty and the
generalised state of exception (to which the analysis will return),
relatively scant attention has been paid to the spatial dimensions
of his thought.22 According to Mincas formulation, there can be no
politics, and thus no political analysis, without a theory of space and
it is precisely the spatial-ontological dimensions of Agambens work
that deserve closer attention when thinking about the possibilities for
developing alternative border imaginaries to the inside/outside model
conditioned by the concept of the border of the state.23
Agamben contends that thinking in terms of borders, separations
and distinctions can be unhelpful when trying to understand the
relationship between politics and life, and this contention is crucial
when considering his overarching perspective. In an interview published in the German Law Review, Agamben argues for an approach to
political analysis that allows for the identification of indistinction:
[W]e need a logic of the field, as in physics, where it is impossible
to draw a line clearly and separate two different substances. The
polarity is present and acts at each point of the field. Then you
may suddenly have zones of indecidability or indifference. The
state of exception is one of those zones.24
Agambens reference to the need for a logic of the field, as in physics,
where it is impossible to draw a line clearly and separate two different
substances, is highly significant. The development of the concept of

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101

the field in physical theory is most commonly associated with the

work of Albert Einstein. In his 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics
of Moving Bodies, Einstein first articulated the Special Theory of
Relativity. Classical approaches to mechanics had formerly relied
upon a conception of space that derived from Euclidean mathematics.
On this view, space was seen as the relationship between points, lines
and planes which were idealisations of solid bodies. The premise of
the Special Theory is that the relationship between space and time is
not absolute but relative and contingent. According to this model,
space-time is mutually interdependent and forms an immanent field
of forces within which substances and events consist of the adventures of electrons and protons.25 On this basis, there are no separate
and autonomous realms of value and meaning outside the field: only
the streams and distributions of energy that comprise it. As Stanford
Kwinter puts it, Einsteins immanent field of forces consists of clusters
of action, affectivity, and matter: it is a regime that organises, allies,
and distributes bodies, materials, movements, and techniques in
space, while simultaneously controlling and developing the temporal
relations between them.26
The key point about the notion of the field is that entities within
it are not mutually exclusive phenomena but physically continuous
within their milieu of interaction.27 Because entities collapse into and
interpenetrate one another the concept of the border or the notion
of separate bordered entities makes little sense according to this
paradigm. Thus, thinking through strict binary oppositions is unhelpful, and an alternative topology is called for: one that reads the terms
of a binary not as dichotomies but as di-polarities.28 Agamben
illustrates the different topological register implied by a logic of the
field with reference to the Mbius strip (see figure 2).29
The Mbius strip is a surface with only one side so that what is
inside and what is outside enters into a zone of irreducible indistinction: what is presupposed as external [] now reappears []
in the inside.30 This zone of indistinction between inside and outside
remains otherwise obscured when relying on a straightforward inside/
outside topology. The alternative topological approach represented by
a logic of the field brings this zone of indistinction into relief, however:
it allows for the identification of fuzziness, ambiguity and lack of
clarity. The importance of this alternative topology in Agambens work
should not be underestimated for it provides a spatial theory that

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Figure 2 Mbius strip

informs his analysis of the exercise and limits of sovereign power,

subjectivity and the political space or nomos of the West: It is precisely
this topological zone of indistinction [] that we must try to fix under
our gaze. 31
As I have already noted, Agamben applies a logic of the field to an
analysis of the relationship between politics and life by focusing on
the classical distinction between zoe and bios:
I find it much less interesting to insist on the distinction [] than
to question the interweaving. I want to understand how the
system operates. And the system is always double, it works by
means of an operation. Not only as private/public, but also the
house and the city, the exception and the rule, to reign and to
govern, etc.32
The problem with continuing to think in terms of borders, separations
and distinctions, in the ways that the modern geopolitical imaginary
and a conventional logic of inside/outside do, is that it is a mode of
thought ignorant of such blurring or fuzziness. Further still, one of the
chilling implications of Agambens argument is that, because most
accounts of global politics fail to recognise the link between sovereign
power and the production of indistinction between zoe and bios, there
is an uncanny affinity between the horrors of the camp and the
political philosophy we may turn to when trying to comprehend if
not resist instances of sovereign practice.33 According to Agamben,
the locus par excellence of the impossibility of upholding the classical

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103

distinction between zoe and bios, and the production of bare life, is the
detention centre at Guantnamo Bay.34 On this basis, a return to the
treatment of detainees held in Guantnamo offers a useful backdrop
against which Agambens notion of bare life can be elucidated further.

Bare life in Guantnamo Bay

Despite the centrality of the concept of bare life in Agambens work, it
nevertheless remains elusive and contentious. The term bare life is
Daniel Heller-Roazens translation of nuda vita, contained in the
subtitle of Agambens original Homo Sacer: Il Potere Sovrano e la Nuda
Vita. Not all scholars agree with this translation, however. For
example, Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino translate nuda vita
as naked life.35 As such, there is sufficient ambiguity for multiple
readings of bare life to emerge.
Many writers who draw on Agamben refer to bare life as if it were
the same as zoe (i.e. the sweet, natural, reproductive life of the private
sphere).36 Yet, contrary to this view, it is possible to read bare life as the
form of life produced immanently by sovereign power in a zone of
indistinction between zoe and bios. Such a reading seems to be more
faithful to Agambens argument:
The foundation (of the modern city from Hobbes to Rousseau) is
not an event achieved once and for all but is continually operative
in the civil state in the form of the sovereign decision. What is
more the latter refers immediately to the life (and not the free will)
of citizens, which thus appears as the originary political element.
[] Yet this life is not simply natural reproductive life, the zoe of the
Greeks, nor bios, a qualified form of life. It is, rather, the bare life of
homo sacer [], a zone of indistinction and continuous transition
between man and beast, nature and culture.37
In other words, bare life does not exist before or outside sovereign
power relations. It is not something we are born with and can be
stripped down to: life conceived as a biological minimum [] to
which we are all reducible.38 Bare life is not zoe: any attempt at
qualifying life as bare or good is a move away from zoe. To suggest
otherwise implies that bare life is something we are all born with
whereas, for Agamben, bare life is something that is actively produced

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by sovereign power for sovereign power: bare life is a product of the

machine and not something that preexists it.39 Once the concept of
bare life is untied from zoe, then, far from a universalistic conception of
subjectivity, it can be interpreted as a form of life whose identity is
always in question.
The United States government classifies detainees held in
Guantnamo as unlawful enemy combatants but this is not a term
recognised by the United Nations or any other international institution.40 Such a classification itself constitutes arbitrary deprivation of
the right to personal liberty since it creates a deliberate legal and
political ambiguity surrounding detainees status.41 In contravention of
Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention, and despite repeated calls
from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), none of
the detainees has been declared a prisoner of war nor presented
before a competent tribunal to establish who or what they are.42 It is
precisely this production of a deliberate uncertainty surrounding the
status of detainees that allows for the indefinite use of exceptional
measures against them. By referring to detainees as unlawful enemy
combatants they are taken outside of international legal and political
frameworks: citizens who commit crimes are treated as lawful
criminals; non-citizens scramble this conventional logic.43
These conventional logics and frameworks, reflecting dominant
notions about what form of life is eligible for protection, constitute a
juridicalpolitical culture in which it is possible for some humans not
to be treated as such. As pure killing machines, the detainees in
Guantnamo are not deemed to be humans with cognitive function
that are entitled to trials, to due process, to knowing and understanding a charge against them.44 Rather, as Butler argues, they are
something less than human, and yet somehow they assume a
human form.45 Indeed, the subject of sovereign power in Guantnamo
is precisely the subject who is no subject, neither alive nor dead,
neither fully constituted as a subject nor fully deconstituted in
death.46
As such, guards who stand watch over the detainees in
Guantnamo confront a peculiar form of human life. Stripped of
political and legal status, it bears no resemblance to Aristotles
conception of man as politikon zoon in the public sphere or bios. Yet,
importantly as far as the interpretation of Agamben advanced here is
concerned, neither does this life in any simple way conform to what

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105

the Greeks would have called zoe, understood as natural reproductive

life confined to the private sphere. Rather, the life confronted by the
guards is a life that scrambles these Aristotelian co-ordinates: we no
longer have any idea of the classical separation between zoe and bios in
this context.47 It is a bare life produced by the sovereign practices of
the camp that is caught in a zone of indistinction between zoe and
bios: a life that is mute and undifferentiated. For Agamben, such a life
belongs to homo sacer or sacred man: a figure in Roman law whose
very existence is in a state of exception defined by the sovereign. The
figure of homo sacer is sacred in the sense that it can be killed but not
sacrificed and is both constituted by and constitutive of sovereign
power. Moreover, as the state of exception is less anomalous and more
a permanent characteristic, according to Agamben we all potentially
run the risk of becoming bare life: we are all (virtually) homines sacri.48

Assessing Agamben
Agambens claim that we are all (virtually) homines sacri raises some
interesting and important questions that are not dealt with explicitly
in his oeuvre: What is meant by the idea that we are all virtually bare
life? Does the concept of bare life allow for any form of differentiation? What are the limitations of adopting Agambens logic? How
might it be elaborated and/or improved upon?
The word virtually though in brackets seems to do a lot of
work in Agambens claim that we are all (virtually) homines sacri.49
According to Deleuze, the virtual is not something that is somehow
lacking in reality but rather something that is engaged in a process of
actualisation.50 This is useful when considering Agambens claim in
greater depth. It points to the way in which the production of bare life
is very much a dynamic process: a process of becoming in Deleuzian
terms.51 While political structures certainly condition the virtuality of
bare life, this production happens immanently. In other words, like all
forms of subjectivity, it is never fixed or static but ephemeral. Under
biopolitical conditions we are not born as bare life but born with a
capacity to be produced as bare life owing to the relationship between
our lives and law.
Although Butler is highly indebted to Agamben, she argues that this
universality exposes an area of weakness in his understanding of
subjectivity. Butlers chief criticism of Agamben is that the claim we

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are all (virtually) homines sacri does not tell us how power functions
differentially among populations.52 Focusing on issues of race and
ethnicity, Butler argues that the generality of Agambens claim fails to
appreciate the ways in which the systematic management and
derealization of populations function to support and extend the claims
of a sovereignty accountable to no law.53 For Butler, certain populations are more likely to be produced as bare life than others.
Although security warnings issued to citizens do not involve racial
profiling, Butler suggests that the creation of an objectless panic all
too often translates [] into suspicion of all dark-skinned peoples,
especially those who are Arab, or appear to look so to a population
not always versed in making visual distinctions.54 As such, Butlers
criticism presses Agambens Homo Sacer on its tendency to generalise
and oversimplify the relationship between sovereignty and subjectivity: a charge that other critics have also recently made.
William Connolly advances similar critiques of Agambens account
of the logic of sovereignty.55 Connollys main objections are twofold.
Firstly, according to Connolly, Agamben assumes that there was once
a separation between zoe and bios: what a joke [] [e]very way of life
involves the infusion of norms, judgements, and standards into the
affective life of participants at both private and public levels.56 Hence,
while Connolly accepts the way in which new technologies of
infusion have intensified biopolitical life, he maintains that the
shift is not as radical as Agamben makes it out to be.57 Secondly,
Agambens answer to the problem of sovereignty is to transcend it
altogether. For Connolly, Agambens approach to the problem of
sovereignty is incommensurable with that problem: biocultural life
exceeds any textbook logic because of the non-logical character of its
materiality [] [it] is more messy, layered, and complex than any
logical analysis can capture.58 On this basis, Connolly arrives at the
damning conclusion that Agamben displays the hubris of academic
intellectualism when he encloses political culture within a tightly
defined logic.59
The joint concern of Butler and Connolly is that Agambens analysis
of the concept of sovereignty does not take into account the complexity of the issues at stake. Such a concern might also arise in the
light of Jacques Derridas multifarious warnings about the nature of
the sovereign operation. For Derrida sovereignty is both silent and
unavowable.60 Any attempt at defining sovereignty invokes as part of

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107

the definition the very concept we are attempting to define. To confer

sense on sovereignty is to universalise it within language, subject it to
rules, and bring it within a code of law which, according to Derrida,
compromises the exceptionality that characterises it.61 On this basis,
Derrida argues that the identity of sovereignty is always in question
because sovereignty has no identity, is not self, for itself, toward itself,
near itself.62 In this way, sovereignty keeps itself in the night of the
secret.63 A Derridean perspective highlights the frailty of any attempt
to diagnose the actuality of sovereignty. After all this actuality is not
somehow given but actively produced: sorted, invested, and performatively interpreted by a range of hierarchising and selective
procedures.64 From this perspective, the concern would also be that
Agamben treats the problematic of sovereignty as if it were something
that could be tamed or even identified clearly in the first instance.
Running throughout these criticisms of Agamben is a worry that
his perspective ultimately closes off questions about subjectivity,
sovereignty and politics more generally. At the heart of this critique is
the complaint that the notion of bare life is too homogenising and
thus too simple to appreciate the detail and complexity of the
production of differentiated subjectivities. On the one hand, with its
seemingly universalistic pretensions, the notion of bare life might
appear too sweeping to allow for nuanced analyses of subjectivity. On
the other hand, I want to suggest, the sting of this criticism is largely
neutralised once the notion of bare life is untied from the concept of
zoe. If bare life is treated as precisely an indistinct form of subjectivity
that is produced immanently by sovereign power for sovereign power
then the undecidability of the figure of homo sacer is brought into
relief. This move allows for a differentiated approach to the production
of subjectivities under biopolitical conditions because it does not fix
bare life as some sort of given that pre-exists sovereign power. On this
basis, bare life is a form of subjectivity whose borders are always
rendered undecidable by sovereign power; it is a form of subjectivity
whose identity is always in question; and, therefore, it is a form of
subjectivity whose inhabitation of a zone of indistinction requires
different modes of political analysis summed up by Agamben in his
reference to a logic of the field. Such a logic, which privileges analysis
of the production of zones of indistinction, not only has implications
for the way we consider the production of subjectivities in world
politics. It also has significant ramifications for the way we might

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reconceptualise the limits of sovereign power and develop alternative

border imaginaries.

RECONCEPTUALISING THE LIMITS OF

SOVEREIGN POWER
Homo Sacer ends with the provocative conclusion that:
Every attempt to rethink the political space of the West must
begin with the clear awareness that we no longer know anything
of the classical distinction between zoe and bios, between private
life and political existence, between man as a simple living being
at home in the house and mans political existence in the city.65
This section explores Agambens conclusion further before moving
towards an outline of its implications for the way we might reconceptualise the limits of sovereign power. First, it is necessary to
return to Agambens treatment of the concept of sovereignty in greater
depth, especially in terms of his move to generalise the state of
exception as a permanent feature of the Western paradigm of government. Second, from here I will argue that it is possible to analyse what
might be called the space of the exception, not as something localised
but as rather more generalised and diffused. Third, such a space can
be characterised as something resembling a generalised border where
exceptional measures, practices and characteristics formerly associated
with borders between states in the conventional sense become
routinised and dispersed throughout global juridicalpolitical space.

