Hidden in plain sight: uncovering migrant geographies in the external borderlands of Europe
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Architecture and urban design (MPARC), MSc
Publicerad
2022
Författare
Zachrisson, Lina
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
This thesis seeks to understand how spatial - built and natural - environments operate
in Europe’s external borderlands to facilitate and condition human migration. It
aims to find new ways in which architects can engage with authoritarian instruments
of power that spatially manifest themselves in and around increasingly militarized border
regions. As concepts and spatial instruments, the borders will be viewed through
the lenses of human mobility, irregular migration, and the creation of territory.
As the Schengen agreement guarantees free movement across all internal borders between
member states, the EU sees the need to increase security and control over who and what gets to
cross the external borders. Meanwhile, public interest in nationalism and anti-immigration rhetoric
continues to grow, rendering displaced populations increasingly vulnerable as they attempt
to navigate the European borderlands in search of safe ground. Current European migration
policy leaves large populations of migrants trapped in transit countries on Europe’s fringes, in
a state of permanent temporality, in-between both humanitarian facilities and legal frameworks.
With the support of field investigations and inquiry in the crisis-ridden border regions of
North Macedonia, this work tries to understand and visualize the border’s inherently spatial
nature and the borderlands as a territory for shaping multiple narratives and geographies
of migration. It centers around the connections and socio-spatial relations between the
actors and processes that contribute to this production of the migrant narrative. The thesis
seeks to uncover converging paths, chains of relations, and hidden dimensions of the realities
that migrant populations suffer when crossing borders. Through an uncovering of such
intersections and divergencies, the outcomes of this work explore speculative interventions
for a more inclusive and socially sustainable narrative of the European borderlands.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
borders, irregular migration, human geography, awareness, relational analysis