skip to main contentskip to main menuskip to footer Universität Bielefeld Play Search

Internalizing Borders

ZiF Logo
ZiF main building from the side, blooming trees, green lawn
Universität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer
Switch to main content of the section
Graphic Research Group Borders
Design: C. Mehl/Büro Paschetag

Convenors

Volker M. Heins (Essen, GER)

Sabine Hess (Göttingen, GER)

Dana Schmalz (Heidelberg, GER)

Frank Wolff (Osnabrück, GER)

Contact at ZiF

Sebastian Lemme
sebastian.lemme@uni-bielefeld.de

Closing Conference: 27 - 29 November 2024

Find details here

Internalizing Borders Mailing List

Internalizing Borders: The Social and Normative Consequences of the European Border Regime

October 2023 - July 2024

State borders and their protection have resurfaced as highly controversial public and political issues in the past two decades. Hopes for a unified Europe and the stability of liberal states appear to presuppose the grim reality of the enforcement of repressive border controls against unwanted migrants. However, the return to borders as alleged safeguards of liberal sovereignty implies their material fortification, the employment of biometric databases, militarized border police, the forced immobilization in camps, and the criminalization of humanitarian activities and organizations. With the hardening of borders, violence, too, becomes an integral part of policing the mobility of populations on a worldwide scale. European borders are becoming both ubiquitous and openly violent. As border violence reportedly abounds, it becomes evident—in Europe particularly—that the new border policies conflict with liberal norms, international law and humanitarian values which constitute the historical and normative bases of the democratic nation state and the process of European unification itself. Against this backdrop, the proposed research group will explore the normative and social consequences of the fortification and closing of borders for the states and societies engaged in these processes. How do hardened borders and border violence perpetrated by state and non-state actors eat into the legal, moral, and social fabric of democratic societies, undermining the very norms on which the latter rest? How can we conceptualize the normative and social consequences of violent bordering practices?

Whereas the transformation of European border zones and the externalization of the European Union border regime deep into other continents have been thoroughly studied, the social and normative implications of violent bordering and its consequences for societies at large—which we conceptualize as border internalization—have not yet been systematically explored. These are the twin goals of the proposed ZiF Research Group: analyzing the meaning and consequences of border fortification for the societies engaged in this process and developing an interdisciplinary framework for conceptualizing the processes of border internalization. Each fellow will work on an individual case study focusing on aspects of Fields I-III and connect this research in different exchange formats with the larger group. Field I (Borders as a Laboratory) will examine how borders function as testing grounds, battle zones, and spaces of innovation for biopolitical norms and policies. Field II (Bordering and Knowledge Production) covers the processes of creating, exchanging, obfuscating, and erasing border knowledges and the discursive dynamics of bordering. Field III (Borders as Source of Social Conflict), finally, looks at how the entangled dynamics of enforcement, circumvention, solidarity, and (de-/re-)juridification create social conflict within bordering societies.

  • Group photo conference participants
    Universität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer
  • Group photo Kickoff Conference
    Universität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer
  • Group phto arrival first members of the group
    Universität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer
  • Photo during the conference, speaker at the desk at ZiF plenary hall
    Universität Bielefeld
  • Photo during the conference, Panel discussion a ZiF plenary hall
    Universität Bielefeld
  • Photo during the conference, Panel discussion a ZiF plenary hall
    Universität Bielefeld
  • Photo during the conference, question from the audience
    Universität Bielefeld
  • Photo during the conference, audience at ZiF plenary hall
    Universität Bielefeld
  • Photo during the conference, speaker at the desk at ZiF plenary hall
    Universität Bielefeld
  • Photo of Sabine Heß in the audience, one of the convenors of the research group
    Universität Bielefeld
  • Panel discussion during the conference
    Universität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer
  • People chatting in the ZiF cafeteria during the coffee break
    Universität Bielefeld/P. Ottendörfer

Output

Podcast Episodes

Frank Wolff: Walls Also Change Those Who Build Them

To the blog post

Meetings

Border Talk Series

Border Talk Series

The ZiF Border Talks are a series of online lectures. All talks of the series will be streamed on-site at ZiF and also livestreamed via Zoom at 18:15, CET.


