The eu’s miGrATion relATions wiTh menA counTries 147
the international system is less commanding, but still powerful.
States are changing, but they are not disappearing. State sovereignty
has been eroded, but it is still vigorously asserted. Governments are
weaker, but they can still throw their weight around. At certain times
publics are more demanding, but at other times they are more pliable.
Borders still keep out intruders, but at other times they are more
porous (Rosenau 1997: 4).The dilemmas of international-migration relations are made evident at the
borders of states because it is these borders that give meaning to interna-
tional migration as a distinct social process.
The construction of notions of danger and risk, and consequently of
policy dilemmas, lies indisputably at the land and sea borders that separate
these states and regions. These borders can be seen as points of demarcation,
but they also possess a more symbolic quality as they go very much to the
heart of debates about the meaning of Europe, as both an economic bloc and
some kind of community def ining itself in relation to the ‘other’. The result
is that the debate about the borders of Europe is far more than a discussion
of border security. It is also a debate about how European countries organise
and understand themselves and then how these understandings inform
international-migration relations. This is not to say that this organisational
and conceptual base is clearly def ined. There is, of course, tremendous
diversity within the EU. The point is that migration goes straight to the very
core of a set of questions that concern the identity of the EU and its member
states, how they organise themselves, how they understand themselves and
how organisations and understandings change.
The centrality of borders is, therefore, more than just a debate about
border security – although that is, of course, important. It is also a debate
about the identity of the EU and its member states and how they relate to
other states. European integration changes the location of borders, their
meaning and associated notions of territoriality, territorial management
and population control. Rosenau characterises the domestic/foreign frontier
as an arena where domestic and foreign issues ‘converge, intermesh or
otherwise become indistinguishable within a seamless web’ (Rosenau 1997:
4). This insight is particularly relevant because it helps us to understand how
responses to international migration necessarily involve both domestic and
international politics or, as Heisler (1992) puts it, they need to be understood
simultaneously as societal and international issues with linkages made
across these levels.