A Monument Made of Words? How the Metaphor of “Fortress Europe” Became a Collective Memory (1992-2008)

“Fortress Europe is a polysemic metaphor that was used as a synonym for the protectionist European Single Market from the 1980s. Since 1992, it has increasingly been associated with the European migration regime. Inside the European parliament, “Fortress Europe” was used by pro-European Members of the European Parliament (MEP)s to criticise the restrictive migration policies pushed by the Commission and the Council and turned into a political symbol for the failure to establish a common migration policy. Therefore, the topos was regularly used to provoke emotions, as part of the political game as well as in the press. This emotional connotation made the metaphor particularly suited for visual representations and it became a recurring motive in contemporary art in the early 2000s. Those works were politically charged and blurred the lines between art and activism. Many of them claimed to contribute to the collective memory of the victims of the European migration policies and turned the metaphor into a monument. Finally, the blog “Fortress Europe” shows how the events at the European borders were remembered online in the early 2000s.