Review: Steffen Mau, ‘Sorting Machines: The Reinvention of the Border in the 21st Century’, translated by Nicola Barfoot
Review of Steffen Mau’s Sorting Machines: The Reinvention of the Border in the 21st Century, translated by Nicola Barfoot (Polity, 2022), 174 pages
Abstract
Steffen Mau asks: How do borders operate in the twenty-first century? Mau’s central argument is that globalisation has not brought about a debordering of the nation-state. Mau presents counter-narratives to the dominant discourses of the 1990s that predicted an emerging “borderless world” and the demise of the nation-state. Mau explains that bordering is not simply the definition of a physical and static geographic space rather borders are recognised as the product of dynamic functional processes. Globalisation does not cause borders to disappear, rather borders have been reproduced and reconstituted as a complex of sorting machines that allow the smooth flow of goods, capital and people regarded as privileged whilst limiting the flow of migrants classed as undesirable. Many traditional border barriers appear to have disappeared only to reappear in a different form. In the case of migration, boundary crossing takes place, but this does not mean that the boundary is broken or that people on the inside of the boundary regard it as irrelevant.
Reviewed by Shaun Best
Mau’s argument reflects the major conceptual development in border studies and the changing nature of state borders. Following Van Houtum and Naerssen (2002), Newman (2011) and Scott (2011, 2012) Mau argues that the processes of border-making or bordering are not rooted in spatial fixity. Bordering is not simply the definition of a physical and static geographic space rather borders are recognised as the product of dynamic functional processes. Contemporary border-making includes the power to sort people according to the degree to which they are perceived to ‘belong.’ Borders have a panoptic sorting function of filtering and separating populations, allowing only desired mobility and ‘risk classification’ to prevent unwanted mobility. Borders simultaneously enact liberalisation and control allowing both freedoms of movement and restrictiveness.
From the year 2000 onwards, Mau demonstrates that there has been a significant increase in the number of walled or fortified borders. There has also been significant growth in increasing smart digital border surveillance. Most borders are described by Mau as ‘filtering borders’ or cordon sanitaire, that close the border to the undesirable border crossing from people who are perceived as less than human and a potential threat but allow for the benefits of cross-border mobility and interchange. Opportunities to cross borders have increased but not for everyone. Mau demonstrates how European nations manage to subvert their UN obligations and their asylum policies by preventing the migrant’s ability to legally apply for entry.
This is possible argues Mau because borders have also gone through a process of externalisation, displacement, and spatial diffusion. In addition to the fixed line on a map, borders extend beyond the line on a map to places where unwanted spatial movements originate, a form of extra territorialization of control to prevent journeys from the beginning. Borders are not limited to barbed wire and fences; borders have been reinvented in the conditions of globalisation to include forms of remote control that reach beyond the national sphere to include an exchange between states and international agencies of control.
As the current system for managing refugees was put together for nation-states by nation-states, understandably Mau accepts that the nation-state remains a crucial element in the conceptualizing of borders. A state’s ability to close national borders is seen as an important security measure. Border securitization and security-related issues have impacted our understanding of borders.
Even when a successful border crossing takes place the migrant finds themselves faced with new internal borders with limited rights and access to services. In addition, people smuggling, the newly defined ‘illegal’ status of migrant populations once they have managed to cross the border, why host populations find it difficult to accept otherness, and why migrants lose both voice and agency in the system, are only addressed in passing. Mau does not directly address viable solutions to mass displacement, the problems of internally displaced people, or the lack of long-held solutions to mass displacement that finds refugees around the world spending years in camps with little opportunity to rebuild their lives or contribute to the host society. Solutions such as Femke Halsema’s (2017) conception of ‘Zatopia’ where responsibility for the protection of refugees moving from the nation states to the regional level or Robin Cohen and Nicholas Van Hear’s (2020) similar conception of Refugia, and Alexander Betts and Paul Collier (2017) on the establishment of ‘safe havens’ are not discussed.
Following the Libyan civil war, the Syrian civil war and the 2014–2017 War in Iraq a substantial number of people found themselves in particularly challenging circumstances and consequently the summer of 2015 came to be known as the Summer of Migration. In response to the significant increase in the number of displaced persons, the European Union formed agreements with Turkey and Tunisia to circumvent the principle of non-refoulement. Non-refoulement is the obligation of nation states to not engage in coercing forced migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers to return to a country where it can be reasonably expected that they will be subjected to persecution. Non-refoulement is incorporated in the 1951 UN Convention on Human Rights. However, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) established in 2004, is used by the EU to prevent forced migrants from attempting to make their way across the Mediterranean to Europe and keep them firmly on the other side of’ our door’ (Bauman 2016).
