BORDER ANALYSIS - GROUP 2

The Swedish personal number can be viewed as an invisible barrier. The analysis focuses on the
application process for the personal number and the personal number regime.

 Borders have not always existed; instead they need to be “continually performed into
being through rituals” (Parker & Vaughan-Williams, 2012, p.729)
 The application process for a personal number shows clearly how border practices are
performed like a ritual: applying for and submitting certain documents, booking a time
and queuing for appointments at the migration office…
 The rituals for a non-EU student: Admission letter, scholarship offer, residence permit
card, entry stamp on passport, personal number, ID card, bank card…
 Mountz (in Johnson et al. 2011) also talks about how borders are moving offshore, in this
case to the Swedish consulates in other countries.
 There is also a constant negotiation and renegotiation of a sense of inclusion and
exclusion as one navigates the processes/perform the border rituals (Brambilla, 2015).
 Paasi (2009) asserts that borders are a symbol of territorial power since they become
processes embedded in the production and reproduction of social relations at different
levels.
 The personal number functions as an entry point through the border because without it
one cannot access institutional and social facilities in the Swedish society.
 Pallister-Wilkins (2016) argues that the human body and its movement, instead of
territory, is the subject of interest when performing security. Using interruptions in
movements and collecting biometric data, the state creates socio-technical devices to
create security barriers, instead of building walls and fences around the boundary of the
national boundary.
 While Pallister-Wilkins (2016) talks about data capture and interruption/redirection of
movements by the physical borders, if we apply what Rumfold (in Johnson et al. 2011)
has written about how some borders are designed not to be seen, we can argue that the
same functions that the borders do can happen where there seems to be no visible borders
as well.

References
Brambilla, C. (2015). Exploring the critical potential of the borderscapes concept. Geopolitics,
20(1), 14-34.
Johnson, Corey, Jones, Reece, Paasi, Anssi, Amoore, Louise, Mountz, Alison, Salter, Mark and
Rumford, Chris. 2011. Interventions on rethinking ‘the border’ in border studies,
Political Geography, 30: 2, 61-69, DOI:10.1016/j.polgeo.2011.01.002.
Paasi, A. (2009). Bounded spaces in a ‘borderless world’: border studies, power and the
anatomy of territory. Journal of Power, 2(2), 213-234.
Pallister-Wilkins, Polly. 2016. “How Walls Do Work: Security Barriers as Devices of
Interruption and Data Capture.” Security Dialogue 47 (2): 151–64.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010615615729.
Parker, N., & Vaughan-Williams, N. (2012). Critical border studies: Broadening and deepening
the ‘lines in the sand' agenda. Geopolitics, 17(4), 727-733.