Beschreibung
When in January 2011 the people of Tunisia took the streets and when streams of people started to flee the country, Europe responded swiftly. While the revolution was going on and was spreading to other Arab countries it was the security of Europe that was on top of the EU agenda. Couched in a language of haste and emergency the European border management regime was to be reassessed at high speed.
Now, five years later, in the context of what is now called ‘the refugee crisis’ and in the aftermath of Paris and Cologne vulnerability has been a recurrent theme. In fact it figures prominently in European policy. It does not come as a surprise that it is not the vulnerability of the refugees or even that of European citizens that is central, but rather that of Europe’s borders. Focusing on the concept of vulnerability I want to attend the shifting relations between Europe and its other. Doing so I will contrast different vulnerabilities, of refugees, European citizens and Europe’s boundaries and show how in practice vulnerability works as a technical and moral operator configuring different kinds of identities of Europe, its boundaries and its other.