The generalised exception

As we have already seen, Agambens approach to sovereignty is
indebted to Schmitts theory of the decision on the exception.
Embellishing this theory, however, Agamben invokes Benjamins
critique of Schmitt in an attempt to move the notion of the exception
away from the issue of emergency provisions towards a more
relational and originary function within the Western political
paradigm. In this way, for Agamben, Benjamins engagement with
Schmitt proves the necessary and, even today, indispensable premise
of every inquiry into sovereignty.66 It is instructive to recall that
Schmitts theory of exception was in part attempting to neutralise

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109

Benjamins concept of divine violence outside the law outlined in

his 1921 essay Critique of Violence.67 Through the concept of the
exception, Schmitt was able to show how there is no pure violence
outside the law: the exception is a mechanism by which operations
outside the law can nevertheless remain part of the law. Yet, in his
Eighth Book on the Concept of History, Benjamin responded to
Schmitts theory of exception by arguing that:
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of
exception in which we live is the rule. We must attain to a
concept of history that accords with this fact. Then we will clearly
see that it is our task to bring about the real [] state of
exception, and this will improve our position in the struggle
against fascism.68
According to Agamben, the Eighth Book is the decisive document in
the BenjaminSchmitt dossier because it effectively [puts] Schmitts
book in check.69 Benjamins counter-argument, while not dismissing
Schmitts book entirely, points to the way in which the Third Reich
thrived on confusing the difference between norm and exception, law
and fact, and order and anomie.70 It is precisely Benjamins identification of the role of this confusion in the Nazi state that inspires
Agamben to attempt then to reconfigure the activity of sovereign
power in terms of the creation of zones of indistinction: the essential
point [] is that a threshold of undecidability is produced at which
factum and ius fade into each other.71
In his brief history of the state of exception, Agamben emplaces
Benjamins Eighth Book within a broader tradition of early twentiethcentury thought dealing with the transformation of democratic
regimes during the two world wars: H. Tingstens Les Pleins Pouvoirs
[1934], F. Watkins The Problem of Constitutional Dictatorship [1940],
C. Friedrichs Constitutional Government and Democracy [1941], and
C. Rossiters Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the
Modern Democracies [1948] all trace the expansion of the powers of
the executives of warring states throughout this period. One of the
cases Agamben draws upon is the post-1914 British legal system
which witnessed the generalising of formerly exceptional measures
within the state apparatus. After Britain declared war on Germany, the
government asked Parliament to approve laws without debate. On

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4 August 1914 the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) was passed
giving the government powers to regulate the economy and limit
citizens rights. Later, parliamentary activity virtually ceased altogether
and on 29 October 1920 the Emergency Powers Act was introduced in
which Article One stated:
If at any time it appears to His Majesty that any action has been
taken or is immediately threatened by any persons or body of
such persons of such a nature and on so extensive a scale as to be
calculated, by interfering with the supply and distribution of food,
water, fuel, or light, or with the means of locomotion, to deprive
the community, or any substantial portion of the community, of
the essentials of life, His Majesty may, by proclamation (hereinafter referred to as a proclamation of emergency), declare that a
state of emergency exists.72
For Agamben, Article One of the Emergency Powers Act constitutes
a decisive event in British legal history because it established the
principle of the state of exception within the juridicalpolitical order.
Since then, Agamben claims, the voluntary creation of a permanent
state of emergency (though perhaps not declared in the technical
sense) has become one of the essential practices of contemporary
states, including so-called democratic ones like Britain.73 In other
words, the state of exception has increasingly appeared as what might
be referred to as the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics.74 In support of this view, which resembles something
like an unstoppable global civil war, Agamben refers to contemporary
sovereign practices that blur the otherwise taken-for-granted threshold between democracy and absolutism.75 One example is President
George W. Bushs Military Order authorising the indefinite detention
and trial by military commissions of non-citizens suspected of
terrorist activities. This Order, as we have already seen, works to
secure sovereign power by blurring the legal and political status of
a suspected individual thereby producing a legally unnameable and
unclassifiable being.76
It is possible to identify something of a tension in Agambens
account of the history of the state of exception, which can be
summarised as a question of intensity or structure. On the one hand,
Agamben sometimes talks about the becoming-general of the state of

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exception in the West as if it were a gradual turning of the screw since

World War I, through fascism, to our contemporary conjecture.77 If this
reading is adopted, then there are grounds for drawing parallels
between Agambens reading of modernity and the reading offered by
Hardt and Negri in the previous chapter. In turn, this would open up
Agambens perspective to the critique Walker makes of the troublesome privileging of immanentism that sees history as a long march
to borderlessness. On the other hand, however, Agamben also
emphasises on many more occasions that the transformation of the
state of exception into a paradigm of government is not a modern
innovation but a feature of Western politics: it is the constitutive
paradigm of the juridicalpolitical order.78 Agamben argues that the
years since World War I have seen the testing and honing of this
paradigm of government that is in a fundamental sense an originary
aspect of the juridicalpolitical life of Western societies:
What the ark of power contains at its centre is the state of
exception but this is essentially an empty space, in which
human action with no relation to law stands before a norm with
no relation to life.79
In other words, as Didier Bigo usefully puts it:
The state of emergency in which we live is not an exceptional
moment, limited in object, space and time, but the norm, or more
exactly it is the perpetuation of the emergency as a rule, as a form
of prolonged state of exception.80
Some readers will no doubt be displeased with the apparent tension
above, although the extent to which one must choose between
intensity or structure as if they were mutually exclusive is debatable.
If the production of bare life is not a new or particularly recent
phenomenon, as Agamben maintains and illustrates with reference to
the figure of homo sacer in Roman law, then the exception must be
seen as a fundamental feature of Western politics. As I will go on to
argue, however, what has changed within this overarching framework
is the historically contingent character of both the method and the
location of the production of bare life. In this way, reflecting Agambens
commitment to a logic of the field, it is also possible to read intensity
and structure not as dichotomous but as fundamentally interrelated.

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The generalised space of the exception

Agamben argues that what is at stake in the sovereign exception is the
creation and definition of the very space in which the juridical
political order can have validity.81 He also claims, however, that such
activity, which constitutes the sovereign nomos according to Schmitt, is
not simply the taking of land but the taking of an outside or exception. As
discussed in Chapter 3, interstate borders, typically understood in
terms of the delimitation of sovereignty at the outer edge of sovereign
territory according to the modern geopolitical imaginary, might be
seen as exceptional spaces: an undecidable zone of anomie excluded
from the normal juridicalpolitical space of the state but nevertheless
an integral part of that space (in fact, the very condition of its
possibility). Yet, for Agamben, the constitutive outside of sovereign
territory is not a space that is to be found fixed at the edge in a
geographical sense. Rather, Agamben sees the constitutive outside as
something interior to the juridicalpolitical order itself.
According to Agamben, the constitutive outside of sovereign
territory is the generalised state of exception that brings together law
and life since there is no fundamental relationship between the two.
In other words, the constitutive outside refers to the decision on life
itself. As such, if we are to consider the spatiality of the constitutive
outside, it makes more sense to think of this as occupying a far less
localised terrain than that associated with traditional state borders.
Instead, Agambens work challenges us to resituate the constitutive
outside of sovereign territory in a far more generalised way. To
reiterate Agambens central thesis, the sovereign move is not a simple
exclusion. Rather, it consists of an inclusive exclusion through the
decision on the status of different forms of life: one that blurs the
categories of zoe and bios thereby creating a zone of indistinction
between the two. On this view, sovereignty is presented as an activity
that perpetually distinguishes between politically qualified life on the
one hand (that is, life with juridicalpolitical status that deserves to be
lived), and life that is a mere biological fact on the other hand (that is,
life without juridicalpolitical status). Bare life, which is neither zoe
nor bios, inhabits this zone of indistinction. Sovereign power relies
upon the production and inclusive exclusion of bare life against which
the human as the politically qualified life of the polis is made possible.
Through the inclusive exclusion of bare life, sovereign power thus

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establishes the constitutive outside of territory in which the juridical

political order can be said to have validity.
Agamben seizes on the emergence of concentration camps in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historically associated
with the state of exception and martial law, to illustrate how the
simple dichotomies between inclusion and exclusion, inside and
outside, bios and zoe fail to hold in the final analysis. For Agamben, the
space of the camp is fundamentally paradoxical: the camp is a piece of
territory that is placed outside the normal juridical order and yet it is
not simply an external space.82 The camp excludes what is captured
inside which, as an inclusive exclusion, blurs conventional spatial
distinctions between internal and external, inside and outside and so
on. Because law is suspended in the camp and arbitrary or exceptional
decisions on the status of life become the rule, Agamben argues that
the camp represents: the most absolute biopolitical space that has
ever been realised a space in which power confronts nothing other
than pure biological life without any mediation.83 As such, people in
camps, as we have seen in the context of Guantnamo, move about
in a zone of indistinction between the outside and the inside, the
exception and the rule, the licit and the illicit.84
To some extent, the camp is another figure that is characterised
somewhat ambiguously in Agambens work. The camp can be read as
a historically contingent manifestation of the operations of sovereign
power: the space that opens up when the state of exception starts to
become the rule.85 For Agamben, however, the camp is not understood as an anomaly or a merely historical fact.86 Rather, he argues
that the camp is in some sense [] the hidden matrix and nomos of
the political space in which we live.87 In other words, as a spatial
arrangement of the state of exception in which bare life is produced
in a zone of indistinction between zoe and bios, the camp is itself a
structure: if sovereign power is founded in the ability to decide on
the state of exception, the camp is the structure in which the state of
exception is permanently realised.88 On this basis, Agamben claims
that the camp is symptomatic of the workings of the juridicalpolitical
system of Western sovereign biopolitics. The camp reveals something
fundamental to the Western paradigm born of the exception: the
attempt to materialise the state of exception and create a space in
which bare life and juridical rule enter into a threshold of indistinction.89 Hence, while there may be few camps such as Guantnamo,

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the logic upon which these places rest can be observed in territory or
space conventionally defined as the normal interior of the state.
Elaborating upon Agambens work, the next section advances the
concept of the generalised biopolitical border to try to capture the
production and existence of these zones of indistinction: a concept
that offers promise for an alternative conceptualisation of the limits
of sovereign power to that assumed by the modern geopolitical
imaginary.

The concept of the generalised biopolitical border

On the one hand, the production of bare life in zones of indistinction
is most visible in contemporary camps specifically designated for
that purpose (not only Guantnamo, but, for example: Bagram and
Kandahar air bases in Afghanistan; Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca in
Iraq; the Baxter immigration facility in southern Australia; the new
Sodhexo-run detention centre near Heathrow; and various so-called
CIA black sites in Eastern Europe). At these sites, as I have shown
against the backdrop of Guantnamo, exceptional practices have
become routinised and bare life is produced through the blurring of
zoe and bios.
On the other hand, Agamben points to the way in which the production of zones of indistinction, where exceptional activities become
the rule, is more and more widespread in global politics. Indeed, the
notion of the generalised space of exception points to the way in
which characteristics usually associated with the edges, margins, or
outer-lying areas of sovereign space gradually blur with what is
conventionally taken to be the normality of that space. Whereas the
space of the exception was once localised in spaces such as the camps,
Agamben implies that in more recent times it has become increasingly
generalised in contemporary political life: the camp, which is now
firmly settled inside [the nation-state], is the new biopolitical nomos
of the planet.90 In Homo Sacer Agamben refers to zones dattentes in
French airports (where foreigners seeking refugee status are detained)
as an example of the way in which the structure of the camp permeates everyday life:
In [] these cases, an apparently innocuous space in which the
normal order is de facto suspended and in which whether or not

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115

the atrocities are committed depends not on law but the civility
and ethical sense of the police who temporarily act as sovereign.91
Under biopolitical conditions in which the paradigm of security has
become the normal technique of government, Agamben argues
that the blurring of the citizen and the bare life of homo sacer is not
encumbered by traditional limits: Living in the state of exception that
has now become the rule has [] meant this: our private body
has now become indistinguishable from our body politic.92 On the
contrary, as Claudio Minca has put it, there has been a normalisation
of a series of geographies of exceptionalism in Western societies
throughout everyday life.93
By now there is a growing literature that illustrates the generalised
state of exception to which Agamben refers. Sociologists Carsten
Laustsen and Blent Dikken, for example, have attempted to show
that the camp is the prototypical social unit by looking at, inter alia,
rape camps, gated communities, sex tourism and theme parks.94
Laustsen and Dikken largely reiterate Agambens argument, but draw
novel, if controversial, parallels between concentration camps and
what they call liberatory spaces such as Ibiza.95 A more substantive
application and embellishment of Agamben, demonstrative of the
scope of his work beyond the political structures of the West, is offered
by Achille Mbembe. In Necropolitics, Mbembe reads colonial occupation as a matter of seizing and asserting control over a geographical
area through the production of bare life in zones of indistinction.96 His
core argument is that colonisation not only relies upon disciplinary
and biopolitical modalities of power but also on a third dimension:
the necropolitical. Under conditions of necropower the status of
the living dead is attributed to swathes of populations occupying/
constituting death worlds. Examples of such death worlds include
colonies in Africa and the Middle East where the sovereign might kill
at any time or in any manner.97 According to Mbembe: colonies are
zones in which war and disorder, internal and external figures of the
political stand side by side or alternate with each other. On this basis,
he continues: the colonies are the location par excellence where the
controls and guarantees of juridical order can be suspended the zone
where the violence of the state of exception is deemed to operate in
the service of civilisation.98 Mbembes reading of colonial occupation
as the production of bare life in zones of indistinction or death worlds

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BORDER POLITICS

points to the inadequacy of the inside/outside model conditioned by

the concept of the border of the state. His account of the necropolitical
in Africa emphasises how the establishment of death worlds, rather
than borders between states, delimits sovereign power. Many African
states cannot claim the monopoly of the legitimate use of force; there
is little or no monopoly on territorial borders; and conflict entails
urban militias and/or private armies more so than the mobilisation of
sovereign subjects as citizens who respect each other as enemies.
Consequently, Mbembe argues that it makes little sense to insist on
distinctions between internal and external political realms.99
While Mbembe draws attention, however, to the way in which
Agambens line of argument (or one that is indebted to it) challenges
conventional thinking in terms of the inside/outside model conditioned by the concept of the border of the state, he does not take
this point any further. By contrast, I want to focus on the implications
of Agambens central thesis, that the structure of the camp is the
hidden matrix and nomos of the political space in which we live, for
the way we might think about that political space. Instead of viewing
the limits of sovereign power as somehow spatially fixed at the outer
edge of the state, Agamben reconceptualises these limits in terms of a
decision or speech act about whether certain life is life worth living or
life that is expendable. Such a decision performatively produces and
secures the borders of political community as the politically qualified
life of the citizen is defined against the bare life of homo sacer. On this
view, the concept of the border of the state is substituted by the
sovereign decision to produce some life as bare life: it is precisely this
sovereign cut or dividing practice, one that can effectively happen
anywhere, that constitutes the original spatialisation of sovereign
power.100 Moreover, such a decision can be read as a security practice
because the production of bare life works to shore up notions of who
and what we are: notions, for example, that are commonly mobilised
as part of an array of responses to perceived threats of terrorism.101
Although Agamben does not refer to it in his work, one way of
capturing this alternative border imaginary is what I call the concept
of the generalised biopolitical border. The concept of the generalised
biopolitical border refers to the global archipelago of zones of indistinction in which sovereign power produces the bare life it needs to
sustain itself and notions of sovereign community. Here, following
Eyal Weizman, the concept of the archipelago is used to describe

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

117

a multiplicity of discrete extraterritorial zones, the spatial

expression of a series of states of emergency, or states of
exception that are either created through the process of law
[through which law is in fact severely undermined or annulled]
or that appear de facto within them.102
Thinking in terms of the generalised biopolitical border unties an
analysis of the operation of sovereign power from the territorial
confines of the state and relocates such an analysis in the context of a
global terrain that spans domestic and international space. With its
focus on the production of zones of indistinction the concept of the
generalised biopolitical border can therefore be read as a response to
those who call for alternative border imaginaries to the conventional
inside/outside model underpinned by the concept of the border of the
state. The concept of the generalised biopolitical border points to the
way in which bordering practices are rather more diffused throughout
society than the modern geopolitical imaginary implies. In this sense,
it reflects Balibars observation that borders are being multiplied and
reduced in their localization, [] thinned out and doubled, [] no
longer the shores of politics but [] the space of the political itself .103
The case of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes illustrates the
dynamics captured by the concept of the generalised biopolitical
border and the changing method and location of the production of
bare life.
GENERALISED BORDER POLITICS: THE CASE OF THE
SHOOTING OF JEAN CHARLES DE MENEZES
At 10.05 on 22 July 2005 UK anti-terrorist officers killed Jean
Charles de Menezes on board a stationary underground train at
Stockwell Station in South London by firing eleven rounds at close
range (seven bullets entered his head, one bullet entered his shoulder
and three bullets missed).104 Five-and-a-half hours after the shooting
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair issued a statement
in which he claimed that the operation had been directly linked
to ongoing investigations into the attempted bombings in Central
London the previous day.105 At that time, Ian Blair announced that the
person shot dead at Stockwell had been acting suspiciously and was
challenged by police but refused to obey instructions.106 In a statement
the following day, however, the Commissioner announced that a

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BORDER POLITICS

mistake had been made and that there was no evidence to connect
Menezes with the attempted bombings or any other terrorist
activity.107 Six months later, following the completion of the first part
of the inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission
(IPCC) into the shooting, Ian Blair commented:
In a terrible way, the Met was transfixed on other things. It was
transfixed on: where are these bombers? And therefore, in a
dreadful way, we didnt see the significance of that. That was our
mistake. It was. It was a bad mistake.108
Discussion in the mainstream UK media of the killing has been
typically framed by Sir Ian Blairs explanation that it was simply a
mistake: an error, an aberration or a lamentable one-off tragedy.109
According to one commentator this framing is entirely appropriate:
by recognising that de Menezes death was a freak mistake, we can
deal with the reality of politics today rather than worrying about
whether we could be next, or wondering what the Met is hiding from
us.110 On the other hand, an uncritical acceptance of the discourse of
the mistake reifies rather than questions the very framework within
which the killing of Menezes has been valorised. In other words, by
merely accepting the discourse of the mistake as a starting point in
reflecting on Menezess death, we run the risk of colluding with rather
than offering a critique of the activities of sovereign power.
Despite the emergence and subsequent entrenchment of a particular narrative about what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes on
22 July 2005 (22/7), there are many ambiguities and unanswered
questions about the circumstances leading to and surrounding his
death. One blind spot relates to the elementary issue of precisely who
was involved in the planning, management and carrying out of the
killing. According to Nafeez Ahmed, the initial report given by the
police had not mentioned anything about the surveillance operation
mounted outside a block of flats located on Scotia Road in the Tulse
Hill area of London on the morning of 22 July.111 We now know that
the aim of that stake-out was to find suspects linked to the attempted
bombings on the London transport network the day before in
particular, Hussein Osman whose details, including a gym membership card leading to the Tulse Hill address, had been found at the site
of the attempted blast in the Shepherds Bush area.112

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

119

Information about the surveillance team remains sketchy, however,

and there have been unconfirmed suggestions about the involvement
of military personnel and/or members of the Special Forces.113 Nevertheless, many reports obscure questions surrounding this involvement
by focusing on the anti-terrorist officer who was distracted from
Menezess emergence from the flats at 09.33 because he was relieving
himself in nearby bushes.114 Even though Menezess racial profile did
not match that of Hussein Osman or any of the other suspected
bombers, anti-terrorist officers followed him on his thirty-threeminute bus journey from Tulse Hill to Stockwell Station. At no point
was he stopped or challenged.115
A positive identification had been made before the bus arrived in
Stockwell and it is thought that Cressida Dick, the police officer in
charge of the Gold Command centre at Scotland Yard, authorised the
use of lethal force if necessary to stop Menezes boarding an underground train.116 Yet, the reasons why Menezes was simultaneously
mistaken as an IC1 male and Hussein Osman and not in any way
challenged by surveillance team members seeking confirmation of his
identity remain unclear. After alighting from the bus, Menezes crossed
Clapham Road and walked 1,000 metres into Stockwell station where,
contrary to initial reports about his suspicious behaviour, he picked up
a free copy of The Metro newspaper, walked through the ticket barriers
using his Oyster Card as payment and then took the escalator to the
northbound Northern Line platform.117 He began to run towards the
platform only once he had noticed that a train was arriving in the
station.118
Having boarded the stationary underground train, Menezes sat in a
carriage facing the platform.119 Undercover surveillance team members
flanked him and held the carriage doors open for armed anti-terrorist
officers as they ran down the escalator and into the carriage in which
Menezes sat.120 According to one eyewitness Menezes looked like
a cornered fox as the officers approached him.121 An officer, known
as Hotel 3, grabbed Menezes, wrapped his arms around him and
pinned his arms to his side while he was shot seven times in the head
and once in the shoulder.122 Despite being fired at point-blank range,
three bullets missed his body.123
One eyewitness account had suggested that Menezes was wearing
a heavy winter coat with wires protruding from it.124 Images of
Menezess body lying dead on the floor of the carriage clearly show,

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BORDER POLITICS

however, that he wore a lightweight denim jacket in keeping with the

mid-morning temperature (18C/64 F).125 No explosives were found
attached to his body and he was not carrying a rucksack or bag.
Despite these infamous images, there is scant footage recording
Menezess movements from Scotia Road to the carriage on the train
at Stockwell. According to police sources, there had been technical
difficulties with CCTV equipment on the platform, and no cameras
were operating in the carriage where the shooting took place because
the hard drive had been taken away for examination following the
failed attacks of the previous day.126 Yet, unofficial reports from the
Tube Line Consortium, which is in charge of running the Northern
Line service, maintain that at least 75 per cent of cameras at Stockwell
station and all on the train should have been working.127
Against the reading of 22/7 as a mistake, the shooting of Menezes
can be viewed as a reflection of innovative ways in which, temporally
and spatially, attempts are made by sovereign power to reproduce and
secure the politically qualified-life of the polis.

