Limits at the Limes. Diffracted Sovereignty inside the Border Zones

Abstract

This paper questions state sovereignty at borders, by referencing the contradictions that a border control approach based upon security concerns creates, and the distortions between societies of norms and situations of exception that the European migration and asylum policies generate. Meanwhile, whilst sovereignty should correspond in a legal theory perspective to authority, its expressions manifested in the European borders consists essentially in domination as bare violence is deployed. By investigating the hiatus between how sovereignty ought to be in theory and how it is observed in practice, it is possible to consider that the very sovereignty is diffracted in the thickness of the frontiers (i). This paper explores the methods states develop directly or indirectly in the borders, inside the border zones, basing the analysis on the notion of heterotopia Michel Foucault forged. Such a conceptual tool is deployed in order to underscore how states construct and exploit frontiers as useful margins and establish them as dissolution zones. Three methods – extraction, classification and obliteration – are highlighted that correspond to the main purposes of border surveillance – control, selection and removal – (ii).