Frontex and the production of the Euro-Mediterranean borderlands (2006–2016)

The government of the Euro-Mediterranean border has produced what is seen as a new ‘geopolitics of inclusion’, through which Europe is trying to attract the neighbouring countries into its hegemonic orbit, involving them in the external governance of its justice and home affairs issues. This chapter analyses the role that Frontex has played in redefining the geopolitical imaginary of the European border, producing a conception of security whose classic inside/outside dichotomy has been gradually overcome. In 2005, the European agency Frontex was established in order to co-ordinate border-control actions among the nations of the European Union. It started as an extraordinary laboratory for the European Union in order to experiment with innovative politics for the control of human mobility, and to implement a new post-national model of border control and management. This chapter investigates how Frontex has impacted on the politics of migration in Europe, and what its functioning fundamentally means for the geopolitics of the European frontiers.