Border walls, irregular migration and the co‐optation of the border security playbook
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Author | Ruben Andersson |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13042 |
© 2022 International Organization for Migration.
[wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal]
Border walls, irregular migration and the
co-optation of the border security playbook
Ruben Andersson
International Development, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Correspondence
Ruben Andersson, International Development, Oxford University, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB, UK.
Email: ruben.andersson@qeh.ox.ac.uk
In January 2022, right before starting to take in Ukrainian refugees in large numbers, Poland had started
another project altogether: the building of a border fence. Cutting through pristine forests and a world heritage
site, it would stretch half the length of Poland's border with Belarus at a cost reportedly 10 times larger than
the Polish migration department's annual budget. The justification for this move was the standoff of the previ-
ous autumn with the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko. In November 2021, thousands of people in
need of protection from far afield were seemingly escorted towards the Polish border in what, to European
leaders, was a blatant attempt at using migrants and refugees as a revenge for sanctions (see Pszczółkowska,
this issue). Lukashenko, the European Commission said, was behaving like a “gangster”; the Slovenian presi-
dency said he was “playing with people's lives for political purposes”, perhaps conveniently forgetting the EU's
less than stellar record on migrant and refugee protection. 1 Yet, few seemed to notice the political pattern:
that Lukashenko's actions were simply the latest example of how the neighbours of powerful destination
states and regions have co-opted the border security playbook. If anything, they showed how such co-optation
has become a systemic feature of Europe's “fight against irregular migration”. Until European leaders – and
others across the world – realize their security approach is fuelling such brinksmanship, it is likely to keep on
escalating.
Globalization may have promised a borderless world, yet the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall have
rather bequeathed us an increasingly borderless border business. Since the 1990s, border security expenditure
has grown sharply on both sides of the Atlantic. In the EU, still lagging the multibillion-dollar expenditure of the
USA on some measures, it is indicative of the wider picture that the Union's Frontex border agency has gone
from a budget of 6 m euros in 2005, its first year, to more than 750 m euros in 2022. 2 This growth of the border
security industry has brought large economic rewards for law enforcement, militaries, defence corporations and
other public and private security providers (Akkerman, 2021; Korkmaz, 2022) as well as large political “wins” for
governments and enforcement actors. Meanwhile, it has generated huge costs for people on the move as well as
for border communities, as Gabriella Sánchez details elsewhere in this issue. The stupendous growth of border
security in terms of both the financial and political capital invested in it has also brought various political conse-
quences, among which we find the main issue of concern to this article: the bargaining and brinksmanship among
“partner” or “transit” states that it encourages.
International Migration. 2022;60:226–230.
226
COMMENTARY
DOI: 10.1111/imig.13042
Received: 10 June 2022 Accepted: 17 June 2022
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