Suchergebnisse

we want to focus on the alarming question of the assaults to Ceuta and Melilla's fences, that occurred with a heightened frequency and strength during October 2005. They could be identified in the migratory asset, in a bigger movement of people without possibilities that cross the African continent, leaving their home in the hope of finding a better future in Europe. We want to show the actual situation as slow and misunderstood, as is the solution proposed for Spain: the militarization of border control (temporary?) and increasing the height of the fence from 3 to 6 meters where necessary, apart from the building of a third fence. These assaults demonstrate how the problem of immigration is not of each state on their own, but rather of the EU in general, as the adoption of Schengen Agreements allowed for free movements between member states. The solutions that are being proposed show more and more how the interests of the EU lay in strenghtening border control, with military forces if necessary, and in the politics of readmission with origin countries. We want to question the interaction of these migratory flows with the fences: of course the long way to reach Europe has many stops, dangers to avoid and ways to be walked, but it is in the arrival to the frontier with the EU we want to focus on. The fence is a permeable membrane according to the genre of flows it has to filter, but in the case of migratory ones it becomes a dense wall. We could say it generates an opposite vector force against the natural flow of migrants, whose only chance is to settle nearby while attempting to cross.

The latest expansion of the EU towards the East has again modified its borders, showing once again the intangibility and flexibility of the latter. The very definition of border acquires different meanings depending on which theme is being discussed: an impenetrable barrier against migratory flows and the introduction of goods, transforming itself into a strainer for the exporting of national products. The new Internal Affairs Commissioner for the EU, Rocco Buttiglione, affirms on the one hand that migratory flows cannot be blocked manu militari, although he also believes that Europe decides who can enter and who cannot. Even within Europe, and despite the Schengen Agreements, borders are taking shape in concrete situations, reminding us that their disappearance is not definitive. We should differentiate between natural borders and those erected by man; in reference to the latter we will focus on walls, such as the one no longer standing in Berlin or that illegally erected by Israel in the Occupied Territories, scoffing at the international bodies dedicated to the defense of human rights and freedoms. In reference to natural borders, in direct opposition to those made by man, and due to the dramatic events that are taking place, we will concentrate on the oceans, true black holes in which the dreams of immigrants come to a tragic end. The absence of man-made elements can be more powerful than the presence of the very same barriers. The interesting thing about the Berlin Wall, having certain similarities to the Great Wall of China, is its slow (but deliberate)transformation from Cold War symbol to souvenir and finally its disappearance altogether in favour of urbanistic exploitation. The best analysis of this condition, as R. Koolhaas states (encloses free space, leaving outside the enclosed city), resides in its mutable situation, sometimes improvised evolution, and others detailed planning. It seems unfathomable that after the disappearance of one wall someone could construct another, especially under ...