22/7 as a form of temporal bordering

Reflecting on the killing of her son, Maria Otone de Menezes
commented:
An honest policeman who was doing his job properly would have
spoken to my son first, stopped him and asked him where he was
going, and not just have shot and killed him without knowing
who he was.128
Similarly, Alex Pereira, his cousin, remarked:
Jean had lived in So Paulo. It is a dangerous city and he knew
the rules there: if you run away when the police tell you to stop,
then you are dead. He knows you dont run away and his English
was perfect. There is no explanation for him ignoring a warning
because there was no warning.129
Patricia de Menezes said: They judged my cousin, and sentenced him,
all in the space of a moment. 130 What is striking and interesting about
these reactions is that the family members complain in a very basic

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

121

sense about the lack of time given to Menezes: he was denied the time
to explain or defend himself as would be expected in the normal
juridical process; time was quite literally taken away from him.
Indeed, all in the space of a moment, temporary sovereigns
decided that Menezess life was not life worth living but a life that
could (and should) be dispensed with. Borrowing from Agamben, it
can be argued that Menezes was produced as bare life: a form of life
whose status is indistinct; banned from conventional law and politics
and subject to exceptional practices. The decision that Menezess life
was not life worth living can be directly linked to the Metropolitan
Polices shoot-to-kill policy, also known as Kratos referring to: the
power to decide, to be decisive, to prevail.131 On this understanding,
Kratos is associated with notions of clear, confident and forceful
decisioning. Paradoxically, however, for this very reason the Kratos
policy does not actually allow for decision-making or at least forms of
decision-making that take time to deal with the dilemmas provoking
the need for a decision in the first place.
Brian Massumi likens this form of decisioning to a lightning strike
or flash of sovereign power.132 Moreover, he argues that this approach
is the temporal equivalent of a tautology : the time form of the
decision that strikes like lightning is the foregone conclusion. When it
arrives, it always seems to have preceded itself. Where there is a sign
of it, it has always already hit. 133 The lightning-strike decision is a
foregone conclusion because it sidesteps or effaces the blurriness of
the present in favour of a perceived need to act on the future without
delay.134 Illustrating his argument Massumi suggests that this approach
characterises the Presidency of George W. Bush for whom there is no
time for uncertainty: I have made judgements in the past. I have made
judgements in the future. 135 Citing Bushs admission that it took just
twelve minutes for him to discuss the invasion of Iraq with cabinet
colleagues, Massumi points to the way the United States administration tends to skip decision-making that takes time because:
Deliberation [] in the current lexicon [] is perceived as a sign
less of wisdom than of weakness. [] To admit to discussing,
studying, consulting, analysing is to admit to having been in a
state of indecision preceding the making of the decision. It is to
admit to passages of doubt and unclarity in a blurry present.136

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For Massumi, the lightning strike approach in general is one that

seeks to act on the future or, in other words, one that responds to
the threat of an indefinite future: what may yet come.137 Whereas
traditionally, however, threats were responded to through prevention,
Massumi argues that we are witnessing the birth of a new form of
response in the context of the global war on terror: the politics of
pre-emption.138 This change is marked by a shift in temporal registers
from the indefinite future tense to the future perfect tense: the
always-will-have-been-already.139 In other words, the politics of preemption does not respond to events by simply trying to prevent them
but actually effects or induces the event:
Rather than acting in the present to avoid an occurrence in the
future, pre-emption brings the future into the present. It makes
present the future consequences of an eventuality that may or
may not occur, indifferent to its actual occurrence. The events
consequences precede it, as if it had already occurred.140
Massumi illustrates his point using the analogy of a fire. A politics of
pre-emption does not simply predict but actually causes fires: it is like
watching footage of a fire in reverse: there will have been fire, in effect,
because there is now smoke.141
The discourse of the foregone conclusion is one that is identifiable
with the killing of Menezes. On the one hand, as we have already
seen, Sir Ian Blair has referred to the killing as a mistake. But, on the
other hand, he has also warned that we should be prepared for more
killings like it: These are fantastically difficult times [] Its still
happening out there, there are still officers having to make those calls
as we speak [] Somebody else could be shot. 142 What seems to be at
stake here is precisely an attempt to securitise the future by bringing it
into the present: its still happening out there. Ian Blair is effectively
dealing with the consequences of future killings under the Kratos
banner before they actually happen irrespective of whether they
actually do. In this way the Kratos policy acts as a temporal bordering
process: it pre-empts threats to sovereign political community that
come from the future thereby securing time as something that belongs
to the state and not to terrorists. Hence, in the United Kingdom, there
are now distinct echoes of Pentagon policies post-9/11 which, as
Didier Bigo has illustrated with reference to the film Minority Report

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

123

(2002), place emphasis on the capacity to pre-empt anywhere and at

anytime.143

22/7 as a form of spatial bordering

In the context of the War on Terror, the securitisation of time and
space are mutually implicated as Joseph Pugliese suggests: the civic
spaces of the city become spaces of uncivil danger, fraught with
racialised taunts, repeated security checks and harassment, and the
possibility of both symbolic and physical violence.144 Attempts at
firming up the temporal borders of sovereign political community
have been played out spatially through changes to the built environment in London, which are often designed to manage rather than
prevent flows among the population of the city. Sometimes these
changes are visible, such as the installation of CCTV cameras across
the city in tube stations, walkways, office blocks and so on. In other
ways these changes can be subtler and integrated into patterns of
daily life, such as the use of Oyster Cards on the transport network.
Yet, perhaps more subtly still, the introduction of new GPS satellite
technology has also allowed for the development and emergence of
new forms of electronic bordering. For example, from 12 noon to 16.45
on 7 July 2005 the mobile phone operator O2 was ordered by the City
of London Police to close their network to the public for an area
totalling 1 kilometre square around Aldgate.145 This emergency zoning,
as discussed in the London Assembly Report, was designed to assist
the service needs of the City of London police, but it also prevented
other emergency services still reliant upon the O2 network from doing
their job properly.146 As such, this form of electronic bordering is
intimately connected to questions about sovereignty, territory and
power which are all raised as problems for future discussion in the
Assembly Report.147 William Walters has coined the term firewalling
for this type of electronic bordering process which reflects the need
for new metaphors and figures to capture the character of borders
today.148
Applying Agambens argument, the killing of Menezes can be read
as symptomatic of innovations in forms of bordering that rely upon
the blurring of public and private spaces. On the one hand, the
production of bare life is not a new means of securing forms of
sovereign political community, as Agamben shows in relation to the

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BORDER POLITICS

figure of homo sacer in Roman law. On the other hand, what arguably
is new about current bordering practices, of which the shooting of
Menezes is symptomatic, are the location and method of the
production of bare life. Menezess death, and its valorisation by the
authorities in their subsequent investigations, point to a new
preparedness to make lightning decisions about life worth living (the
politically qualified life of the polis) and life not worth living (bare
life) potentially anywhere. With the advent of Kratos, such decisions
are no longer localised or fixed at particular border sites in the
margins of sovereign territory but increasingly more widespread or
diffused throughout society: a phenomenon that is captured by the
concept of the generalised biopolitical border. After all, Menezes
was not killed in a camp or space especially designated for such
exceptional practices but in a tube station in Central London. In this
way Agambens chilling conclusion that we are all (virtually) bare life
is perhaps regrettably less sensationalist than it might at first seem,
and calls for alternative ways of identifying and interrogating the types
of bordering processes upon which sovereign power relies: these are
fantastically difficult times [] Its still happening out there []
Somebody else could be shot. 149
NOTES
1. Closs Stephens and Vaughan-Williams, Terrorism and the Politics of
Response, 2008; Edkins, Missing Persons, 2007; Edkins and Pin-Fat,
Introduction: Life, Power, Resistance, 2004 and Through the Wire,
2005; Edkins, Pin-Fat and Shapiro, Sovereign Lives, 2004; Dauphinee and
Masters, The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror, 2007; and van
Munster, The War on Terror, 2004.
2. Bigo, Detention of Foreigners, 2007.
3. Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, 2003.
4. Doty, States of Exception, 2007; Rajaram and Grundy-Warr, The
Irregular Migrant, 2004.
5. Caldwell, Bio-Sovereignty and the Emergence of Humanity, 2004;
Edkins, Humanitarianism, Humanity, Human, 2003.
6. Connolly, The Complexity of Sovereignty, 2004; Neal, Foucault in
Guantnamo, 2006; Prozorov, X/Xs, 2005.
7. Ibid.
8. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998; Remnants of Auschwitz, 1999; State of
Exception, 2005.

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.

37.

125

Agamben, Form-of-Life, 1996, p. 151.

Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 4.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 6.
Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, 2003, p. 180.
Nancy, Abandoned Being, 1993.
Schmitt, Political Theology, 2005.
Benjamin, On the Concept of History, 2003, p. 392.
Agamben, State of Exception, 2005.
Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 139.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, p. 9 (emphasis added).
Minca, Giorgio Agamben and the New Biopolitical Nomos, 2006;
Agambens Geographies of Modernity, 2007; The Return of the Camp,
2005.
Minca, Giorgio Agamben and the New Biopolitical Nomos, 2006,
p. 388.
Agamben, Interview with Giorgio Agamben, 2004, p. 612 (emphasis
added).
Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 1985, p. 190.
Kwinter, Architectures of Time, 2001, p. 14.
Ibid., p. 14.
Agamben, Interview with Giorgio Agamben, 2004, p. 612.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, p. 37.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid.
Agamben, Interview with Giorgio Agamben, 2004, p. 612.
Norris, Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead, 2005,
p. 14.
Agamben, Interview with Giorgio Agamben, 2004, p. 612.
Binetti and Casarino, Translators Notes, 2000, p. 143.
See, for example, Edkins and Pin-Fat, Through the Wire, 2005. Edkins
and Pin-Fat note that the concept of bare life is contentious and open
to different readings. However, they set-up and use the terms bare
or naked life and zoe interchangeably (pp. 67). For other examples of
this tendency see: Butler, Precarious Life, 2004, p. 67; Edkins, Missing
Persons, 2006; Edkins, Whatever Politics, 2006, p. 6; Laustsen and
Dikken, Zones of Indistinction, 2002, pp. 290307; Norris, Giorgio
Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead, 2005; and Ojakangas,
Impossible Dialogue on Bio-Power, 2005, p. 7.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, p. 109.

126
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.

43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.

52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.

BORDER POLITICS

Butler, Precarious Life, 2003, p. 67.

Agamben, State of Exception, 2005, pp. 878.
UN, E/CN4/2006/120, 2006, p. 12.
Ibid.
The UN report on the situation of detainees in Guantnamo points out
that the United States government relies upon the deliberate cultivation
of ambiguity in order to flout the Geneva Conventions. In a memorandum sent by the Department of Defense dated 16 April the
government states: US Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees
humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military
necessity, in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions
(emphasis added). As the UN report notes, this formulation is
ambiguous because it implies that military necessity may, under certain
circumstances, overrule the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. UN,
E/CN.4/2006/120, 2006, p. 23.
iek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2002, p. 91.
Butler, Precarious Life, 2003, p. 98.
Ibid., p.74.
Ibid., p. 98.
Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 138.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, p. 111
Ibid.
Deleuze, Pure Immanence, 2001, p. 31.
See Deleuze and Guattari, Becoming-Intense, 2004. Deleuze and
Guattari refer to the way in which becoming is [] the in-between, the
border, or line of flight. As such, and resonating with Agambens
treatment of bare life, becoming is said to constitute a zone of
indiscernibility, pp. 3234.
Butler, Precarious Life, 2003, p. 68.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Connolly, The Complexity of Sovereignty, 2004.
Ibid., p. 28.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Derrida, Rogues, 2005, p. 100.
Ibid., p. 101.
Derrida, From Restricted to General Economy, 2002, p. 335.
Ibid., p. 335.
Derrida, The deconstruction of actuality, 1994, pp. 2830.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, p. 187.

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.

74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.

127

Ibid., p. 63.
Benjamin, Critique of Violence, 2004.
Benjamin, On the Concept of History, 2003.
Agamben, State of Exception, 2005, p. 58.
The Nazi state proclaimed a state of exception in 1933 but this was
never repealed.
Agamben, State of Exception, 2005, p. 29.
Quoted in ibid., p. 69.
Ibid., p. 2. As Didier Bigo has pointed out, government leaders such as
Tony Blair, George Bush, and John Howard do not necessarily declare
states of emergency formally. Rather, they speak of specific administrative derogations or ask for more power for a short period (under a
sunset clause), Bigo, The Ban, the Pan, and the Exception, 2006, p. 5.
Agamben, State of Exception, 2005, p. 2.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 3.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, pp. 4, 9; Means Without End, 2000, p. 39;
State of Exception, 2005, pp. 23.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, pp. 6, 7, 8, 19, 28, 83; Means Without End,
2000, p. 37; Agamben, State of Exception, 2005, pp. 3, 67.
Ibid., p. 87.
Bigo, The Ban, the Pan, and the Exception, 2006, p. 5.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, pp. 1819.
Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 40.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., pp. 401.
Ibid., p. 39.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 40.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, pp. 1712.
Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 45.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998, p. 174.
Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 39.
Minca, Giorgio Agamben and the New Biopolitical Nomos, 2006,
p. 388.
Laustsen and Dikken, Zones of Indistinction, 2002; Culture of Exception,
2005.
For a review of the limitations of Laustsen and Dikken, see McLoughlin,
The Nomos of the Modern, 2005.
Mbembe, Necropolitics, 2003.
Ibid., p. 25.

128

BORDER POLITICS

98. Ibid., p. 24.

99. Ibid., p. 32.
100. Minca, Giorgio Agamben and the New Biopolitical Nomos, 2006,
p. 388.
101. Closs Stephens, 7 Million Londoners, One London, 2008.
102. Weizman, On Extraterritoriality, 2007, p. 13.
103. Balibar, The Borders of Europe, 1998, p. 220.
104. The Daily Telegraph, De Menezes shot 11 times during 30 seconds,
26 August 2005.
105. Ibid.
106. BBC News Online, Man Shot Dead by Police on Tube, 2005.
107. NBC News, UK police defend shoot-to-kill after mistake, 2005.
108. Daily Telegraph, Met chief admits serious mistake over Menezes, 2006.
109. BBC News Online, London Attacks in Depth, 2007; NBC News Online,
UK Police defend shoot-to-kill mistake over Menezes, 2006; Daily
Telegraph, Met chief admits serious mistake over Menezes, 2006;
Appleton, Memorial to paranoia, 2005; Black, 77 The London Bombs,
2005; Davenport, Met Chief admits Menezes mistakes, 2006; Taylor,
Special Report, 2006.
110. Appleton, Memorial to paranoia, 2005.
111. Ahmed, The London Bombings, 2006, p. 97.
112. BBC News Online, London Attacks in Depth, 2007.
113. Ahmed, The London Bombings, 2006, p. 97.
114. Cusick, A Cover up?, 2005.
115. Taylor, Special Report, 2006.
116. Ibid.
117. Ahmed, The London Bombings, 2006, pp. 97100; BBC News Online,
London Attacks in Depth, 2007; Pugliese, Asymmetries of Terror,
2006.
118. BBC News Online, London Attacks in Depth, 2007.
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid.
121. Whitby, I saw tube man shot, 2005.
122. BBC News Online, London Attacks in Depth, 2007.
123. Ibid.
124. Whitby, I saw tube man shot, 2005.
125. Weather in London, UK, on 22 July 2005.
126. Pugliese, Asymmetries of Terror, 2006, p. 1.
127. Ibid., p. 1.
128. Quoted in Taylor, Special Report, 2006.
129. Daily Telegraph, De Menezes shot 11 times during 30 seconds, 2005.
130. Ibid.