27 June 2024
Stephen Phillips (Åbo Akademi University): “The Continuing Erosion of Refugee Law at Finland's Eastern Border”

20 June 2024
Maximilian Steinbeis (Berlin, Verfassungsblog): "Constitutional Abuse as an Authoritarian Populist Strategy"

07 June, 4:15 pm (Friday!)
Galya Ben-Arieh (Northwestern University): Policy Paradoxes: The Biden Administration's Behavior Change Approach to Asylum and Immigration

16 May 2024
Jürgen Bast (Justus Liebig University Giessen): “Doing and Undoing Human Rights at European Borders”

25 Apr 2024
Bernd Kasparek (Berlin): "Intergovernmentalism Strikes Back. How Common and how European will the Common European Asylum System be?"

13 Mar 2024
Nicholas de Genova (Houston): "From Border War to Civil War: Populism | Fascism | Authoritarianism"

28 Feb 2024
Magdalena Kmak (Turku): Mobile Law: "Law, Migration and Human Mobility"

08 Feb 2024
Todd Miller (Tucson, AZ), Franziska Grillmeier (Lesbos): "The Changing Conditions of Journalism at the Border: Experiences from the US and Europe"

25 Jan 2024
Lucy Mayblin (Sheffield) and Thom Davies (Nottingham): "Eco-Coloniality and the Violent Environmentalism of the UK-France Border"

18 Jan 2024
Annika Lindberg (Gothenburg): "On Europe's Attachment to Border Violence"

11 Jan 2024
Maurice Stierl (Osnabrück) and Martina Tazzioli (Bologna): "Undoing the Decolonial Redux, Multiplying (Post-)Colonial Legacies"

16 Nov 2023
Ekkehard Coenen (Weimar): "Knowledge and Violence - Sociological Perspectives"

 

Kickoff Conference

8 - 10 November 2023

How do hardened borders and border violence perpetrated by state and non-state actors eat into the legal, moral, and social fabric of democratic societies, undermining the very norms on which the latter rest?

How can we conceptualize the normative and social consequences of violent bordering practices? These and other questions will be addressed at the kickoff conference of the research group "Internalizing Borders".

PROGRAMME (as PDF)

The keynote on Wednesday evening and the discussion panel on Thursday morning are open to the public and will also be streamed (via Zoom). Registration is requested by 7 November, 2023.

Please contact the Research Group Coordinator Sebastian Lemme to register and, if you are attending digitally, to receive the links for the Zoom sessions: sebastian.lemme@uni-bielefeld.de.

Border Work and Authoritarian Transformation

13 - 15 December 2023

Dimensions of Border Internalization: Towards a Conceptual Framework

13 - 15 March 2024

Event Link

The following workshop sessions are open to the public and we are looking very much forward to your participation:

Wednesday, 13.03.
Keynote: 18:15, Nicholas De Genova (University of Houston): “From Border War to Civil War: Populism | Fascism | Authoritarianism”

Thursday, 14.03.
Lecture: 12:00, Laura Holderied (Justus Liebig University Giessen): “Conceptualizing and Analyzing (the Politics of) Human Rights in Migration Societies”

Keynote: 17:00, Itamar Mann (University of Haifa): “What Kind of Justice is Border Justice?”

 

Zoom-link for these public events:

https://uni-bielefeld.zoom-x.de/j/66346488673?pwd=bWs0ZXJ4RDltM1MxNVowWjJkRUNXQT09 
(Meeting-ID: 663 4648 8673 / Passcode: 508936)

Internalizing Borders: Findings and Insights of the ZiF Project

12 - 14 June 2024

More information will follow soon

27 - 29 November 2024

Closing Conference "Border Internalization: Authoritarian Transformation and the Societal Impact of Border Work"


How does border work change the societies building these borders? State borders and their 'protection' have resurfaced as highly controversial public issues in the past two decades, particularly in the context of migration governance. The return to borders as alleged safeguards of liberal sovereignty comes with their material fortification, the employment of biometric databases, militarized border police, the forced immobilization of people on the move in camps, and the criminalization of humanitarian activities.
 
