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Title: Freedom, technology and surveillance: everyday paradoxes on the EU-Morocco border

Authors: Emma Mc Cluskey

Addresses: Department of War Studies, King's College London, England, UK

Abstract: The Schengenland-Morocco border is frequently venerated for its humane and efficient controls, thanks in part to hi-tech surveillance technologies. It is also a border receiving an increasing amount of 'traffic' from the Arabian Peninsula due to routes to Europe being blocked further East. This article works with the idea that the 'balancing' of freedom of movement and surveillance within Schengenland is an inherent paradox which has multiplied, circulated and manifested itself at a human level, played out in the lives of people forced to enter Europe through irregular means. Inspired by moves within feminist research (Enloe, 1989), appropriated within critical security (Huysmans, 2016), I put this idea of paradox to work by fashioning it as a curiosity. An epistemological device allowing me to see in particular ways, paradox as a curiosity places analytical supremacy on the everyday paradoxes in which migrants are embedded, stemming from their entanglements with bordering technologies.

Keywords: border; surveillance; Morocco; Schengen; ethnography; migration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2020.108683

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2020 Vol.6 No.1/2, pp.115 - 137

Received: 18 Mar 2019
Accepted: 22 Oct 2019

Published online: 24 Jul 2020 *

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