The Generalised Biopolitical Border

131.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
140.
141.
142.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
149.

Derrida, Rogues, 2005, p. 13.

Massumi, The Future Birth of the Affective Fact, 2005, pp. 57.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 45.
Ibid., pp. 610.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid., pp. 78.
Ibid., pp. 89.
NBC News, UK police defend shoot-to-kill after mistake, 2005.
Bigo, Protection: Security, Territory, Population, 2006.
Pugliese, Asymmetries of Terror, 2006.
The London Assembly, Report of the 7 July Review Committee, 2006.
Ibid., p. 148.
Ibid.
Walters, Rethinking Borders Beyond the State, 2006.
NBC News, UK police defend shoot-to-kill after mistake, 2005.

129

Chapter 5
ALTERNATIVE BORDER IMAGINARIES:
THE POLITICS OF FRAMING

In their reflections on the role of radical theory, Paolo Virno and

Michael Hardt call for the proposition of new concepts for political
theorising today adequate to our conditions.1 Virno and Hardt tie
conceptual revision to political change, and this move reorientates the
relationship between theory and practice so that the two are not
conceived as separate but rather inextricably linked: the relationship
between theory and practice remains an open problematic, a kind of
laboratory for testing the effects of new ideas, strategies and organisations.2 The task of inventing new concepts apposite to the study of
contemporary global politics not only assists in political analysis but
constitutes a critical praxis, with significant ethical and political implications, in its own right.3 This is because the question of whether a
given concept is adequate or apposite to our conditions will depend
upon a prior judgement about who we are and what our conditions
might be in the first place.
On the one hand, the concept of the border of the state, underpinning the modern geopolitical imaginary and conventional inside/
outside model, has occupied and continues to occupy a prominent
position in conceptualisations of global politics, both explicitly and
implicitly. This is illustrated in the cases of United Kingdom and European Union border security arrangements considered in Chapter 1
which, alongside innovations in understanding what and where the
border is, retain a traditional understanding of it in their operations
at ports, airports and the outer-geographical edge of the sovereign
territories they seek to protect. The concept of the border of the state is
also prominent in diverse theorisations of global politics from the
mainstream works of Waltz, Bull and Wendt in IR through to treat130

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131

ments of, for example, concepts of violence and sovereignty in

Benjamin, Derrida and Schmitt. On the other hand, as we have also
seen, multifarious practices in contemporary political life, such as the
offshoring of the European Unions borders in West Africa or the
United Nations legal argument mobilised in defence of detainees held
in Guantnamo, imply that this conventional border imaginary has
undergone radical transformation. For this reason, as discussed in
Chapters 2 and 3, many critical analysts of global politics have pointed
to what they consider to be the inadequacy of the concept of the
border of the state, the inside/outside model, and the modern geopolitical imaginary, as a framework for political understanding and
practice.
In the previous chapter, the concept of the generalised biopolitical
border was introduced based upon Agambens reconceptualisation of
the limits of sovereign power. As such, and in the manner of political
theorising advocated by Virno and Hardt, this concept can be read as a
response to those writers, such as Balibar, Walker and Weizman, who
imply the need for alternative border imaginaries to the conventional
inside/outside model. Having outlined this concept, the primary task
now is to flesh out how the generalised biopolitical border might lead
to different practice/theory in global politics. What difference does
thinking in terms of the generalised biopolitical border make for IR
and related disciplines? What does it mean for, and how does it relate
to, a logic of inside/outside and the modern geopolitical imaginary?
What forms of ethicalpolitical thought and praxis might follow from
it? To address these questions, I shall begin by returning to three
examples considered in the Introduction to the book, namely conceptualisations of juridicalpolitical order, the production of citizensubjects, and security practices, to illustrate how these aspects of
political life could be rethought under conditions of the generalised
biopolitical border. Second, departing from pessimistic readings of the
implications of Agambens thought for ethicalpolitical practice, I shall
then spell out what I consider to be the affirmative mode of alternative
thinking that the concept of the generalised biopolitical border
gestures towards. Finally, the analysis turns to the work of Jacques
Derrida in order to comment on potential problems with the generalised biopolitical border and what I shall go on to outline as the activity
of framing in global politics.

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THINKING IN TERMS OF THE GENERALISED

BIOPOLITICAL BORDER
The concept of the border of the state has enabled a dominant
conception of juridicalpolitical order that is central to the modern
geopolitical imaginary: a view of that order as being divided between
domestic and international realms and, notwithstanding aberrations
from time to time, largely settled and stable. In this way the concept of
the border of the state helps to domesticate the contingency of the
juridicalpolitical order by acting as a familiar reference point on the
basis of which the repetition of diverse practices cumulates to create a
sense of normality and permanence. Yet, as Agnew, Tuathail and
other critical geopolitics scholars have pointed out, the role of the
concept of the border of the state in maintaining this semblance of
stability and immutability contributes to a form of knowledge
privileged by the modern geopolitical imaginary that is inherently
linked to questions of power and authority. In other words, the work
that the concept of the border of the state does in upholding the
juridicalpolitical order is not a natural nor neutral practice, but one
that serves to benefit those whose interests are bound up in maintaining the status quo. Consequently, accounts of global politics that
rely upon an unreflective usage of the concept of the border of the
state are complicit in practices of forgetting the contingency of the
juridicalpolitical order and therefore also the reification of it.
By contrast, thinking in terms of the generalised biopolitical border
reveals the contingency and performative self (re)production of
juridicalpolitical order. Agambens account of the logic and operation
of sovereign power demonstrates that this order, born of the exception, is predicated upon the performative act of suspending the law
to produce a zone of indistinction in which bare life can be produced.
Seen in this light, sovereign power does not pre-exist bare life and
neither does bare life pre-exist sovereign power. Instead, sovereign
power and bare life must be thought of as co-constitutive of each
other. Sovereign power comes to exist only through the constant
(re)production of bare life in zones of indistinction that are amenable
to its sway:
The essence of political power in the West [] is the power to
suspend (not apply) law and thus to produce a sphere of beings

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133

without quantities, homines sacri, whom every being, insofar as he

or she is alive, may be.4
On this basis, it is through the production of homo sacer that the
politically qualified life of the polis, necessary for juridicalpolitical
order, is ultimately defined and sustained. As Andrew Norris puts it:
politics must again and again enact its internal distinction from bare
life [] it must repeatedly define itself through the negation of bare
life a negation that can always take the form of death.5 In other
words, the politically qualified life of the polis and the form of
juridicalpolitical order this subjectivity enables are contingent upon
a sovereign decision about the status of some human life as not
worthy of being lived as such. As Judith Butler has explored in her
discussion of Agamben against the backdrop of indefinite detention
in Guantnamo, this decision relies upon nothing other than the
deeming of certain forms of life to be ineligible for certain basic, if not
universal, human rights: the decision to detain, to continue to detain
someone indefinitely, is a unilateral judgement made by government
officials who simply deem that a given individual, or indeed a group,
poses a danger to the state.6 Moreover, as Butler highlights, it is a
decision that is increasingly taken by government officials (such as
those who sanctioned and shot Jean Charles de Menezes) rather than
by democratically elected politicians, thereby constituting an extension
of sovereign power by stealth.7 Often, the decision leading to the
production of bare life is underwritten by so-called national security
imperatives defined by a state of emergency: in this way the invocation of the discourse of exceptionalism attempts to legitimise the
suspension of national and international law. Therefore, echoing
Derridas discussion of authority in Chapter 3, the legitimacy of sovereign power is legitimised by nothing other than its own legitimisation.
One way of characterising how the generalised biopolitical border
reconceptualises the (re)production of the juridicalpolitical order is in
terms of performance. Whereas the modern geopolitical imaginary
supported by the concept of the border of the state implies a
static, immutable juridicalpolitical structure that is somehow given,
Agambens thesis reveals this as a performed fiction. The sovereign
decision that creates bare life is not necessarily a singular act but a
reiterative performance: one that leads to the perpetuation of bare life
detained indefinitely in camps or left to die in cargo containers at sea.

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Moreover, as Agambens analysis implies, this border performance is

also a body performance. Bodies do not simply encounter pre-existing
borders as if they were timeless territorial artefacts. Rather, borders
are continually (re)inscribed through mobile bodies that can be risk
assessed, categorised, and then treated as either trusted citizen
travellers or bare life. In this way border/body performances depend
upon movement and are played out at sites across everyday life.
A perspective that identifies the performative character of the
juridicalpolitical order reconfigures the way in which the relation
between borders and subjectivity might be analysed. According to
the modern geopolitical imaginary, the proper political subject is the
citizen: bordered and autonomous before the law in the same way
as the sovereign state of which it is a subject. Such a formulation
attempts to domesticate the radical contingencies of subjects socioontological status and fix their identities to territory in order to secure
the presence of sovereign political community. Thinking in terms
of the generalised biopolitical border prompts an alternative line of
analysis that redirects emphasis away from the modern bordered
citizen. For Agamben, the real sovereign subject is not the citizen
but rather homo sacer: the mute carrier of sovereignty defined not by
contract or rights but by exposure to the sovereign decision on
whether it is deemed life worthy of living.8 The insistence on the
significance of the marginal figure of homo sacer highlights the need
for further analysis of the multifarious methods, contexts and locations
in which bare life is produced in global politics. One example, which
has already received some attention in the academic literature
inspired by Agamben, is a critical engagement with the politics of
humanitarianism.9
Conventional accounts of the relationship between human rights
and sovereign power suggest that the former has a capacity to act as
a check on the worst excesses of the latter. Agamben, however, shows
a more insidious dimension to this relationship which, ultimately,
challenges the basis for an optimistic reading of the potential of
international human rights. According to an Agambenian perspective,
human rights and sovereign power are not diametrically opposed
because ultimately they both rely upon the same referent object: bare
life. The subjects produced by the ideology of humanitarian intervention closely resemble the subjects of sovereign power: mute;
undifferentiated; and depoliticised. In the same way that sovereign

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135

power produces the bare life it needs to sustain itself, humanitarianism renders people into needy victims, lives to be saved taken outside
of the workings of normal juridicalpolitical order, in such a way that
justifies flouting norms of territorial integrity and intervening in the
affairs of another sovereign state. In other words, the concept of
humanity cannot be relied upon to check sovereign power: rather, as
Anne Caldwell puts it, humanity instead appears as the ground and
object of sovereignty; it has become a political group, represented by a
new political power.10 Therefore, despite the stated aims of humanitarian organisations and ventures, there is a danger that they can end
up in solidarity with the very powers they ostensibly seek to overcome
or at least mitigate: the discourse of human rights fails to call into
question the distinction between politically qualified life and bare life
upon which the conception of rights rests. Thus, as Slavoj iek has
provocatively argued, concentration camps and refugee camps can
be seen as two sides of the same sociological matrix: perhaps the
ultimate image of the treatment of the local population as homo sacer
is that of the American war plane flying above Afghanistan one is
never sure what it will drop, bombs or food parcels.11
Thinking in terms of the generalised biopolitical border also has
potentially challenging implications for the way in which analyses of
global security relations might be framed. To a large extent the concept
of the border of the state offers a stable and comfortingly coherent
means of mapping who, where and what the enemy is: it enables the
juxtaposition of an immutable realm of warfare and barbarism outside
the state on the one hand and the impression of safety, stability and
possibility of progress inside the state on the other.12 Such a picture
permits a double designation of the enemy so that it is taken to be
both (a) outside the state but (b) itself another state which, in turn,
leads to the possibility of a resolution of conflict through classical
forms of warfare between sovereign states. The concept of the generalised biopolitical border, however, scrambles this conventional logic
and the assumed alignment between inside/amity and outside/enmity.
Rather than essentialising the enemy as the other outside the state, an
Agambenian approach is more attentive to the ways in which different
threats are produced as foreign or exteriorised, as, for example, Dan
Bulley has shown in the case of the London bombings on 7 July 2005.13
Furthermore, Agamben argues that under biopolitical conditions in
which security becomes the normal technique of government, classical

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BORDER POLITICS

interstate warfare is eclipsed. Rather, as security becomes the basic

principle of state activity politics is reduced to policing, and lines of
amity and enmity are fundamentally blurred. Conflict is no longer
between states but potentially between the terroristic state and its
citizens who are all virtually homines sacri.14
ETHICALPOLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE
GENERALISED BIOPOLITICAL BORDER
Prima facie, Agamben seems to lead in somewhat pessimistic, even
despairing, directions. Indeed, his diagnosis of the relationship
between politics and life, analysis of the production of bare life in
zones of indistinction, and prognosis that we are all virtually homines
sacri imply a bleak picture of the possibility for contestation, change
and, in short, politics. For this reason, Andreas Kalyvas argues that
Agambens portrayal of the unstoppable march to the camp is
totalistic [], and though it is concerned with politics and its eclipse,
it is itself quite un-political.15 William Connolly arrives at a similar
conclusion: Agamben [] carries us through the conjunction of
sovereignty, the sacred, and biopolitics to a historical impasse.16 In an
interview in 2004, however, Agamben replied to his critics:
Ive often been reproached for (or at least attributed with) this
pessimism that I am perhaps unaware of. But I dont see it like
that. There is a phrase from Marx, cited by Debord as well, that I
like a lot: the desperate situation of society in which I live fills me
with hope. I dont see myself as pessimistic.17
By now a growing number of scholars have identified a more positive
moment in Homo Sacer. On Jenny Edkinss view, a bleak assessment of
Agambens work, such as that reached by Kalyvas and Connolly,
overlooks a significant facet of Agambens work, where he seeks to
propose an alternative to, and indeed a contestation of, sovereign
biopolitics.18

Agamben and ethicalpolitical praxis

Central to Agambens thinking about ethicalpolitical praxis and
resistance against sovereign biopolitics is his conception of the subject

Alternative Border Imaginaries

137

as an interval or remainder between what he refers to as practices of

subjectification and de-subjectification.19 According to Agamben, the
biopolitical terrain of global politics can be understood as a kind
of de-subjectification machine: its a machine that both scrambles
all the classical identities and [] a machine that [] recodes
these very same dissolved identities.20 For Agamben it is possible to
think through the potential for resistance by rendering the machine
inoperative on its own terms.21 Agambens thought does not lead
to nihilism or passivity but calls for the radical invention of new
practices: a movement on the spot, in the situation itself.22
In The Time That Remains [2005], Agamben gives the example of St
Pauls negotiation with the Jewish law that divides Jews and non-Jews.
Agamben is interested in the way in which, instead of applying a
universal principle to argue against this sovereign cut, Paul intervenes
by taking the law on on its own terms. According to Agamben, Paul
does this by dividing the division itself: by introducing a further
division between the Jew according to the flesh and the Jew according
to the spirit. This division of the division means that, instead of a
simple separation between Jews/non-Jews, there are now Jews who
are not Jews, because there are Jews who are Jews according to the
flesh, not the spirit, and [non-Jews] who are [non-Jews] according to
the flesh, but not according to the spirit.23 Consequently, a remainder
is produced that renders the applicability and operativity of the law
ineffective: a new form of subject that is neither a Jew nor a non-Jew
but a non-non-Jew.24
Applying this logic to contemporary conditions, Agamben places his
hope for a kind of minority politics in this form of unworking of the
system or biopolitical machine from within:
One should proceed in this way, from division to division, rather
than by asking oneself: What would be the universal communal
principle that would allow us to be together? To the contrary. It is
a matter, confronted with the divisions introduced by the law, of
working with what disables them through resisting, through
remaining rsister, rester, its the same root.25
Elsewhere, Agamben links the move to render the system inoperative
with notions of profanation, meaning to violate or transgress, and
play.26 He illustrates the logic of profanation through play with the

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BORDER POLITICS

example of the cat that plays with the ball of string as if it were a
mouse. The game frees the mouse from being cast as prey and at the
same time the predatory activity of the cat is shifted away from the
chasing and killing of the mouse: and yet, this play stages the very
same behaviours that define hunting.27 With this example Agamben
seeks to demonstrate the profanatory potential in play as a means of
creating a new use of something by deactivating an old one. The
ultimate call is to subvert the given machine or apparatus according to
its own logic: to wrest from the apparatuses from all apparatuses
the possibility of use that they have captured.28
In Means Without End [2000], Agamben is clear that any move to
render biopolitical apparatuses inoperative must do so on the basis of
his diagnosis of the relationship between politics and life as outlined
in the previous chapter:
It is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque
zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path
of another politics, of another body, of another world. I would not
feel up to forgoing this indistinction of public and private, of
biological body and body politic, of zoe and bios, for any reason
whatsoever. It is here that I must find my space once again here or
nowhere else. Only a politics that starts from such an awareness can
interest me.29
The figure that Agamben draws upon to think through the possibility
of resistance is what he calls whatever being.30 The notion of
whatever being refers to being-as-such: the simple fact of ones
own existence as possibility or potentiality.31 Whatever being has no
essence that can be separated from its attributes.32 It constitutes a
pure singularity in the sense that it cannot be broken down into
different parts.33 The task, then, is not to mobilise resistance on the
basis of universal generalised principles such as human rights. Rather,
it is to explore and invent the profanatory potential that resides within
remnants of forms of subjectification and de-subjectification produced
by sovereign power itself.
Prospects for thinking and acting otherwise in global politics centre
around the figure of the refugee in Agambens work. According to
Agamben, this figure, which can be understood precisely as the
remnant of sovereign biopolitics, is perhaps the only imaginable

