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Spring 2003: The Exclusion Of Foreigners: The Logic Of Schengen Visa
The Logic of the Schengen Visa: policing at distance (PDF, 18 pages, 56.9 KB) , by Didier Bigo & Elspeth Guild
Didier Bigo and Elspeth Guild suggest an exhaustive and thorough study of the Schengen visa, of consular instructions and asylum and migration policies. This study focuses less on the efficiency of border controls than on the way imposing the visa is a major tool in distance police strategies. According to Didier Bigo and Elspeth Guild, the visa is a prime way to discriminate against citizens from specific countries, not subject to the visa, and those who are forced to prove that they are not undesirable. In spite of this, the visa is often presented as a simple technical tool facilitating the free movement of individuals within the Schengen States.
NEW!
Cultures & Conflits research team established the first map of the Schengen visa showing the new bipolarity between the haves and the haves not. The issue of white and black visa lists, of imposition or not of visas says less about safety and migration imperatives, than about the social construction of more or less shared fears concerning the Other, and about the way Europeans seek to construct an image of themselves, a common identity. A sense of unease and social anxiety has created a climate that is largely hostile to foreigners coming from the third world whose colour sets them off.
This map is a Cultures & Conflit exclusive research work. It is available at http://conflits.revues.org/article.php3?id_article=715