Framing Entangled Borders in the Baltic States

ABSTRACT

The eastern Baltic borders have become more prominent in public debates following the instrumentalized migration crisis orchestrated by Belarus in 2021. This article explores and assesses the discourses related to borders and border barriers emerging in the Baltic states in reaction to the “crisis”. Using a discourse analysis framework, the work engages with the discursive framing concerned with how to define and consolidate the border and the use of border barriers, as interpreted through media frames. The article situates the framing of borders and border barriers within geopolitical identities and the notion of entangled borders in the EU, referring to the overlapping of nation-state border regimes and the EU external border regime that occurs along the EU’s borderlands. The article finds that media frames relate to three primary discourses: increasing securitization, the Baltic states’ positionality within the EU, and the changing geopolitical space. Discourses on borders and border barriers reveal that different types of borders often entangle in each other, which, through this entanglement, contributes to how borders are constructed, conceived, and expressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourses
• entangled borders
• identity geopolitics
• Baltic states
• Belarus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For this study the BSR is taken to include all states geographically located around the Baltic Sea.

2 The first Soviet occupation of the Baltic states in 1940 was followed by a Nazi occupation between 1941-1944, in 1944 the Baltics were recaptured and annexed into the Soviet Union.

3 A recent interpretation relates the narrative of migrants to that on the language of invasive wildlife (Wilson 2023).

4 Barbed wire that is formed into large coils, is often used for military and security purposes.