Alternative Border Imaginaries

139

figure of the people today: a whatever being that throws conventional juridicalpolitical categories into disarray.34 Indeed, for
Agamben, this unique figure acts as a site for the invention of
alternative forms of political community not based on unity,
sovereignty, citizenship or other conventional categories. Rather, the
refugee
[] should be considered for what he [sic] is, that is, nothing
less than a border concept that radically calls into question the
principles of the nation-state and, at the same time, helps clear
the field for a no-longer-delayable [sic] renewal of categories.35
Taking the refugee as a starting point for the reconstruction of political
categories and philosophy demands attention to how the topology
wrought by this figure, reflecting the Mbius strip outlined in the
previous chapter, might stimulate alternative conceptualisations of
ethicalpolitical relationality. Agamben illustrates the direction in
which this thinking could lead against the backdrop of the politics of
space in Jerusalem.36 The prospect of this city as the capital of two
states, without territorial divisions, could be generalized as a model of
new international relations. Agamben continues:
Instead of two national states separated by uncertain and
threatening boundaries, one could imagine two political
communities dwelling in the same region and in exodus one into
the other, divided from each other by a series of reciprocal
extraterritorialities, in which the guiding concept would no longer
be the ius of the citizen, but rather the refugium of the individual.37
This alternative topology, embodied by the figure of the refugee,
disaggregates political space from the homogeneous and territorially
bordered sovereign nation-state to create the possibility for new
political arrangements:
It is only in a land where the spaces of states will have been
perforated and topologically deformed, and the citizens will have
learned to acknowledge the refugee that he himself is, that mans
political survival today is imaginable.38

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BORDER POLITICS

Agamben and the possibility of resistance

In her recent work, Jenny Edkins, independently and together with
Vronique Pin-Fat, has explored what Agambens thought might
mean in the context of resistance against biopolitical apparatuses in
the current War on Terror. Significantly, nowhere in his work does
Agamben claim that the biosovereign order he diagnoses and engages
with is in fact necessary or somehow inevitable. This leads Edkins
to deny that sovereign power constitutes the only possible form of
political life and, indeed, that it constitutes a political life at all.39 The
suggestion that the biopolitical sovereign order does not constitute a
political life at all ties into a broader argument Edkins and Pin-Fat
seek to establish: that sovereign power is not a relation of power in
the Foucauldian sense, as discussed in Chapter 3, but rather one of
violence.40 Relations of violence do not produce subjectivities in the
same way as power relations. Instead, the former is a type of relation
that merely involves the technologised administration of sovereign
biopolitics: in other words a form of slavery or servitude.41 With the
emergence of a global zone of indistinction in which we can no longer
distinguish between our biological life as living beings and our
political existence, the possibilities for resistance arguably have been
curtailed.42 Thus, according to Edkins and Pin-Fat, any attempt at
contesting sovereign biopolitics must, however paradoxical it may
seem, seek to reinstall power relations with their accompanying
freedoms and potentialities.43 On this basis, the challenge for practical
politics is to envisage how such a reinstallation might take place.
Following Agambens claim referred to earlier, that it is by starting
from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction
that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of
another body, of another world, Edkins and Pin-Fat argue that
strategies for contesting sovereign power cannot consist of a call for a
reinstatement of classical politics, a reinstatement of the distinction
between zoe and bios.44 In other words, it will not do for any such
contestation to find its basis in the very logic it is trying to overcome.
Edkins emphasises that identity politics, associated with social
movements, for instance, would reappropriate rather than displace
that flawed logic.45 This is because, as she explains, identity-based
claims ultimately work within the same horizon as sovereign power:
such a claim is a demand for inclusion in or recognition by the state,

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141

not a claim that contests or disrupts the notions of inclusion and

exclusion upon which sovereign power depends.46 Rather, what is
required is a displacement of the logic that might tie resistance back to
sovereign politics:
If a logic of sovereign power is identified that relies for its very
operation on the production and organisation of bare life as a
form of life that is hospitable to its operation, then it is in a sense
obvious that a challenge to sovereignty might be framed in terms
of a refusal or destabilisation of that very form of life itself.47
One way of challenging sovereign power would be to remove the
grounds upon which it is able to produce bare life in the first place
thereby rendering the biopolitical machine inoperative on its own
terms. This implies the need for a life that is inseparable from its form:
one where the classical binary between zoe and bios does not hold and
cannot be blurred in a zone of indistinction.
Crucially, as far as the potential for a politics of resistance is
concerned, Agambens notion of whatever being lacks the features
permitting the sovereign capture: what the state cannot tolerate in any
way [] is that the singularities form a community, without affirming
an identity, that humans co-belong without any representable
condition of belonging.48 Somewhat ironically, then, as Edkins has
pointed out, the form of being produced by sovereign power, that is,
bare life, turns out to be that form of being sovereign power finds
intolerable.49 Put differently, the form of life sovereign power produces
for its own survival is also potentially the source of its undoing. The
type of politics that might follow from Agambens formulation a
whatever politics as Edkins puts it is one that capitalises on this
potential weakness in sovereign power. In practical terms, Edkins and
Pin-Fat argue that such a politics consists of two interrelated moves:
the refusal to draw abstract lines of the sort sovereign power itself
relies upon; and/or what they call the assumption of bare life.50
These moves, and their implications for how thinking in terms of
a generalised biopolitical border might prompt a reframing of ethical
political practice/thought, warrant closer attention.
To produce a zone of indistinction between zoe and bios that is
hospitable to the cultivation of bare life, the logic of sovereign power
must assume a distinction between the two to begin with. This

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involves drawing abstract lines or borders between different forms of

life in order to distinguish the politically qualified life of the polis from
life that is deemed not to be worthy as such. What counts as politically
qualified life is not a static given but a historically contingent outcome.
Different groups have been excluded from politics throughout history
(for example slaves, women, and Jews) although the fear arising from
Agambens work is that we are now all potentially excluded as homines
sacri. To counter this, Edkins and Pin-Fat suggest that one form of
resistance would be to reject or to prevent the inscription of borders
between zoe and bios, inside and outside, human and inhuman:
It is only through a refusal to draw any lines at all (and, indeed,
nothing else will do) that sovereign power (as a form of violence)
can be contested and a properly political power relation can be
reinstated.51
Importantly, Edkins and Pin-Fat emphasise that they are not arguing
for a renegotiation of where these lines are drawn: to renegotiate in
this fashion would be to remain inside the relation of violence. Rather,
they argue that to move outside this relation of violence and reinstall a
properly political power relation must involve the cessation of linedrawing in toto: [] we need not only to contest its right to draw lines
in particular places, but also to resist the call to draw any lines of the
sort sovereign power demands.52
The second and interrelated strategy of resistance put forward by
Edkins and Pin-Fat involves what they call an acceptance of bare life
and it is this line of thought that perhaps reflects Agambens notion
of inoperativity most closely. Such an acceptance occurs when the
subject both acknowledges and also demands recognition of its status
as nothing but bare life. In this way properly political power relations
are reinstalled as the subject transforms bare life into what Agamben
calls form-of-life.53 The transformation occurs as the subject literally
lays bare the violent excesses upon which sovereign power rests by
assuming them. To illustrate this point, Edkins and Pin-Fat draw on
the provocative example of the phenomenon of lip sewing among
refugees. Among others they cite the case of Abbas Amini, an Iranian
national seeking asylum in Britain, who, in 2003, protested against the
governments immigration policies by sewing shut his eyes, ears and
mouth:

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Aminis political act of resistance, using his own body, can be

read as an act where, with all hope lost, the only site left for
resistance is in complete embrace of bare life as a form-of-life
that has its own bios.54
This example offers a useful illustration of what Agamben means by
an act of transgression that un-works the biopolitical system from
within. By assuming bare life Amini takes away the grounds upon
which sovereign power would otherwise operate. His actions adopt
the logic of the system in order to jam it. Another example of an
attempt to render the sovereign biopolitical machine inoperative is
Agambens own refusal to travel to the United States.55 Since March
2004, Agamben has protested against what he considers to be the
biopolitical tattooing of the US Department of Homeland Security by
publically resigning from his position as Visiting Professor at New York
University and banning himself from air travel to the United States.56
In an article published in Le Monde in 2004, Agamben claims that:
History teaches us how practices first reserved for foreigners find
themselves applied later to the rest of the citizenry. 57 Citing the
capture and filing of finger print and retina data as reflecting a new
normal biopolitical relationship between the citizen and the state, he
argues:
By applying these techniques and these devices invented for the
dangerous classes to a citizen, or rather to a human being as
such, states, which should constitute the precise space of political
life, have made the person the ideal suspect, to the point that its
humanity itself that has become the dangerous class.58
Agambens decision to ban himself from travel to the United States,
thereby effectively rendering himself immobile, jams the generalised
biopolitical border because, as we have seen in previous chapters, it
relies precisely on circulation of people, goods and services. Indeed,
this example highlights that, for border security to work effectively,
subjects need to be constantly on the move: without movement biopolitical bordering practices cannot operate. The profanatory potential
of this insight has yet to be mobilised as far as resistance against some
of the most insidious practices legitimised by the War on Terror is
concerned.

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The limits of a logic of the field

Sergei Prozorov has expressed dissatisfaction with the discomforting
contours of the critique of sovereign power and the possibilities for a
practical politics of resistance proposed by Edkins and Pin-Fat. As
Prozorov sees it:
[T]he proper avenues of critique appear self-defeatingly extreme,
if not outright inconceivable: the total refusal to draw dividing
lines and installing limits is ultimately a call to dispense with the
very principle of order.59
On this basis, Prozorov dismisses the forms of resistance advocated
by Edkins and Pin-Fat as quaintly paradoxical.60 In their counterresponse, however, Edkins and Pin-Fat argue that Prozorovs
criticisms make sense only when viewed from the framework of
sovereign power.61 It is precisely their intention to dispense with the
very principle of order as far as it is founded upon the sovereign ban
and a division between forms of life.62 Furthermore, Edkins and PinFat stipulate that they are not advocating the refusal of all dividing
lines and installing limits as Prozorov claims: we are specifically
referring to the drawing of lines between what amounts to forms of
life as politically qualified or as bare life.63 With this proviso in
mind, they argue that the form of praxis emanating from their reading
of Agamben is one that insists [] on the politics of decisioning and
particular distinctions and demands that specifics of time, place and
circumstance be attended to in each instance.64
This exchange is interesting because it highlights an area of
ambiguity in Agambens work that is carried through to Edkins and
Pin-Fats discussion of the possibilities of a practical politics that
follow on from it. On the one hand, at the heart of Edkins and PinFats argument is a normative commitment to the displacement of line
drawing or practices of bordering associated with sovereign politics:
nothing less will do.65 In this way the ethical and political codes they
call for resonate with the spirit of Agambens logic of the field as
outlined in Chapter 4. On the other hand, Edkins and Pin-Fat make it
clear in their response to Prozorov above, that it is not all but only
certain distinctions they are refusing: only the drawing of lines upon
which sovereignty depends.66 In this way there seems to be a depar-

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ture from a logic of the field and a return to thinking in terms of

borders, distinctions and separations. Therefore, the ambiguity lies in
the issue of whether Agambens call for a logic of the field implies the
need for the abandonment of all forms of borders, distinctions and
separations, or just some. If it is the former case then the metadistinction Edkins and Pin-Fat rely upon in their argument between
certain types of distinctions that are to be refused and other types of
distinctions that are to be embraced surely falls prey to the very logic
they are ostensibly seeking to displace. If it is the latter then the
question arises, how do we know which borders, distinctions and
separations should be refused? We are then back to familiar questions
located within the framework of sovereign politics: Who draws the
line? Where? On what grounds?
Furthermore, an additional problem arises when the relationship
between a logic of the field and the concept of the generalised biopolitical border is considered against the backdrop of the inside/
outside problematic. Despite Agambens commitment to a logic of
the field, the generalised biopolitical border, understood as a form of
dividing practice, does not escape or go beyond the inside/outside
dichotomy in any straightforward sense. If one of the purposes of the
production of bare life is to define the politically qualified life of the
polis, then the former acts as the constitutive outside of the latter. In
other words, while the border between inside/outside is shown not to
be fixed at the geographical outer edge of the sovereign state as the
modern geopolitical imaginary implies, Agambens diagnosis of the
activity of sovereign power as the decision to produce some life as
bare life (and thus other forms of life as non-bare life) is still reliant
upon and reiterative of an inside/outside way of thinking. Effectively,
the substitution of the concept of the generalised biopolitical border
for the concept of the border of the state means that the dividing
practice upon which sovereign power relies is recast: not something
pre-given, static and localised at a territorial extremity but reinscribed
as a performance throughout society in a more generalised sense.
Agambens call for an adoption of a logic of the field in political
analysis raises these thorny questions without putting forward any
easy solutions. To abandon a mode of thought that is reliant upon
borders, distinctions and separations is difficult perhaps impossible
to envisage as Prozorovs comments reflect. In her essay Whatever
Politics, Edkins suggests that the move to acknowledge the inevitable

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chaos of a world without lines is not hopelessly utopian.67 Drawing on

Jacques Derrida, she claims that, while borders attempt to produce
clarity and offer stability, they are always already doomed to failure
and break down on an everyday basis: Attempts are continually made,
in the here and now, in philosophy and in politics, to make distinctions, but these only ever partially or temporarily succeed. 68
Pursuing this line of enquiry, the following section investigates
Derridas treatment of borders further in order to elucidate what is
at stake with the identification of these problems arising from
Agambens adoption of a logic of the field: first, by examining
Derridas problematisation of the concept of the border in a general
sense; second, by outlining what I call his account of the politics of
framing; and, third, by applying this account to the question of the
relation between the concept of the border of the state and the
concept of the generalised biopolitical border as rival border
imaginaries in global politics.
THE POLITICS OF FRAMING
According to Jacques Derrida, the history of the structure of Western
thought since Plato is effectively a history of binary oppositions, of
which presence and absence, cause and effect, speech and writing,
and inside and outside are prominent examples.69 Oppositions of this
nature constitute a powerful conceptual order: especially because we
are often unaware we are using or relying upon them. In a very broad
sense, deconstructive thought engages critically with these binaries by
unpacking the logic that they ultimately rest upon. Through this
questioning, the structure of Western thought is shown not to be
natural but rather laden with assumptions and priorities that often
have significant ethical and political implications.

The basic moves of deconstructive thought

Derrida is notoriously hesitant to define deconstruction because any
attempt at such a definition would be ironic. In his Letter to a
Japanese Friend, Derrida writes: What deconstruction is not? Everything of course! What is deconstruction? Nothing of course! 70 More
accessible accounts of the basic moves of deconstructive thought can
be found in Positions [1981] and Limited Inc. [1988]. Derrida insists that

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a deconstructive strategy or way of reading always involves a double

and simultaneous movement:
Deconstruction cannot be restricted or immediately pass to a
neutralization: it must, through a double gesture, double science,
a double writing put into practice a reversal of the classical
opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is on that
condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of
intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes and that is also a
field of non-discursive forces.71
The first move of deconstruction is to recognise that the terms within
any given binary opposition are not strictly opposites after all but
hierarchically arranged because one of the two terms is usually
privileged over the other: presence over absence; cause over effect;
speech over writing; inside over outside.72 In this way the first or
superior term tends to assume a degree of naturalness and, as such, is
referred to as a kind of centre, origin or source. Derrida argues that it
is necessary to overturn this hierarchy.73 A deconstructive strategy,
however, is to avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions
of metaphysics and simply residing within the closed field of these
oppositions, thereby confirming it.74 In other words, deconstruction
does not simply reverse the privileging of terms because this would
reappropriate, rather than displace, the logic at play. Instead, Derrida
argues that a different strategy is required. This second move is
precisely the displacement of the logic of the system. It involves
identifying what is called the undecidable: something that can no
longer be contained within the binary opposition but which, however,
inhabit[s] [it] without ever constituting a third term.75 As the extract at
the beginning of this section emphasises, it is strictly on the condition
of such a double gesture alone that deconstruction might intervene in
the field of oppositions it criticises.76 Deconstruction, writes Derrida,
does not consist in moving from one concept to another, but in
reversing and displacing a conceptual order within which it is
articulated. 77
Jonathan Culler offers a useful illustration of the basic moves of
deconstruction, focusing on causation and the binary opposition
between cause/effect.78 Typically, Culler argues, cause is privileged and
given logical and temporal primacy over effect.79 A deconstructive line

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of enquiry, however, shows that this structure is not a given, but rather
the effect of a rhetorical operation. Culler asks us to imagine that we
feel a pain.80 This feeling causes us to look for a cause for the pain.
Perhaps we see a pin. A link is therefore made between the pain and
the pin. In producing a causal sequence the perceptual order is then
reversed from (a) pain to pin to (b) pin to pain. Using this example,
Culler argues that the causal scheme is produced by a metonymy or
metalepsis (substitution of cause over effect); it is not an indubitable
foundation but the product of a tropological operation.81 On this
basis, we are unable to speak of the cause in any simple sense. What
is at stake in this example is that cause is more complicated than the
cause-leading-to-effect structure implies, because the feeling of pain
causes us to find the pin which, in turn, causes the production of
a cause. Culler goes on to make three key points about the way
deconstruction works in this example. These are worth going through
here because they raise some key features about what deconstruction
does and does not entail.
First, Cullers deconstructive analysis does not lead to the conclusion that causality is something we should abandon in our
thinking.82 Causality is not abandoned in the example above because it
is the feeling of pain that causes the process of identifying a cause.
Rather, the deconstructive move is to apply the concept of causality to
causality itself. In this way, the appeal is not to some sort of external
benchmark to engage with causality but the principle of the concept of
causality itself: the deconstruction appeals to no higher logical principle or superior reason but uses the very principle it deconstructs.83
Second, in employing the concept of causality in its deconstruction of
that concept, deconstruction involves the critic rather than putting
him/her outside that which is critiqued.84 In other words, in his
deconstruction of causality, Culler asserts the indispensability of
causation while, at the same time, refusing it as an unquestionable
foundation. Third, the deconstruction of causality shows that cause
cannot be easily seen as being logically and temporally prior to effect
as conventional wisdom would have it.85 Deconstruction upsets this
conventional wisdom: if the effect is what causes the cause to become
a cause, then the effect, not the cause, should be treated as the origin.86
According to Culler: by showing that the argument which elevates
cause can be used to favour effect, one uncovers and undoes the
rhetorical operation responsible for the hierarchisation and one

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produces a significant displacement.87 If neither cause nor effect can

act as an origin then the notion of the origin is no longer originary:
a nonoriginary origin is a concept that cannot be comprehended by
the former system and thus disrupts it.88
Cullers illustration demonstrates the way in which a rigorous
border cannot be maintained between cause and effect. The logic of
cause/effect is haunted by the undecidable which Culler seizes upon
to enact the displacement of the notion of origin. Undecidability
does not refer to indeterminacy or confusion. Rather, as Derrida
emphasises in Limited Inc., undecidability is always a determinate
oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also
of acts).89 Such possibilities are also determined in different situations,
whether discursive, political or ethical. These determinations are
determined pragmatically but, according to Derrida, they are then
stabilised through a decision of writing (in the broad sense I give to
this word, which also includes political action and experience in
general).90 In Cullers example above the rhetorical production of the
pin as the cause of the pain is an instance of such stabilisation. This
form of writing referred to in the quotation above is known as archewriting in Derridean terms. Despite efforts of stabilisation through
practices of arche-writing, however, there are always traces of
instability. The resisting and disorganising quality of undecidability
denies the possibility that any term within an alleged binary opposition can be pure. Again, this is shown in Cullers example through
the way in which cause and effect, initially separated, are shown to
be mutually implicated. Thus, deconstruction unpacks binary logic to
demonstrate that the terms within a supposed opposition are not
mutually exclusive, but mutually interdependent, and mutually contaminated: the concept of the border invoked in any given binary is
shown to be undecidable and as such it displaces the dichotomous
logic.

