Geopolitics of Border Securitization: Sovereignty, Nationalism and Solidarity in Asylum Reception in Finland

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the recent security interventions at the northern Finnish-Swedish border crossing point in the town of Tornio, the particular focus being on the 2015 migration influx in which Finland received a tenfold increase in asylum applications compared with the previous years (~3000 → 32 476 asylum applicants). The resultant securitization of the Finnish-Swedish border and the organization of asylum reception practices, in which nongovernmental organizations played an important role, created tension between the Finnish and Swedish authorities, borderlanders, and within wider Finnish society. An empirical study of various materials (documents, interviews, social media debates and media reports) is used to examine the coexistence and intertwining of different border securitization practices and discourses. The analysis is structured around three story lines that disclose border securitization as multiple and aims to problematize the assumption that states, as entities holding sovereign authority, fully determine matters of border securitization. Firstly, the state intervention examined here occurred through and fully depended on collaboration with local authorities and nongovernmental actors. Secondly, nationalistic groups mobilized demonstrations against immigration and started independent street patrols in the name of security, throwing into question the effectiveness and authority of the state government in matters of border securitization. Thirdly, the discourses of the securitized Finnish-Swedish border reflect the wider solidarity crisis between EU countries with respect to shared sovereignty. The study complicates the understanding of border securitization as a straight forward state effort and provides a picture of a hybrid border securitization environment.

Acknowledgements

The research has been supported by the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council and Multilayered Borders of Global Security research team (#303527, #303480). I wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The paper was written in 2017 when I was as a visiting scholar at the International Migration Research Centre (IMRC) and Balsillie School of International Affairs. I am grateful to Professor Alison Mountz for her support and invaluable insights that gave me encouragement to pursue research on the concept of sovereignty. The study was presented at IMRC in September 2017 and at “Geopolitics: Actors, Practices and Realities” conference at the University of Oulu in November 2017. The interest towards the border multiple approach is stemming from the discussions with Professor Dorte Jagetic Andersen in Sønderborg in 2015. Any errors are my own.

Additional information

Funding

TThe work was supported by the by Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council [303527].