Building on ample research from border studies and other scholarship, our Research Group focused on the societal effects of European bordering processes, asking how border fortification and border violence impact the societies that enact them. In Europe and elsewhere we can observe a nexus between border policies, the border spectacle, and the rise of right-wing populist, authoritarian, and nativist discourses and politics.
 
At the closing conference of our research group, we will discuss how the brutalization of European border work is related to societal shifts, the erosion of the rule of law, illiberal transformation of democracies, and the rise of authoritarianism. The conference brings together the fellows of the research group with other experts on borders, racism, and populism such as Tendayi Achiume, Miriam Ticktin, William Walters, and Maximilian Steinbeis.
 

Find the programme here.

Contact
Sebastian Lemme (scientific coordinator)
sebastian.lemme@uni-bielefeld.de

Sue Fizell (organisational support)
zif-researchsupport@uni-bielefeld.de

Members

Volker M. Heins (Essen, GER)
Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities

Sabine Hess (Göttingen, GER)
Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology
University of Göttingen

Dana Schmalz (Heidelberg, GER)
MPI for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg

Frank Wolff (Osnabrück, GER)
Modern History, IMIS
Osnabrück University

Dr. Jens Adam
Research Group Soft Authoritarianisms
University of Bremen

Prof. Maurizio Albahari, PhD
Department of Anthropology and Keough School of Global Affairs
University of Notre Dame

Prof. Soledad Álvarez Velasco, PhD
Latin American and Latino Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois Chicago

Dr. Grażyna Baranowska
Hertie School Berlin
Centre for Fundamental Rights

Prof. Dr. Lisa Marie Borrelli
Social Work
HES-SO Valais-Wallis

Prof. Nicholas de Genova, PhD
Department of Comparative Cultural Studies
University of Houston

Prof. Dr. Tobias Eule
Sociology of Law
Bern University

Dr. habil. Mareike Gebhardt
University of Muenster
Center for European Gender Studies

Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen, PhD
Center for Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration
Yale University

Marijana Hameršak, PhD
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb

Prof. Dr. Levke Harders
Gender History
Innsbruck University

Prof. Elissa Helms, PhD
Department of Gender Studies
Central European University

Prof. Azra Hromadžić, PhD
Department of Anthropology
Syracuse University

Dr. Arshad Isakjee
University of Liverpool
School of Environmental Sciences

Dr. Bernd Kasparek
Berlin Institute for Empirical Migration and Integration Research
Humboldt University Berlin

Lise Känner
Bielefeld University
Faculty of Law
Public Law and Information Law

Prof. Dr. Witold Klaus
Institute of Law Studies
Polish Academy of Sciences

Prof. Magdalena Kmak
Åbo Akademi University
Faculty of Social Sciences, Business and Economics, and Law

Dr. Jochen Lingelbach
University of  Bayreuth
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Prof. Danijela Majstorović, PhD
University of Banja Luka
Department of English

Dr. Albert Manke
University of Göttingen
Institute for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology

Prof. Itamar Mann
International Law, Human Rights, and Environmental Law
Haifa University

Brendan McGeever, PhD
Department of Psychosocial Studies and the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism
University of London

Prof. Dr. Sandro Mezzadra
Department of Arts
University of Bologna

Dr. Deborah Bunmi Ojo
Obafemi Awolowo University
Faculty of Environmental Design and Management
Department of Urban and Regional Planning

Johanna Paul
Bielefeld University
Faculty of Sociology
Sociology of Transnationalization and Social Anthropology