Deconstructing the concept of the border

In Positions, Derrida further illustrates what he means by the undecidable with a series of analogies.91 One of these is the hymen
which, as a form of border, is both part of the logic of inside/outside
(in a general sense) and yet also neither itself strictly inside nor
outside. As such, the hymen is not simply outside inside/outside, but,
then again, neither can it be contained within that system of logic.

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Instead, the hymen disrupts the logic of inside/outside while, in a

strange way, remaining part of it. In this way Derrida uses the figure of
the hymen to demonstrate that, albeit in a very particular and obscure
context, the border between inside and outside is impossible to
maintain. Another analogy Derrida uses to illustrate what he means
by the undecidable is the concept of the supplement, which also
serves to problematise the concept of the border in a general sense.
On the one hand, the concept of the supplement implies a fullness
of presence: the supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude
enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence. It
cumulates and accumulates presence.92 On the other hand, the
supplement also supplements:
It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as if
one fills a void. [] The supplement is an adjunct []. As a
substitute, it is not simply added to the positivity of a presence, it
produces no relief, its place is assigned in the structure by the
mark of an emptiness.93
In this passage Derrida refers to the way in which the concept of the
supplement acts as an illusion in the attempt to produce full presence.
By supplementing something with something else, that which is
supplemented is produced as an effect of the supplementation: it
appears to be present as a result of the thing that supplements it.
Derridas point, however, is that the act of supplementation also
reveals a lack in that which is supplemented: the supplement indicates
what is lacking in that which is supplemented.
Derrida gives the example of two dictionaries.94 The second is
published as a supplement to the first. In light of the above argument
the second dictionary can be said to produce the first as a whole
(bordered) text in its supplementarity. The second dictionary also
points out what words are lacking in the first dictionary, however. In
this way, the supplement is added to make up for a deficiency, but as
such it reveals a lack, for since it is in excess, the supplement can never
be adequate to the lack.95 Derridas discussion shows that the supplement is therefore undecidable: it disrupts and displaces the binary
opposition between presence and absence. Again, this problematises
the notion of the border that is presupposed to separate the two terms
of the binary presence/absence.

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The concept of the border is also problematised by Derrida in his

use of the term diffrance. Binary oppositions presuppose a fixed
notion of difference between the terms that comprise them (cause/
effect, inside/outside, presence/absence). Thus, inside can be said to
rely upon outside to be identified and so on. Derrida argues, however,
that language is not as stable as this structure implies: meaning is
always already on the move; constantly referring; and differentiating
and deferring. It follows that there is no fixed point according to which
meaning is produced. Derrida captures this restless and relentless
movement with the neologism diffrance.96 This strange term, which is
a play on the French verb diffrer (to differ and to defer), demands
closer attention.
In Positions Derrida refers to diffrance as a structure and a
movement that cannot be conceived on the basis of the opposition
presence/absence [] the systematic play of differences, of traces of
differences, of the spacing [espacement] by which elements relate to
one another.97 The difference between diffrance and difference is
not audible in French: whenever we say diffrance it is unclear or
undecidable whether or not we are referring to diffrance or merely
saying the French word for difference.98 Hence, the difference
between diffrance and difference is clear only in the written form.99
This point serves an important function in Derridas engagement with
the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to Derrida,
Saussure treats speech as if it were in some sense originary or
authentic in terms of meaning and therefore a more immediate form
of expression than writing.100 On Derridas view, however, writing
is not somehow opposite and/or external to speech as the binary
opposition between speech/writing suggests.101 On the contrary,
writing not only relates to but also affects and even changes speech. In
this way, again, Derrida highlights how the supposed border between
speech and writing is impossible to maintain and ultimately breaks
down.
The key point arising from Derridas notion of diffrance is that it
shows how meaning may derive from difference but this difference is
not one between static, coherent or bordered, self-present elements.
David Roberts captures what is at stake when he writes:
Meaning is an endless web, each part of which depends on and
refers to others, so that we never get a full, final grasp of what is

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being referred to. Meaning is always deferred; there is always

further diffrance.102
In this way, Derrida problematises the concept of the border by
highlighting how signs blur into one another rather than standing
alone as self-present, coherent, and positive terms in language.
Because meaning is always already caught in a movement of difference and deferral, context can never be considered somehow simple
or secure: it is only ever secured through the production of hierarchies
of signification within the entire field of meaning.103 Consequently,
Derrida writes, one of the definitions of what is called deconstruction
would be the effort to take this limitless context into account, to pay
the sharpest and broadest attention possible to context, and thus to
an incessant movement of re-contextualisation.104 In other words,
deconstruction is partly about never entirely accepting the givenness
of a context but problematising the borders that produce that context
as supposedly separate from another context.
According to Derrida, deconstruction is not a theory as such.105
Neither is it a philosophy nor a method that can be applied to a
particular empirical situation.106 It is not even a discourse, an act, or a
practice.107 Rather, Derrida insists, deconstruction, if there be such
a thing, happens; it is what happens.108 Elsewhere he comments:
deconstruction is the case.109 No matter how much something
appears naturally sewn up, settled or given, it is always produced in
a limitless context of interpretation and reinterpretation which,
necessarily, denies the possibility of any sort of closure, finitude or
totalisation. Therefore, a deconstructive ethos leads to extreme complication of precise borders, distinctions or separations upon which
coherent, logical and explanatory accounts of fundamentally imprecise
phenomena are predicated.110 Deconstruction consists of dislocating,
displacing, disarticulating, disjoining, putting out of joint, the
authority of the is.111 In this way, it intervenes in relations of force,
in differences of force, in everything that allows, precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilized.112

Borders as frames of intelligibility

So far, the exploration of Derridas thought, focusing on his treatment
of the hymen, the supplement, and diffrance has emphasised that

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borders are not simple, straightforward givens. Rather, there is a

general problematic of the border which deconstruction seeks to
engage with rather than efface. As well as highlighting this problematic, however, Derrida also encourages a reading of borders as
frames of intelligibility that are inscribed in order to attempt to give
meaning to something. As we have already seen, the inscription of a
border represents a move to delineate and attempt to secure an inside
from an outside. This conditions the possibility of attempting to give
meaning to the inside as a self-present entity defined against the
outside. In his essay The Parergon [1979], Derrida explores the way in
which borders act as frames but, in doing so, he demonstrates how the
activity of framing is always contingent and never quite succeeds in its
attempt to delineate inside from outside.113
For Derrida, the attempt to delimit context by drawing a border or
frame always follows the logic of what he calls the parergon.114 His use
of the word parergon relates to Immanuel Kants writings in which,
according to Derrida, parerga act as limiting devices at the edge of the
ergon as a work/object to be judged. The relationship between parerga
and the ergon is exemplified by colonnades in front of magnificent
buildings and drapery around statues. In each case parerga (that is,
colonnades and drapery) centre or ground the ergon (that is, magnificent buildings and statues) by means of a frame. This framing is
necessary for all aesthetic judgement. It allows for the internal or
proper meaning of an object or work of art to be isolated from
circumstances external to it.
Derrida gives the example of the question: Do you find this palace
beautiful?115 Any response has to discern the intrinsic value of the
palace on the one hand from the palace as a function of extrinsic
motives, such as relations of economic production, on the other. In
this case, the framed is included for judgement whereas the frame
itself and what lies beyond the frame is excluded. Yet, it is not
always clear what is proper and what is secondary to a work.116 In
other words, there is a degree of ambiguity concerning the separation
of parerga from the ergon. This relates to what we might call the
undecidability of the frame: What is the place of the frame? Does it
have a place? Where does it begin? Where does it end? What is its
inner limit? What is its outer limit?117
If, according to Kant, parerga do not belong to the ergon but are
merely extrinsic to it, then for Derrida, parerga do belong to the ergon,

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albeit in an extrinsic way.118 The difference here is subtle but of vital

importance. On Derridas view, parerga cover over what would otherwise appear as a lack inherent within the ergon to which they are
added.119 While parerga are in some sense extrinsic to the ergon it is
not simply their exteriority that constitutes them as parerga, but the
internal structural link by which they are inseparable from a lack
within the ergon.120 Thus, because of the internal structural link
binding the parerga to the ergon, Derrida refers to the conjugated
term parergon. In so doing, Kants separation between intrinsic and
extrinsic or inside and outside is challenged. Derrida shows that
what is ostensibly outside (parerga) actually plays an important role
inside (ergon) the object of Kants analysis. In effect this is a reiteration
of the same argument Derrida makes with respect to supplementarity.
Derrida highlights that the incomprehensibility of the border of the
object to be judged does not only appear at the inner limit between
the parerga and the ergon, in other words between the magnificent
building and its colonnades or the statute and its drapery. Crucially, it
also arises at the outer limit:
[] from the outside, from [] the space in which the statue or
column stands, as well as from the entire historic, economic and
political field of inscription in which the drive of the signature
arises [] the parergonal frame is distinguished from two
grounds, but in relation to these, it disappears into the other.121
Such a disappearance blurs the ergon into the milieu in which it is
located: in other words limitless context.122 In The Truth in Painting
[1987], Derrida further illustrates the undecidablility of the parergonal
frame with reference to the lace of a shoe:
In its rewinding passing and re-passing though the eyelet of the
thing, from outside to inside, from inside to outside, on the
exterior surface and under the interior surface [] it remains the
same right through, between right and left, shows itself and
disappears [] in its regular traversing of the eyelet, it makes the
thing sure of its gathering, the underneath tied up on top, the
inside bound on the outside, by a law of structure.123
In this example the lace both constitutes and undermines the oppo-

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sition between inside and outside. The frame of a painting works in

the same way:
It cuts out but also sews back together. By an invisible lace which
pierces the canvas [], passes into it then out of it in order to
sew it back on to its milieu, onto its internal and external
worlds.124
In each of these examples the parergonal frame is not geometrically
fixed at the outer edge of the work but endlessly traversing inside and
outside. On this basis, a more dynamic approach to framing is implied:
one that ends up slicing through the inside/outside dichotomy. Such
an approach ultimately leaves us wondering where the border is:
parerga have thickness.125
Derridas treatment of the parergon has implications far beyond a
critique of Kant. Every philosophical discussion on meaning in some
way presupposes a discourse on the limit between an inside and an
outside: a discourse on the border between inside and outside as
a frame. Through an engagement with the figure of the parergon,
however, Derrida demonstrates that borders as frames are not fixed
but rather a site of intrinsic instability, change and invention. Consequently, it is difficult to speak of their presence, as such, because
they are not necessarily given in advance but rather drawn according
to circumstance. In this way, borders as frames might be described as
spectral. The frame they impose attempts to domesticate contingency
in order to give meaning. The attempted separation of the inside from
the outside is hard to maintain, however. What is ostensibly extrinsic
always penetrates and thus determines that which is considered to be
intrinsic.126

Framing global politics/global politics reframed

One way of thinking about the concept of the border of the state is to
consider it precisely as a framing device. As we have seen in previous
chapters, it frames particular understandings of the interrelationships
between sovereignty, territory, violence, authority and power which, in
turn, enables, constrains and conceals particular practices in diverse
spheres of contemporary political life including law, citizenship and
security relations. In this way, the concept of the border of the state,

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BORDER POLITICS

ascribed a particular set of meanings by the modern geopolitical

imaginary, delimits context to attempt to provide a sense of stability
and permanence: a foothold on the basis of which diverse understandings of, and practices in, global politics may proceed. Viewed in
these terms, the concept of the border of the state is parergonal to
global politics: it operates as a discourse of the limit between inside
and outside to tame contingency, offer some sense of fixity in the
context of otherwise limitless fluidity, and thereby attempt to give
meaning to the flow and flux of social and political life. Yet, as a
parergonal frame, the concept of the border of the state cannot be
separated from global politics: the former is intrinsically a part of
the latter in the same way that colonnades are inseparable from the
building they stand in front of. Furthermore, following Derrida, the
parergonal nature of the concept of the border means that it has never
somehow only been located at the outer edge of the state. Rather,
it must be seen as being fundamentally thick, constantly weaving
inside and outside the inside/outside dichotomy it frames.
On this basis, the concept of the generalised biopolitical border can
also be read as a framing device. On the one hand, this concept offers
an alternative frame to the concept of the border of the state which
many writers in IR and related disciplines now regard as a problematic
starting point for conceptualising practices in global politics that do
not conform to the coordinates of the modern geopolitical imaginary
(such as those outlined in Chapter 1). Reflecting what might be
referred to as a shift in thinking from a geopolitical to a biopolitical
horizon, the generalised biopolitical border derived from Agambens
work illustrates one way in which it might be possible to diversify,
pluralise and radicalise the study of borders. Agambens theorisation
of sovereign power leads to a dispersal of the border that separates
inside from outside so that it can be seen as generalised across a
globalised biopolitical terrain. On the other hand, while the concept
of the generalised biopolitical border offers an alternative frame that
problematises the modern geopolitical imaginary, it fails to escape
either a logic of inside/outside or the particular (and political) activity
of framing. In other words, this concept may challenge the imperiousness of the concept of the border of the state as a frame in the
practice/theory of global politics but, in the final analysis, one frame
(the concept of the border of the state) is merely substituted by
another (the concept of the generalised biopolitical border). As such,

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157

the worry is that the concept of the generalised biopolitical border can
also be accused of trying to foist a sense of coherence, shapeliness and
form on global politics in the same way that the concept of the border
of the state has done (and as the discipline of IR continues to
reinscribe). In short, the concept of the generalised biopolitical border,
while prompting a critique of the concept of the border of the state,
amounts to a different type of framework.
Recognising that the concept of the border of the state and the
concept of the generalised biopolitical border are two different types
of frame calls into question whether one can be considered better
than another. Immediately the problem here is that the terms of the
question presuppose the existence of a ground of some kind a set of
criteria or metrics according to which a given frame might be judged.
In conventional social scientific inquiry an appeal to some notion of
reality or empirical referent can be identified as acting as such a
ground. As Derrida has shown, however, appeals of this nature are
sorted, invested and interpreted: there is always a politics of reality.127
In other words, there are always frames, and each one is contestable
and politically charged: paraphrasing Derrida, there is always a politics
of framing. It is precisely because of the fundamental absence of an
absolute frame, a meta-frame according to which all other frames
might be judged better or worse than others, that there is a need for
the activity of framing in the first place. Further still, the absence of
a meta-frame means that no frame is impervious to deconstructive
analysis: deconstruction is the case.128
According to Derrida, a deconstructive perspective must neither
re-frame nor fantasise the absence of the frame.129 In other words,
the work of deconstruction is to negotiate between two competing
imperatives. On the one hand, because the activity of framing is
always contingent, unstable and violent, deconstructive analysis
should not aspire to, or be satisfied with, merely switching one
problematic frame (for example, the concept of the border of the state)
for another (for example, the concept of the generalised biopolitical
border). On the other hand, deconstructive analysis requires sensitivity to the way in which frames are used everyday through
language and, while the activity of framing never works because of
infinite context, it will not do simply to wish this activity away: some
form of closure is necessary for anything to happen and so we need
frames. This means that any form of practice/theory ultimately relies

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BORDER POLITICS

upon line drawing: even a mode of thinking that advocates the refusal
of drawing lines. Interestingly, this is reflected in the counter-response
to Prozorov given by Edkins and Pin-Fat: that their reading of
Agamben leads to a politics of decisioning and particular distinctions.130 In this way, despite Agambens insistence on the necessity of
adopting a logic of the field, his accounts of the activity of sovereign
power and the prospects for resistance against it do not overcome a
reliance on borders, distinctions and separations. It must be reiterated,
however, that, for Derrida, this is not necessarily something to lament.
Although borders continually break down, they are nevertheless
necessary. What this means is that the politics of framing must be
marked and negotiated as such. The implications of Derridas account
of what I have called the politics of framing can be summarised as
follows.
First, as we have seen in relation to the use of the concept of the
border of the state, different frames in global politics do not simply
produce different representations of global politics. The activity of
framing, of invoking borders, distinctions and separations to try to
make sense of contemporary political life, is not divorced from global
politics but fundamentally part of it. Therefore, any form of framing
constitutes praxis in its own right, with important ethical and political
ramifications.
Second, in the absence of a meta-frame or absolute standard, the
use of a particular frame to try to make sense of contemporary political
life must be seen as a political move. In other words, the adoption of
one frame or another is always something that cannot be fully justified
and is therefore open to the possibility of unending scrutiny, debate
and/or contestation. On this basis, for example, my own elaboration of
the concept of the generalised biopolitical border can be read as a
political act using the work of a variety of theorists to articulate an
alternative imaginary to that dominated by the concept of the border
of the state.
Third, part of the work of deconstruction is to expose practices of
framing in order that particular frames might be interrogated and/or
resisted as contingent outcomes: as borders drawn to provide comfort
and security in the otherwise meaninglessness of the flux. A
deconstructive ethos is to show how, no matter how established or
settled a given frame appears to be, it is always produced in a limitless context of interpretation and reinterpretation which, necessarily,

Alternative Border Imaginaries

159

denies the possibility of any sort of closure, finitude or totalisation.

