High-Tech Fortress Europe: FRONTEX and the Dronization of Border Management

European Public Affairs: 27 January 2016 | by Raluca Csernatoni

Irregular migration has become one of the top issues on the European Union’s (EU) security agenda in terms of securing external borders, protecting the cultural and ethnic identity of EU Member States, safeguarding their socio-economic welfare systems, and combating terrorism and organised crime. However, despite countless political exclusionary discourses, media cover-ups, policy efforts and drastic practical measures to impose strict controls and manage the flow of irregular migrants within the EU, the results have been close to disastrous.

The freedom of movement within the European Union has been heralded as a hallmark of successful integration and a privilege exclusively reserved to EU citizens. Alongside such advancement within the EU, there have also been extensive practices of external bordering that lead to the creation of a so-called ‘Fortress Europe.’

While extremely efficient and successful at first analysis, the increased cooperation between Member States in terms of border management and the harmonisation of policies and processes in regards to irregular migration and asylum seekers have concomitantly generated negative results. There are countless instances in which migrants’ basic human rights have been infringed upon and relegated to second order status when border security priorities have taken precedence.

Read more: http://www.europeanpublicaffairs.eu/high-tech-fortress-europe-frontex-and-the-dronization-of-border-management/[i] W. Armstrong & J. Anderson, eds., Geopolitics of European Union Enlargement The Fortress Empire (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

[ii] H. Dijstelbloem and A. Meijer, Migration and the New Technological Borders of Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).