Dr. Dr. Maximilian Pichl
RheinMain University of Applied Sciences
Faculty of Applied Social Sciences

Almamy Sylla, PhD
Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (ULSHB)
Faculté des Sciences Humaines et des Sciences de l’Éducation

Dr. Martina Tazzioli
University of Bologna
Department of History and Cultures

Dr. Veronika Zablotsky
Freie Universität Berlin
Institute of Philosophy

Publications

  • Adam, Jens & Sabine Hess (2024): Grenzregime und Autoritäre Transformation. Zu Internalisierungseffekten repressiver Grenzpolitiken – das Beispiel Polen. In: Röder, A., Zifonun, D. (Eds.): Handbuch Migrationssoziologie, 1-30. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20773-1_20-1.
  • Albahari, Maurizio (2024): Migrant Democracy: Constitutional Promise and Political Struggle in Contemporary Italy. Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-01041-0

  • Albahari, Maurizio (forthcoming): Democratic Resistance at the “Holy Mile:” Notes from the Neapolitan Underground. In: Peripheries in European Studies. Pamela Ballinger and Clemens Sedmak, eds. Routledge.

  • Alpes, Maybritt Jill & Sylla, Almamy (2024): Quand les programmes de réintégration interrogent la citoyenneté. La figure du « retourné » au Nigéria et au Mali. Cahiers d’Études Africaines, Les équivoques de la dissuasion à la migration, LXIV (2), 254, 421-442.
  • Borrelli, Lisa Marie (2024): Mobile spaces of control and moral geographies – Places of internal bordering, immorality, and crime in Sweden. Special Issue on Mapping Internal Borders, edited by Margit Fauser. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 10.1080/01419870.2024.2345463.

  • Borreli, Lisa Marie (2024): Ignorance as political instrument? Integration discourses on migrant welfare recipients in Switzerland. Special issue on Border agnotologies: power, technology, resistance, edited by Claudia Aradau and Lucrezia Canzutti. Geopolitics. 10.1080/14650045.2024.2331793.

  • Borrelli, Lisa Marie & Lindberg A. (2024): Making (In)formality Work for Power in a Multi-Scalar European Border Regime. Special Issue on Governing Transit and Irregular Migration: Formal Policies and Informal Practices, edited by Maria Koinova. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 10.1080/1369183X.2024.2371205.

  • Borrelli, Lisa Marie & William Walters (2024): Blood, Sweat and Tears: On the Corporeality of Deportation, EPC: Politics and Space. 10.1177/23996544241232325.

  • Dakhli, Leyla, Pascale Laborier, & Frank Wolff (Eds.) (2024): Academics in a Century of Displacement: The Global History and Politics of Protecting Endangered Scholars. Migrationsgesellschaften. Wiesbaden: Springer.
  • De Genova, Nicholas (2024): Migration, Race, and the Racializing Strategy of Borders. International Migration 62 (5).
  • Derrider, Marie & Sylla, Almamy (2024): Racialized impacts of migration governance in Mali. Revue Européenne de Migration Internationale (REMI): Migrations et développement. Enjeux politiques, Volume 40, No 1, 91-115. 10.4000/remi.25425.
  • Gebhardt, Mareike, Gross-Wyrtzen, Leslie, Harders, Levke,  Helms, Elissa & Hess, Sabine (2024): Border Internalization as a Gendered Process: A Conversation Among Feminist Scholars, in: movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies.
  • González, Fredy, and Albert Manke (forthcoming): From Secrecy to the Public Sphere: Translating Chinese Sworn Brotherhood Practices for Western Audiences. In: History and Theory.
  • Gross-Wyrtzen, Leslie & Z. R. El Yacoubi (2024): Externalizing otherness: The racialization of belonging in the Morocco-EU border. Geoforum 155, 1-8.