Fourth, as well as vigilance towards diverse practices of framing,
deconstruction implies the need for a constant questioning of frames.
On this basis, it is necessary continually to reflect on the frames used
to try to make sense of global politics and project these reflections into
our analyses. Following this ethos, it is necessary perpetually to return
to, question and realise the limitations of framings in global politics
which any further uptake of the concept of the generalised biopolitical
border must necessarily embrace.
NOTES
1. Virno and Hardt, Radical Thought in Italy, 1997, p. 7 (emphasis added).
2. Ibid., p. 2.
3. For parallels with Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattaris view of the task of
philosophy see Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 1994.
4. Wall, Au Hasard, 2005, p. 40.
5. Norris, Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead, 2005,
p. 5.
6. Butler, Precarious Life, 2003, pp. 589.
7. Ibid., pp. 612.
8. Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 113.
9. See Caldwell, Bio-Sovereignty and the Emergence of Humanity, 2004;
Edkins, Humanitarianism, humanity, human, 2003; Kumar Rajaram
and Grundy-Warr, The Irregular Migrant as Homo Sacer, 2004.
10. Caldwell, Bio-Sovereignty and the Emergence of Humanity, 2004,
p. 116.
11. iek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2002, p. 94.
12. Walker, Inside/outside, 1993; Ashley, The Geopolitics of Geopolitical
Space, 1987.
13. Bulley, Foreign Terror, 2008.
14. Agamben, On Security and Terror, 2008.
15. Kalyvas, The Sovereign Weaver, 2005, p. 112.
16. Connolly, The Complexity of Sovereignty, 2004, p. 27.
17. Agamben, I am sure that you are more pessimistic than I am, 2004,
p. 123.
18. Edkins, Whatever Politics, 2007, p. 70.
19. Agamben, I am sure that you are more pessimistic than I am, 2004,
p. 123.
20. Ibid., p. 116.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 121.

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BORDER POLITICS

23. Ibid., p. 122.

24. Agamben, The Time That Remains, 2005, p. 51.
25. Agamben, I am sure that you are more pessimistic than I am, 2004,
p. 123.
26. Agamben, Profanations, 2007, pp. 7392.
27. Ibid., p. 86.
28. Ibid., p. 92.
29. Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 139 (emphasis added).
30. Agamben, The Coming Community, 1993; Form-of-Life, 1996; Means
Without End, 2000.
31. Agamben, The Coming Community, 1993, p. 143.
32. Agamben, Form-of-Life, 1996, p. 151.
33. Agamben, The Coming Community, 1993, p. 67.
34. Agamben, We Refugees.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Edkins, Whatever Politics, 2007
40. Edkins and Pin-Fat, Through the Wire, 2005; Introduction: Life, Power,
Resistance, 2004.
41. Edkins and Pin-Fat, Introduction: Life, Power, Resistance, 2004, p. 12.
42. Agamben, Means Without End, p. 138.
43. Edkins and Pin-Fat, Through the Wire, 2005, p. 1.
44. Ibid., p. 12.
45. Edkins, Whatever Politics, 2007, pp. 756.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 86.
49. Edkins, Whatever Politics, 2007, p. 78.
50. Edkins and Pin-Fat, Through the Wire, 2005; Introduction: Life, Power,
Resistance, 2004.
51. Edkins and Pin-Fat, Introduction: Life, Power, Resistance, 2004, p. 13.
52. Edkins and Pin-Fat, Through the Wire, 2005, p. 15.
53. Agamben, Form-of-Life, 1996.
54. Edkins and Pin-Fat, Introduction: Life, Power, Resistance, 2004, p. 17.
55. Agamben, Say No to Bio-Political Tattooing, 2004.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Prozorov, X/Xs, 2005, p. 104.
60. Ibid., p. 104.

Alternative Border Imaginaries

61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.

161

Edkins and Pin-Fat, Through the Wire, 2005, p. 13.

Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 14.
Edkins and Pin-Fat, Introduction: Life, Power, Resistance, 2004, p. 18
(emphasis added).
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 18.
Edkins, Whatever Politics, 2007, pp. 8890.
Ibid., p. 90.
Derrida, Positions, 1981.
Derrida, Letter to a Japanese Friend, 1985.
Derrida, Limited Inc., 1988, p. 21.
Derrida, Positions, 1981, pp. 401.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid.
Derrida, Limited Inc., 1988, p. 21.
Ibid (emphasis added).
Culler, On Deconstruction, 1987.
Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 867.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 88.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Derrida, Limited Inc., 1988, p. 148.
Ibid.
Derrida, Positions, 1981, pp. 405.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 1997, p. 144.
Ibid., p. 145.
Derrida, The Supplement of Copula, 1979, p. 34.
Ibid., p. 34.
Derrida, Diffrance, 1982.
Derrida, Positions, 1981, pp. 389.
McQuillan, Deconstruction: A Reader, 2000, p. 16.
This point also calls into question the assumed tendency to privilege
speech over writing in Western thought as if it were more direct,
unmediated, pure or self-present.

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BORDER POLITICS

100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
130.

De Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1968.

Derrida, Of Grammatology, 1997, pp. 2765.
Roberts, Nothing But History, 1995, p. 196.
Derrida, Force and Signification, 2002.
Derrida, Limited Inc., 1998, p. 136.
Derrida, Some Statements and Truisms, 1990, p. 85.
Derrida, As if I were dead, 1996, p. 217.
Derrida, Some Statements and Truisms, 1990, p. 85.
Derrida, Deconstruction: the Im-Possible, 2001, p. 20.
Derrida, Some Statements and Truisms, 1990, p. 85.
Derrida, Limited Inc., 1988, p. 128.
Derrida, Deconstruction and the Other, 1995, p. 25.
Derrida, Limited Inc., 1988, p. 148.
Derrida, The Parergon, 1979.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid.
Dronsfield, After Parerga, 2003, p. 35.
Derrida, The Parergon, 1979, p. 24.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 22.
Derrida, The Truth in Painting, 2002, p. 61.
Ibid., p. 299.
Ibid., p. 304.
Ibid., p. 61.
Derrida, Limited Inc., 1988, pp. 1523.
Derrida, Politics and Friendship, 2002, p. 223.
Derrida, Some Statements and Truisms, 1990, p. 85.
Derrida, The Parergon, 1979, p. 28.
Edkins and Pin-Fat, Introduction: Life, Power, Resistance, 2004, p. 15.

CONCLUSION

On the eve of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the worlds

attention was drawn towards the escalation of conflict in Georgia,
where President Mikhail Saakashvili launched an aerial bombardment
and ground attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The
following day, Friday 8 August, images of the spectacular opening
ceremony of the Games were overshadowed by live footage of
Georgian troops taking control of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian
capital, together with the mobilisation of Russian armed forces into
the region. Seeking to justify bombing raids over South Ossetia and
throughout greater Georgia, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
spoke of the need to protect the interests of the 70,000 or so people
who had accepted the offer of Russian citizenship. In response,
Georgia sought to regain control of its disputed territory and called
for international support against the presence of the Russian military
within its borders. Arguments about the sanctity of Georgias borders
and the principle of territorial integrity were quickly deployed by
President Saakashvili: Russia is fighting a war with us in our own
territory. This is a clear intrusion on another countrys territory. We
have Russian tanks on our territory, jets on our territory in broad
daylight. 1 The intrusion of Russian forces into Georgian territory was
denounced on similar grounds by French President Nicolas Sarkozy
and United States President George W. Bush respectively:
The territorial integrity and belonging of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia to Georgia can never be put under doubt.2
The United States and her allies stand with the people of
Georgia, and their democratically elected government. We insist
163

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BORDER POLITICS

that Georgias sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected,

and Moscow must honour its pledge to withdraw all its invading
forces from Georgian territory.3
Nevertheless, while Russian President Dimitry Medvedev claimed to
respect the cornerstone of the United Nations Charter, he argued that
his countrys foreign policy must first and foremost protect its citizens
in South Ossetia for whom the current border settlement was not
adequate:
Russia does not reject the principle of territorial integrity but its
foreign policy will take into account the will of the peoples of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, who are unlikely to want to remain
in the same state with Georgia. If someone continues to attack
our citizens, our peacekeepers, then of course we will answer just
as we did.4
As the various leaders issued statements on a daily basis, large
numbers of South Ossetians fled their homes, the Georgian towns of
Gori and Senaki were left ravaged, and a significant but ultimately
unknown number of civilians are reported to have died.5
The argument of this book has not been that borders between states
are obsolescent or that the modern geopolitical imaginary no longer
matters in global politics. Clearly, as the summer of violence in
Georgia illustrates all too brutally, what we might call traditional
geopolitical conflict over territorial borders is still very much a part of
contemporary political life. Indeed, the location of the international
border between Georgia and Russia is at the heart of the South
Ossetian crisis, with bitter historically embedded disagreements
concerning the alignment between people, nation and territory.
Furthermore, as the above quotations serve to illustrate, responses to
the conflict by the international community have been framed by
notions of the sanctity of territorial possession and inviolability of
state borders. On this basis, it would be churlish to suggest that the
concept of the border of the state, together with more conventional
inside/outside ways of thinking, has somehow lost its pertinence in
todays world.
On the contrary, as demonstrated in Chapters 1, 2 and 3, this
concept has acted, and continues to act, as a dominant framing in

Conclusion

165

both the theory and practice of global politics. As many scholars from
diverse disciplinary backgrounds have also argued, however, the work
that the concept of the border of the state does has been somewhat
under-theorised. Such neglect has been particularly conspicuous in
the discipline of IR which, as we have seen, has had a tendency to
produce theoretical analyses of global politics that are dependent
upon, but nevertheless take for granted, a particular understanding
and use of the concept of the border of the state. By contrast,
theorising and understanding this concept as a particular frame in
global politics allow for an interrogation of the array of practices it
enables, constrains and legitimises. Moreover, as shown in Chapter 3,
this framing and the modern geopolitical imaginary it supports rely
upon and reproduce specific notions about the intrarelationship
between violence, territory and power.
Yet, while the continued significance of the concept of the border of
the state is not in dispute, it is possible to identify a proliferation of
bordering practices in contemporary political life that complicates the
modern geopolitical imaginary. As the examples in Chapter 1 demonstrate, the fine lines depicted on Mercators map belie the increasing
complexity and thickness of bordering practices. Moves towards
integrated border security in the UK, European and American contexts
suggest departures from conventional thinking about the nature and
location of borders, so that they are now evermore offshored, electronic and peripatetic. The danger is that an approach to the study of
borders that reads the concept of the border of the state only in the
context of the modern geopolitical imaginary is one that is ultimately
unable to identify, interrogate and/or resist such practices which
remain obscured by the dominant frame. While there is certainly a
continued need for detailed case studies of traditional border sites
understood to be located at the geographical outer edge of the state, it
is also imperative that border studies adopts a more sophisticated
conceptualisation of what and where borders are. Otherwise, border
studies runs the risk of (re)producing an outdated paradigm of
analysis that is unable to keep pace with the diversification of
bordering practices in global politics. On this basis, I have argued
that it is necessary to attempt to think outside the modern geopolitical
imaginary, in order to diversify, pluralise and radicalise our understanding of what studying borders today might mean.
This is no easy task because many of the theories, categories and

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concepts we might use to critique the modern geopolitical imaginary

are themselves part of that very horizon of thought. Seeking to contribute to nascent moves away from a geopolitical towards a biopolitical paradigm of analysis, however, this book has argued that
critical resources for developing alternative border imaginaries can be
found in the work of Giorgio Agamben. Agambens diagnosis of the
operation of sovereign power offers an array of spatio-ontological
devices, such as the ban, the camp and a logic of the field, with which
it is possible to articulate how borders are intimately linked to the
bodies of those in transit, as mobile as the subjects they seek to
control, and not merely confined to the outer edges of sovereign territory but more and more generalised throughout a global biopolitical
terrain. These features of bordering practices in contemporary political
life are not otherwise locatable on the radar of conventional border
studies reliant upon and reproductive of the modern geopolitical
imaginary. This way of thinking is blind to these dynamics whereas,
responding to interdisciplinary calls for alternative border imaginaries
from writers such as Balibar, Walker and Weizman, the concept of the
generalised biopolitical border offers both a means of identifying and
of engaging critically with them.
Thinking in terms of the biopolitical generalised border highlights
and confronts the contingency of the juridicalpolitical order. This
order, born of the exception, is predicated upon the performative act of
suspending law to create a zone of indistinction in which sovereign
power produces a form of life amenable to its sway: bare life. The
proper subject of sovereign power is recast: not the modern bordered
sovereign citizen but the mute carrier of sovereignty defined not by
rights but by exposure to the decision on whether it is human life
deemed worthy of living as such.6 Once this reconfigured view of
the relation between sovereignty and subjectivity is adopted, then
alternative possibilities for thinking about ethicalpolitical praxis are
opened up. New ways of conceptualising resistance emerge based
around the notion of inoperativity and the attempt to jam the
sovereign biopolitical machine by turning its own logic against it.
Agambens diagnosis of the activity of sovereign power calls for
analyses of the changing methods and locations of the production of
bare life which, as we have seen, are not only confined to traditional
border crossings but detention camps, railway stations and spaces of
exception throughout everyday life. Furthermore, the production of

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167

bare life is a bordering practice that can involve citizens as well as

government officials and this has particular significance in the context
of the War on Terror.7 Writing in 1938, Walter Benjamin claimed that:
In times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator,
everybody will be in the position of having to play detective. 8
Reflecting Benjamins insight of seventy years ago, in 2007 the New
York Metropolitan Transport Agency (MTA) ran a poster and radio
advertisement campaign called The Eyes of New York. Under the
banner If you see something, say something, good citizens were
enjoined to be on the lookout for suspicious activity.
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on
11 September 2001, the London Metropolitan Police (the Met) has
led a series of similar campaigns in the United Kingdom. The most
recent, from January 2006 to March 2007, led with the banner: If you
suspect it, report it. Six posters call for vigilance, targeting: financial
activity (Terrorists need funding. Have any cheque or credit card
transactions made you suspicious?); the use of vehicles (Terrorists
need transport. Has a vehicle sale or a rental made you suspicious?);
the Thames (Terrorists could use the river. If you live or work on
the river, has anything made you suspicious?); domestic storage
(Terrorists need storage. Are you suspicious of anyone using garages,
lock-ups or storage space?); and apartment blocks (Terrorists need
places to live. Are you suspicious of your tenants or neighbours?) (See
figure 3.)
What the campaign does not tell us is what it is about getting a
refund, owning a white van, being near a river, using a garage or living
in a block of flats that is particular to terrorist activity. Rather, the
suspicion, as with the MTA example, is generalised and objectless.
While the stated aim of both campaigns in New York and London is to
achieve greater security, it is not at all clear that this sort of approach
is successful in accomplishing its expressed goals. On the contrary,
it can lead to many more problems, including the very dynamics it
presumably seeks to overcome. For example, Judith Butler has highlighted how the imperative for good citizens to be on the lookout
for risky subjects constitutes a potential licence for prejudicial
perception.9 Butler argues that the cultivation of an objectless
suspicion translates into a virtual mandate to heighten racialised ways
of looking and judging in the name of national security which, in turn,
fosters mutual resentment and reinstates divisions along racial lines.10

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Figure 3 If you suspect it, report it campaign, January 2006

Conclusion

169

In this way, she claims, a certain form of indefinite containment permeates public culture outside the prison walls, on the subway, in the
airports, on the street, in the workplace.11 Furthermore, the racialisation of suspicion translates into acts of violence in these otherwise
normal everyday settings as demonstrated by the shooting of Jean
Charles de Menezes in Stockwell Station.
Irrespective of the numbers of people who actually call anti-terror
hotline numbers, the campaigns of the MTA and London Met illustrate how a politics of affect is employed in the ongoing War on
Terror. Indeed, following Benjamin, it is through the attempt to
cultivate citizen-detectives that the central dynamics of the war on
terror are (re)produced: dynamics that are not localised in the conflict
zones of Afghanistan and Iraq but identifiable throughout everyday
life in Europe and the West more generally. The cultivation of citizendetectives corresponds with attempts to produce others, usually of
non-white appearance, as depoliticised subjects whose normal
recourse to conventional provisions in politics and law are suspended
in favour of national security objectives. Of course, it might be rightly
pointed out that many of these dynamics are not new: Benjamins
writings point to the historical legacies within which current practices
must be located. Developments in technology, however, as well as
in news media coverage enable innovations in the ways in which
sovereign power attempts to secure itself both temporally and
spatially. Agambens reference to the figure of homo sacer in Roman
law reveals the ancient roots of biopolitical bordering practices but it is
necessary to detect how borders get (re)produced differently from one
historical and geographical context to another.
On the one hand, the added value of the concept of the biopolitical
generalised border is that it offers an alternative account of the
limits of sovereign power to one reliant upon the modern geopolitical
imaginary. On the other hand, as we have seen, this concept should
not be considered as a straightforward replacement for the concept
of the border of the state. Rather, what we are dealing with here are
different framings of global politics, each with particular ethical
political implications, as discussed in Chapter 5. Applying the thought
of Derrida, the task for the future of border studies, as I see it, is not
to attempt to develop new ways of thinking that try to escape,
go beyond or move outside the inside/outside problematic. On the
contrary, such attempts are always already destined to failure as they

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only ever serve to reproduce an inside/outside logic. Instead, a

Derridean-inspired approach is one that urges the incessant identification and perpetual deconstruction of the multiple practices of
inside/outside in order to interrogate what is enabled by, and who
benefits from, diverse border politics.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

8.
9.
10.
11.

