english text 183 as a fortified geographical limit against the external enemy, which Buzzati criticised in his novel The Tartar Steppe, as also did Cavafy – in his poem Waiting for the Barbarians – and Coetzee – in his similarly titled novel. But the immediate reality shows us not only that they are not disappearing (even if what they have is a symbolic function, which, in any case, maintains the repressive, violent element of which I shall speak later) but that they are increasing. All that was wanting was the reinforcement of walls and fences that we witnessed in 2015 in many parts of the EU, from Poland and Hungary to France and Spain, which seems like a rediscovery of the myth of fortress Europe.10 However, it is worth recalling that the context of globalisation imposes a recognition of the porosity of borders and the failure of all attempts to close borders like a fortress, an attempt that the EU tries to revive from time to time, based on a short-sighted economic view (concentrated on obtaining a reserve army, no less) which violates the elementary requirements of a rule-of-law state with regard to immigrants, and, worse still, the international obligations of the member states in matters concerning the rights of refugees. Indeed, although some may think that this situation is useful to maintain a plentiful workforce or, to use the term coined by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, a copious industrial reserve army, always available to cope with the demands of the economy (whether formal or submerged), they make the mistake of reducing a global social phenomenon (in the sense used by Mauss) to its economic labour dimension. Yet its effectiveness is doubtful because of its combination with (if not subordination to) the dimension of public order, the demand/excuse of the politics of fear that seeks to palliate the loss of aggregation of classes that have been made precarious, producing an effect of social stratification that encourages a structural situation of violation of human rights that is far from complying with the minimal normative assumptions of a rule-of-law state. In reality, despite the constant message of the need for absolute control of borders in terms of a filter that will not allow the passage of undesirables, whom we continue to describe as “illegal” (not so much because they are dangerous delinquents as because they are “surplus” immigrants), it is almost impossible to offer examples of states whose territory is completely sealed, even despite the constant improvements in border surveillance systems. The porosity of borders is a further sign of the gradual erosion of state sovereignty, which is even more scandalously visible in the case of the EU with the variable geometry defining its territory and its borders. This ultimately impacts on the mobility of its own citizens, as we are seeing now in the cases of Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom: the political and judicial connection between sovereignty and territory has been questioned by the multiplication of supranational powers and legislations, the rapid growth and intensification of transnational links and the strengthening of the new global circuits of production and exchange of capital assets. Having said which, it is necessary to stress that the notion of a border is not equivalent to that of a defensive wall or the confines of sovereignty. Even in classical terms, the distinction between the Roman terms of limes, confines and vallum is very complex. Summarising, almost at the risk of simplifying, I would say that although, in our conception of border, there remains the idea of the confine, limit or barrier of the state, i.e., an instrument of delimitation of territorial sovereignty, it is no less true that in the very origin of this concept a border is, above all, an area of contact, one of tension but also of exchange. And the fact is that, going beyond the artificial delimitations that states agree (or impose), i.e., construct, as an ostensible gesture of sovereignty (and therefore of military or police and defence logic), there are social and economic needs, interests, cultures and peoples that have relationships by virtue of the border as an area or space of contact. In contrast to the notion of a border as a limes, i.e., a fortified line that serves to separate civilisation from barbarity, we must revive the dimension of the border as an area of economic and social interaction that can gradually foster exchange, negotiation and mingling: cultural, economic, social and political. That is what the Mediterranean as a border is, a scenario of conflicts, but we are also inevitably constituted by those conflicts. The attitude of closure and blockage, the creation of constant, enormous difficulties that reduce and almost eliminate the area of contact, which, I must emphasise, is not Arcadian, is, in my view, the most serious mistake in our policies of immigration and asylum. A mistake which, moreover, is a very grave contradiction of all the attempts to optimise the benefits that both parties (the EU, of course) could obtain from the existence of a common space. Which said, it is impossible to deny that the border, the Mediterranean as a boundary, from El Tarajal beach to the islands of Kos and Lesbos, has acquired another dimension. One that makes borders areas of violence, of violation of rights. The waters of the Mediterranean bring us dead bodies, which are only the tip of the iceberg in comparison with the corpses that they conceal. For each Alan Kurdi whose photograph moves public opinion there are hundreds of bodies of children that lie hidden at the bottom of the sea. Thus the Mediterranean becomes a border of death, the most dangerous border in the world, a veritable place of fright. The Mediterranean, a border of death, a place of fright The impact of the acts of violence on the border is undeniable: it always is when there is harm, when there is suffering. Because, above all, violence signifies harm, insofar as violence seeks to impose or obtain something by force. And unjustified or disproportionate harm is an evil that the law cannot and must not accept. This idea is strengthened even further if we accept the thesis of some philosophers of law, such as Ballesteros, who
Entre el mite i l'espant
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