  • Gross-Wyrtzen, Leslie (2024): La blackness dans l’histoire de l’Afrique du Nord et dans les politiques migratoires contemporaines. Un cadre d’analyse. Tumultes, Numéro thématique: Racismes anti-Noirs en Afrique du Nord, sous la direction de Isabel Ruck et Leila Seurat. 63,  71-90.

  • Harders, Levke (2024): Internalizing Borders: Placing Migration History in an Interdisciplinary Context. Migration and Belonging (blog). URL: https://belonging.hypotheses.org/5142.

  • Harders, Levke (2024): Le belonging: une catégorie d’analyse pour l’histoire. Geschichtstheorie am Werk (blog). URL: https://gtw.hypotheses.org/24173.

  • Heins, Volker M. (2024): Internalization of Borders: The Concept and Its Applications. Society 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-01004-5.
  • Heins, Volker M. (2024): Was heißt Realismus in der Asylpolitik? Tagesspiegel, 17. September 2024. URL: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/uber-einen-aktuellen-streit-der-lager-was-heisst-realismus-in-der-asylpolitik-12369527.html.
  • Helms, Elissa (2024): Race in place: scales of difference along the Balkan Route of migration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1-26. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2024.2394589.
  • Lingelbach, Jochen (2024): Unequal refugeeness. Race, gender, and co-belligerence from Poles in colonial Africa to Ukrainians in Poland. Journal of Refugee Studies, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feae089.

  • Lingelbach, Jochen (2024): Aus Europa, nach Europa. Das inter­na­tio­nale Flücht­lings­recht und sein kolo­niales Erbe. Geschichte der Gegenwart. URL: https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/aus-europa-nach-europa-das-internationale-fluechtlingsrecht-und-sein-koloniales-erbe/.

  • Lingelbach, Jochen (2024): The colonial history of refugee externalisation. Sending refugees to Rwanda was done before and exposes an imperial world-view. Externalizing Asylum. A compendium of scientific knowledge. URL: https://externalizingasylum.info/the-colonial-history-of-refugee-externalisation/.
  • Manke, Albert (forthcoming): Legal Origins of the European Border Regime: The Internalization of Racist Legislation From the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Era. In: Society.

  • Manke, Albert (forthcoming): Internalisierter Rassismus? Rechtliche Wissenstransfers aus der Ära der Exklusion asiatischer Migrant*innen in den USA nach Europa. In: Werkstatt Geschichte.

  • Manke, Albert (forthcoming): Chino cubanos entre revoluciones a través del Pacífico: El papel plurivalente de la hermandad Chee Kung Tong. In: Ricardo Martínez Esquivel, ed. El Chee Kung Tong 致公堂: Redes glocales, diáspora china y cultura política. San José: Universidad de Costa Rica.

  • Ojo, Deborah Bunmi (Forthcoming): Transnational Variation in Residents’ Quality of Life in Nigeria-Benin Republic Border Communities’. GeoJournal: Springer. 10.1007/s10708-024-11238-9.
  • Phillips, Stephen & Magdalena Kmak (2024): Deterrence as Legal Innovation: Management of Unwanted Mobilities and the Future of Refugee Protection. In: Innovative Public Governance in Times of Crisis.Nomos Publishing House.
  • Pichl, Maximilian (2024): Law statt Order. Der Kampf um den Rechtsstaat. edition suhrkamp 2837, Berlin: Suhrkamp.

