Cooperative security and border control : Mediterranean perspectives

Abstract

One of the most significant transformations of the security landscape of the post-Cold War era has been the profound change in the nature of state borders. Long seen primarily as military defence lines, where states would fend off military incursions by other states, state borders have increasingly become policing or law enforcement borders aimed at excluding ‘undesirables’, such as irregular migrants, transnational terrorists, or drugs. Thus rather than having become obsolete, as claimed by some proponents of ‘globalisation’ (Ohmae 1990), state borders—in their changed function—remain key features of the international system. Indeed, in many places they have become flashpoints of policy-making, as evidenced, for example, by the high levels of concern with, and the considerable build-up of, the outer borders of the European Union (EU) or the US-Mexico border in recent years (Andreas & Snyder 2000, Bigo 2005, Lutterbeck 2006).