EUCE 2012 Conference
Security's Impact on Border Policies
Click Here to see both events photos.
About Border Security
Since 9/11, security issues have been at the forefront of border policy developments both in Europe and North America. The European Union (EU) member states and the North American states (Canada, Mexico and the United States) have, however,responded in a fundamentally different fashion while re-aligning broad security goals at the same time. The European experience within the EU is largely influenced by its regional policy, with its tradition of local level and intergovernmental networks and policy making practices, but also by a need to secure both internal and international borders in manners coherent with pre-existing policies of partnerships and cooperation. The resulting international border security policies engage bordering states on issues ofeconomic development and security matters, while internal security is increasingly the co production of large networks of territorial and functional governments and organizations concerned by shared security across all twenty-seven member states.
In NorthAmerica, Canada and Mexico have been subjected to alignment pressures from the United States. Border security perspectives are primarily informed by the United States (US) administration understanding of criminal and immigrationissues on their southern border that, in turn, is subject to considerable demographic and market pressures, where Canada and the US are now in the process of developing new policies while they have agreed to treat Mexico separately. This is also made more complex because such policies are attempting to unify policy answers to vast and regionally varied borderlands.
The Workshop
This workshop will explore these varied and nuanced issues in a comparative study of border security policies focusing both on the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement areas. In particular, invited researchers will present their research work on the influence security has on other policies in borderlands, boundaries and frontiers. Understanding border security policies is fascinating because it sheds light on the nature of states. Social scientists generally agree that ‘dense economic, cultural, or political human activities … straddling a borderland result in increasing porosity’, and that only‘cooperation, collaboration and the co-production of security goals can alleviate porosity’ (Andreas, 2003, p. 3; Brunet-Jailly, 2007, p. IX-X). This, however, is a rather counter intuitive idea from the perspective of state policies. Indeed, in the modern era the Westphalian logic that boundaries are internationally recognized markers legitimizing power over a demarcated territory remains prevalent; and raises questions about the very nature of those necessary coproduced border security policies. Please see our program, which is available on the web site, for details.
Click Here to listen to Derek Lundy's interview on Radio Without Borders. Derek Lundy is one of our colleagues and participant at this Workshop. He is bestselling author of "Godforsaken Seas", "The Bloody Red Hand", and "Borderlands: Riding the Edge of America".
High School Outreach - NEW DATE!
This event will take place on June 9th, on campus, and it's a follow up to the subject that was centre of the Conference that took place on March 30th and 31st. We will have some of the experts participating in the Conference to be our speakers for the High School Symposium. We will gladly receive high school students and their teachers for a fun day of minds-on hands-on activities and discussion, which will not only introduce the students to European Studies but also show them that they already have some knowledge of the topics such as borders, international relations, and so on.
This is a partnership between European Studies Program and Let's Talk Science, and it is be funded by our European Union Centre of Excellence.
It is our delight to expose students to those topics and prepare them for a splendid future, projecting them to be not only our prospective students, but also our future leaders.
Teachers are welcome to register their grade 9 to 12 students, contacting Let's Talk Science. Individual students and other groups are also welcome.
Please see our poster:
High School Symposium - March 29th