For Frontex, the protection of nation-state borders is focused on surveillance and policing the movement of non-state actors such as individuals and families fleeing civil war and other conflicts that they did not want and did not invite. On its web pages, Frontex describes its role in the following terms:
“Frontex coordinates maritime operations (e.g. in Greece, Italy, and Spain) but also at external land borders, including in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Slovakia. It is also present at many international airports across Europe. Frontex assesses risks to EU border security… if an EU country is facing extreme pressure at an external border, especially the arrival of large numbers of non-EU nationals, Frontex coordinates the deployment of European Border Guard Teams… develops best practices for returning migrants and coordinates joint return operations” (Frontex 2020).
In 2020, the New York Times reported that Frontex officers participated in illegal "pushbacks" of forced migrants already in European waters from reaching mainland Europe via Greek waters.
Mau gives a detailed and up-to-date empirical account of the “unmistakable trends of closure, border selectivity and control” (p. 35) He demonstrates the steps taken by nation-states to maintain their bordering function whilst maintaining beneficial global links. Mau’s detailed account demonstrates that paperless migrants are treated with suspicion and resentment, disowned by all nation-states, and become rightless; they are not equal before the law because no law applies to them, and no nation-state offers them protection. Being human does not confer any specific rights except for the rights provided by the nation-state. However, Mau does not discuss the racist underpinning of much of the nostalgic rhetoric around borders. The meaning and significance of Nigel Farage’s slogan: 'Take back control of our borders’ or Donald Trump's ‘Make America Great Again’ and how such rhetoric is used to undermine protection frameworks for migrants is not examined. In addition, apart from a passing reference to Zygmunt Bauman’s (p35, 142) observation of a double standard of globalisation in which some people inhabit the globe whilst others are chained to a place, Mau does not engage with relevant theory and current debates on migration. Mau presents a detailed but not theory-driven account of the socioeconomic and cultural realities that border studies engage with. For that reason, Mau’s book is worth reading.
In the last analysis, Mau presents an informed analysis of the nature of national borders as physical, legal and metaphysical formations, explains the new and increasingly “smart borders”, digital and other technological practices of border control, and presents a detailed transnational analysis of how European Union countries have transferred responsibility for border control to the southernmost border of EU notably to Greece and Italy, and more distant countries outside of Europe. What comes across clearly but not explicitly from Mau's text is that human rights are linked solely with state citizenship, consequently, refugees are left ‘world less’ and without rights. The situation is further compounded by the fact that countries are increasingly unwilling to offer shelter to displaced persons. There is no dominant border theory, however, the detailed empirical account offered by Mau’s book will allow readers to assess and evaluate the conceptual frameworks currently available. Mau also raises the question of why nation-states continue policing borders in the ways that they do. And what are the human costs and moral consequences of such bordering, Othering and fixing of territorial identities? And can such a cost be justified?
References
Bauman, Z (1998) On Globalisation: Or Globalisation for Some, Localization for Others, Thesis Eleven 54(1), 37–49.
Bauman, Z (2016) Strangers at our Door, Cambridge, Polity
Betts A and Collier, P (2017) Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System, Oxford, Oxford University Press
Cohen, R and Van Hear, N (2020) Refugia. Radical Solutions to Mass Displacement. London, Oxon and Routledge
European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) (2020) https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/institutions-and-bodies/institutions-and-bodies-profiles/frontex_en
Halsema, F (2017) Nergensland: nieuw licht op migratie. Amsterdam: Ambo-Antho
Newman D. (2011), “Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies: An Overview”, in Wastl Water D. (ed.), Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, Ashgate Publishers, pp. 33-47.
Scott, J. W. (2011), “Borders, Border Studies and EU Enlargement”, in Wastl Water D. (ed.), Ashgate Research Companion of Border Studies, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, pp. 123-142.
Scott, J. W. (2012), “European Politics of Borders, Border Symbolism and Cross-Border Cooperation”, in Wilson T. and Donnan H. (eds.), A Companion to Border Studies, Hoboken, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 83-99.
Stevis-Gridneff, Martina (2020) E.U. Border Agency Accused of Covering Up Migrant Pushback in Greece. The New York Times, (26 November 2020).
Shaun Best is a visiting lecturer at the University of Winchester. His research has mainly focused on the work of Zygmunt Bauman including Zygmunt Bauman on Education in Liquid Modernity (2020) and Zygmunt Bauman: Why Good People do Bad Things (2013).
Email: shaun.best@winchester.ac.uk