  • Wolff, Frank (2024): Das trojanische Pferd der Rechten. Jacobin Magazin 16, 78–81.
  • Wolff, Frank (2024): Die Transformation Europas hinter Mauern: Ein Gespräch. FES Themenportal: Flucht, Migration, Integration.
  • Wolff, Frank (2024): Rassismus und Antisemitismus: Annäherungen an eine unheimliche Zweisamkeit. In: Antisemitismus und Rassismus: Konjunkturen und Kontroversen seit 1945, edited by Christina Morina, 115–34. Vergangene Gegenwart. Debatten zur Zeitgeschichte 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
  • Wolff, Frank (2024): The Transformation of Europe Behind Closed Borders: A Conversation. FES Online Portal Displacement, Migration, Integration.
  • Wolff, Frank (2024): When Legal Language Meets Apocalypse Anxiety: Democracy, Constitutional Scholars, and the Rise of the German Far Right after 2015. In: Far-Right Newspeak and the Future of Liberal Democracy, edited by A. James McAdams and Samuel Piccolo, 106–25.  Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right. Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003436737.
  • Wolff, Frank (2024): Endangered Scholars: Globalizing the Long History of an Emergent Category. Introduction. In: Academics in a Century of Displacement: The Global History and Politics of Protecting Endangered Scholars, edited by Leyla Dakhli, Pascale Laborier, and Frank Wolff, 3–25. Wiesbaden: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43540-0_1.
  • Adam, Jens & Hess, Sabine (2023): Fortified Nationalism. Racializing Infrastructures and the authoritarian Transformation of the Body Politic. A Field Trip to the bifurcated Polish/EU Border Regime. movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies 7 (2), 1-28. http://movements-journal.org/issues/11.ukraine/05.adam,hess--fortified-nationalism.html.

  • Albahari, Maurizio (2023): The Externalization of Borders. In: Marcelo Borges and Madeline Y. Hsu, Editors, 600-620. The Cambridge History of Global Migrations, Volume II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • De Genova, Nicholas (2023): Border Abolitionism: Analytics/ Politics.(co-authored with Martina Tazzioli). Social Text 41 (3) (Issue #156).

  • De Genova, Nicholas (2023): A Racial Theory of Labour: Racial Capitalism from Colonial Slavery to Postcolonial Migration. Historical Materialism 31 (3). Special thematic issue: “Race and Capital”.

  • De Genova, Nicholas (2023): Unleashing the Capacity of Blackness: The Scene of Total Violence and the Ongoing Present of Slavery. Cultural Dynamics 35 (4).

  • Derrider, Marie & Sylla, Almamy (2023): Violences raciales et gouvernance migratoire au Mali. Plein droit, la revue du Gisti 139, 31-34.

  • Gross-Wyrtzen, Leslie & Vazquez Lopez, A. (2023): Becoming fugitive: Migration in the American and EurAfrican borderlands. ACME: International Journal for Critical Geographies 22(5): 1342-1365.

  • Heins, Volker M. & Wolff, Frank (2023): Hinter Mauern: Geschlossene Grenzen als Gefahr für die offene Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

  • Heins, Volker M., & Wolff, Frank (2023): ‚Festung Europa‘ oder: Was Mauern mit uns machen. Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik, 62-70, 68 (7).
  • Helms, Elissa (2023): Social Boundaries at the EU Border: Engaged Ethnography and Migrant Solidarity in Bihać, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Journal of Borderlands Studies. 10.1080/08865655.2022.2108109.
  • Hromadžić, Azra (2023): Hooked: Social Lives and Historical Entanglements at the Cultural Center in Bihać. In: N. Parigini, L. Karam and F. Bertelé  (Eds.) Flamingo Loophole. Bihać, Grafičar, 50-78.
  • Kmak, Magdalena (2023): Law, Migration and Human Mobility: Mobile Law. Routledge.
  • Lindberg A. & Borrelli, Lisa Marie (2023): Concentric Circles of Control: The proliferation of internal borders targeting the racialised poor in Denmark and Switzerland. In: Atzmüller, Roland, Décieux, Fabienne and Ferschli, Benjamin (2023). Ambivalenzen in der Transformation von Sozialpolitik und Wohlfahrtsstaat. Soziale Arbeit, Care, Rechtspopulismus und Migration. Arbeitsgesellschaft im Wandel: BeltzJuventa Verlag, 232-249.
  • Wolff, Frank (2023): Mitten durch wessen Herz? Die ‚Berliner Mauer‘ als Sonderfall und Pionier eines Irrwegs. Andererseits – Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies 11/12. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839469811-005.
back to top