BBC News Online, Georgia Conflict, 2008.

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Agamben, Means Without End, 2000, p. 13.
For a recent collection of essays that explore the role of citizens in what
Chris Rumford has called borderwork, see Rumford, Citizens and Borderwork in Contemporary Europe, 2008.
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INDEX

Note: page numbers in italics refer to pages with illustrations.

9/11 see September 11 attacks
22/7 see Menezes, Jean Charles de
Africa, 14, 268, 38, 76
Agamben, Giorgio, 89, 96124, 13246,
156, 158, 1669
Agnew, John, 1, 1415, 39, 424, 132
Ahmed, Nafeez, 118
Airline Liaison Officers, 19
Albert, Mathias, 501
America see United States
Amini, Abbas, 1423
Amnesty International, 29
Amoore, Louise, 589
Amsterdam Treaty, 25
Anarchical Society, The (Bull), 456
Anderson, Malcolm, 478
anti-terrorism, 34, 1624, 26, 2932, 589,
11724, 1679; see also security; war on
terror
archipelago, concept of, 11617
Aristotle, 97, 98
Ashley, Richard K., 53
asylum seekers, 18, 1423
authority see power; sovereignty
Balibar, tienne, 67, 15, 34, 117
ban, Agambens concept of, 98, 99
bare life, 99100, 1037, 11217, 1234,
1326, 1413, 1667
Benjamin, Walter, 678, 712, 99, 1089,
167, 169
Berlin Wall, 7, 14, 38
Biersteker, Thomas, 445
Bigo, Didier, 568, 111, 1223
binary oppositions (deconstruction),
14652

biometric borders, 589

biometrics, 16, 201, 23, 33, 589
biopolitical approach, 5860
Agamben, 97101, 105, 107, 11317
Foucault, 7981, 88
generalised biopolitical border, 910,
11417, 1234, 13146, 1569, 1669
bios, 97100, 1026, 11214, 138, 1402
Blair, Sir Ian, 11718, 122
border controls, 1728; see also bordering
practices; security
border imaginaries, 410, 4461, 13059,
166; see also border of the state,
concepts of
border of the state, concepts of
deconstructed, 1512
as empire, 856, 89
as pokh, 689, 701
as exceptional territory, 734, 112, 114
as frames, 1529
generalised biopolitical borders, 910,
11417, 1234, 13146, 1569, 1669
imperialist 845
inside/outside model, 7, 26, 549
logic of the field, 1002, 107, 111, 1446,
158
modern geopolitical imaginary, 13,
1415, 414, 59, 1324, 1646
zones of indistinction, 1012, 1079,
11217, 1323, 1368, 1402
see also border imaginaries
border studies, 3844, 165
bordering practices, 1628, 334, 569,
1234, 143, 165
borders
biometric, 589
electronic, 123

185

186
location of, 67, 1820, 28, 33, 165
offshoring of, 1820, 28, 33
presence/absence of, 45, 15, 556, 856,
89
thickness of, 32, 155, 156, 165
vacillation of, 67, 1534, 5960
see also border of the state, concepts of
Borders Act (UK), 16
Borders, Immigration and Identity Action
Plan, 16
Borger, Julian, 4
Boudieu, Pierre, 58
Boulainvilliers, Henri de, 78
Britain see United Kingdom
Brown, Chris, 4
Brown, Gordon, 16
Bukharin, Nikolai, 83
Bull, Hedley, 456
Bulley, Dan, 135
Bush, George W., 121, 1634
Butler, Judith, 104, 1056, 133, 167, 169
Cabinet Office (UK), 23
Caldwell, Anne, 135
camp, the, 11315, 135
Canary Islands, 268
capitalism, 83
Carrera, Sergio, 27, 28
cause/effect (deconstruction), 1489
citizenship, 3, 134
civil liberties, 21
colonial occupation, 11516
concentration camps, 113, 115, 135
Connolly, William, 55, 66, 68, 106, 136
Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis
Government in the Modern Democracies
(Rossiter), 109
Constitutional Government and Democracy
(Friedrich), 109
Convention against Torture, 30
Council Declaration on the EU Response
to the London Bombings, 26
critical geopolitics, 414, 132
Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference
and Dissent (Dalby), 43
Critique of Violence (Benjamin) 678, 109
Culler, Jonathan, 1479
Dalby, Simon, 43
data capture, identity, 1922, 23, 33

BORDER POLITICS
de Boulainvilliers, Henri, 78
de Menezes, Jean Charles, 11724, 169
de Saussure, Ferdinand, 151
Dean, Mitchell, 75
decision-making, 724, 989, 1212, 124
Declaration on Combating Terrorism, 26
deconstruction, 14652, 157
Defence of the Realm Act (UK), 110
Deleuze, Gilles, 105
Department of Homeland Security (US), 58
Derrida, Jacques, 8, 10, 6872, 1067,
14659, 16970
de-subjectification, 137, 138
detention, indefinite, 2932, 133
Dick, Cressida, 119
diffrance (Derrida), 1512
Dikken, Blent, 115
disciplinary power (Foucault), 7980
Donnan, Hastings, 38
e-Borders Programme, 1920, 23
economic migration see migration
economy, global, 77; see also globalisation
Edkins, Jenny, 61, 98, 136, 1406, 158
Eighth Book on the Concept of History
(Benjamin), 109
Einstein, Albert, 101
Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies
(Einstein), 101
electronic bordering, 123; see also e-Borders
Programme
emergency, states of, 724, 133; see also
states of exception
Emergency Powers Act (UK), 110
empire, concept of, 838
Empire (Hardt and Negri), 8391
pokh, 689, 701
Ethics of Territorial Borders: Drawing Lines in
the Shifting Sand, The (Williams), 4950
EU see European Union
European Union, 5, 248, 38
exception, states of, 724, 989, 10817
exceptional territory, 734, 112, 114
field, logic of the, 1002, 107, 111, 1446,
158
field of security, 578
Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of
Capitalist Development (Hilferding), 83
force see violence

Index
Force of Law: The Mystical Foundations of
Authority (Derrida), 6872
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK),
17, 23
Foucault, Michel, 89, 59, 75, 7782, 889,
97
framing devices, 1529
Friedrich, C., 109
Frontex, 248
Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the
Modern World (Anderson), 478
generalised biopolitical borders, 910,
11417, 1234, 13146, 1569, 1669
Geneva Convention, 30, 104
geography, political, 41
Geography of Frontiers and Boundaries, The
(Prescott), 40
geopolitics, critical, 414
Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical
Geopolitical Reasoning in American
Foreign Policy ( Tuathail and Agnew),
423
Georgia, 1634
German Law Review, 100
Germany, 723, 109
Glasgow airport attack, 16
Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World
of States, The (Jackson), 489
global economy, 77; see also globalisation
global security relations, 3, 1356
globalisation, 45, 1718
Guantnamo Bay, 2932, 1035, 11314,
133
Hardt, Michael, 8391, 130
Heller-Roazen, Daniel, 103
HERA I (Frontex operation), 27
HERA II (Frontex operation), 28
Hilferding, Rudolf, 83
Hindess, Barry, 667
History of Sexuality, Volume 1: The Will to
Power, The (Foucault), 97
Home Office (UK), 17, 23
homo sacer, concept of, 1056, 111, 124,
1336, 169; see also bare life
Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
(Agamben), 96, 978, 103, 108, 11415,
136
human rights, 302, 1345

187
ICCPR see International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights
ICERD see International Convention on the
Elimination of all Forms of Racial
Discrimination
ICJ see International Court of Justice
ICRC see International Committee of the
Red Cross
Identities, Borders, Orders: Re-Thinking
International Relations Theory (Albert,
Jacobson, Lapid), 501
identity, 3, 202
identity data capture, 1922, 23, 33
identity documents, 17, 19, 201
identity life cycle, 21, 212
immigration, 1719, 268; see also asylum
seekers; mobility
immigration control see border controls
imperialism, 83, 845
Imperialism and World Economy (Bukharin),
83
Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism
(Lenin), 83
inclusion and exclusion, 33, 98, 11213, 142
inclusive exclusion, 98, 11213
indefinite detention, 2932, 133
Independent Police Complaints
Commission (IPCC), 118
inside/outside (deconstruction), 14952
Inside/outside: International Relations as
Political Theory (Walker), 52
inside/outside model, 7, 26, 549
integrated border security, 256
International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC), 104
International Convention on the
Elimination of all Forms of Racial
Discrimination (ICERD), 30
International Court of Justice (ICJ), 31
International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), 301
international law, 302
International Relations theory, 45, 389,
4461, 165
interrogation, 29
IPCC see Independent Police Complaints
Commission
IR see International Relations
Jackson, Robert, 4, 489

188
Jacobson, David, 501
Joint e-Borders Operations Centre, 20
Kalyvas, Andreas, 136
Kant, Immanuel, 1535
Kolossov, Vladimir, 39, 40
Kratos policy, 1212, 124
Kwinter, Stanford, 101
Laffey, Mark, 89
Lapid, Yosef, 501
Laustsen, Carsten, 115
law, 2932, 6777, 109, 110; see also
sovereignty
Le Monde, 143
Lenin, Vladimir, 83
Les Pleins Pouvoirs (Tingsten), 109
Letter to a Japanese Friend (Derrida), 146
life, and politics, 97105, 136, 1389; see also
bare life; bios; zoe
life cycle see identity life cycle
lightning strike decisions, 1212, 124
Limited Inc. (Derrida), 146, 149
limology, 3844, 165
location of borders, 67, 1820, 28, 33,
5960, 165
logic of the field, 1002, 107, 111, 1446, 158
London bombings, 16, 26, 135
Madrid bombings, 26
Massumi, Brian, 1212
Mbembe, Achille, 7, 11516
Means Without End: Notes on Politics
(Agamben), 96, 1389
Medvedev, Dimitry, 164
Menezes, Jean Charles de, 11724, 169
migration, 18; see also immigration; mobility
Military Order (US), 2930, 110
Minca, Claudio, 100, 115
mobility, 14, 1728, 143
Mbius strip, 1012, 102, 139
modern geopolitical imaginary, 13, 1415,
414, 59, 1324, 1646
Nancy, Jean-Luc, 98
National Security Strategy (UK), 16
Necropolitics (Mbembe), 11516
Negri, Antonio, 8391
neo-realist approaches, 3, 45
Newman, David, 39

BORDER POLITICS
Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History
(Foucault), 78
nomos, 757, 112, 113, 114
Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of
the Jus Publicum Europaeum, The
(Schmitt), 757
Norris, Andrew, 133
nuda vita see bare life
offshoring of borders, 1820, 28, 33
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies
(Einstein), 101
Tuathail, Gearid, 414, 132
Paasi, Anssi, 39
paper documentation (identity), 17, 19
parerga (deconstruction), 1535, 156
Parergon, The (Derrida), 1534
philosophy, influence on border studies, 41
Pin-Fat, Vronique, 61, 1406, 158
policing, 57, 68, 6970, 84, 11724
polis, 98, 112, 133, 142, 145
Political Frontiers and Boundaries (Prescott),
40
political geography, 41
political science, influence on border
studies, 41
Political Theology: Four Chapters on the
Concept of Sovereignty (Schmitt), 725
Positions (Derrida), 146, 14952
post-structuralist thought, 810, 6591
power, 601, 7782; see also sovereignty
Power/Knowledge (Foucault), 778
power relations, 140, 142
pre-emption, politics of, 122
pre-emptive bordering practices, 224, 28,
58
Prescott, J. R. V., 40
presence/absence (deconstruction), 150
presence/absence of borders, 45, 15, 556,
856, 89
Problem of Constitutional Dictatorship, The
(Watkin), 109
problematisation, as method of analysis,
89
profanation, as means of resistance, 1378
Project Iris, 20
Prozorov, Sergei, 144
Pugliese, Joseph, 123
Putin, Vladimir, 163

Index
refugee, figure of, 1389
refugees see asylum seekers
resistance, 13646
Respublica Christiana, 76
Revised EU Terrorism Action Plan, 26
revolution, 69, 71, 90
risk profiling, 20, 223, 58
Rossiter, C., 109
Ruggie, John Gerard, 45
Russia, 1634
Saakashvili, Mikhail, 163
Salter, Mark, 74
Sarkozy, Nicolas, 163
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 151
Schengen Agreement, 25
Schengen Information System, 25
Schmitt, Carl, 727, 989, 1089, 112
Securing the UK border: Our Vision and
Strategy for the Future, 1617
security, 34, 1628, 569, 80, 116, 1336;
see also anti-terrorism; war on terror
Security in a Global Hub: Establishing the
UKs New Border Arrangements, 17
security relations, 3, 1356
September 11 attacks, 5, 16, 26, 58, 167
Shapiro, Michael, 61, 71
Single European Act, 25
Smart Border Alliance, 58
social psychology, influence on border
studies, 41
Social Theory of International Politics (Wendt),
467
Society Must Be Defended (Foucault), 7880
sociology, influence on border studies, 41
South Ossetia, 1634
Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics
(Edkins, Pin-Fat, Shapiro), 61
sovereignty
and bare life, 98100, 1068, 1325, 166
and borders of the state, 525, 601
empire as alternative form of, 8390
limits of sovereign power, 601, 76, 801,
10817
and resistance, 13746
and states of exception, 725, 98100,
10817
and subjectivity, 98100, 1068, 1323,
166
and territory, 757

189
spatial concepts
empire as smooth space, 856
Mbius strip, 1012, 102, 139
Special Theory of Relativity, 101
state borders, concepts of see border of the
state, concepts of
State of Exception (Agamben), 96
states of exception, 724, 989, 10817
subjectification, 137, 138
subjectivity, 3, 778, 1056, 1078, 134,
1369
Suganami, Hidemi, 74
surveillance, 28, 79, 11819
technology
biometrics, 16, 201, 23, 33, 589
border controls, 1819
electronic bordering, 123
identity data capture, 1922, 23, 33
territorial trap, 1415, 42
territory, 1634
and borders, 2, 14, 1820, 28, 334
exceptional territory, 734, 112, 114
and law, 2932, 737
and sovereignty, 757, 81
and violence, 667
terrorism, 5, 16, 26, 58, 135, 167; see also
anti-terrorism; war on terror
Theory of International Politics (Waltz), 45
Theory of Relativity, 101
thickness of borders, 32, 155, 156, 165
Time That Remains, The (Agamben), 1378
Tingsten, H., 109
transformation of borders see vacillation of
borders
travel see mobility
Treaty of Rome, 25
Truth in Painting, The (Derrida), 1545
UK see United Kingdom
UKBA see United Kingdom Border Agency
UN see United Nations
UNITED, 26
United Kingdom, 1624, 10910
United Kingdom Border Agency, 16, 19
United Nations, 2, 2931, 32, 104
United States, 58, 77, 143
US see United States
vacillation of borders, 67, 1534, 5960

190
van Houtum, Henk, 41
violence, 50, 55, 60, 6672, 109, 140, 142
Virno, Paolo, 130
Walker, R. B. J., 7, 516, 61, 701, 901
Waltz, Kenneth, 45
war, 10910, 1356
war on terror, 2930, 58, 1223, 1403,
1679; see also anti-terrorism; security
Watkin, F., 109
Weber, Max, 2
Weimar constitution, 723
Weizman, Eyal, 7, 11617
Weldes, Jutta, 89
Wendt, Alexander, 467

BORDER POLITICS
Westphalian system, 5, 45, 501
whatever being, 1389, 141
Whatever Politics, (Edkins), 1456
width of borders see thickness of borders
Williams, John, 4, 4950
Wilson, Thomas, 38
World Trade Center attack see September 11
attacks
Yugoslavia, dissolution of, 38
iek, Slavoj, 135
zoe, 97100, 1026, 107, 11214, 138, 1402
zones of indistinction, 1012, 1079,
11217, 1323, 1368, 1402