Introduction: Who can and cannot enter EUropean space?

The mobility of the non-European Union population towards EU territory has recently dramatically redrawn the public’s attention to the problem of borders, both in the EU and in its neighbouring countries. Nearly three decades after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the triumph of normative vision of borderless EUrope, there have been many dramatic and mediatised attempts to cross the very border of the European Union, either through the Mediterranean Sea, the massively razor-wired walls in the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta bordering Morocco (Saddiki, 2010), La Manche from the French city of Calais (Rigy and Schlembach, 2013; Reinisch, 2015), or attempting to come ashore Greek or Italian islands (Lendaro, 2016). This mobility has also increasingly affected the social and political life of the EU’s neighbours, as they become the last transit areas in journeys to EU territory, which – in turn – has resulted in othering people in motion by local populations (Andersson, 2010a, 2010b; Bachelet, 2018). At the same time, the populations of non-EU countries, which are part of the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), have been experiencing less mediatised border crossings for labour or educational purposes given visa restrictions. This crossing of the Schengen area border affects their professional and personal lives with the recurring need to peregrinate back and forth during their visas’ validity (Folis, 2012). Hence, the problem of borders is now in the limelight of politics of the EU as a whole and in the political and social life of many member states, as well as affecting neighbouring countries.

Within the European Union, this is mostly seen as a problem of ‘effective protection’ of its external borders, not only by the EU border agency Frontex and national border guards, but also by engaging the EU’s neighbours, especially those in Northern Africa (Bialasiewicz, 2012). However, at the same time, this ‘effective protection’ of the external border is linked within the EU to both defending or opposing the liberal values and principles of EUrope, especially in the context of what is called the ‘migration crisis’.