Paradoxes on the Borders of Europe.

This paper argues that contemporary hegemonic projects such as ‘Fortress Europe’ exercise violence at their borders forcing certain people to be borders. Those very borders and the people who inhabit them constitute paradoxically the very conditions of possibility of any hegemonic order. This paper focuses on Sangatte, the site of a Red Cross ‘reception centre’ outside Calais for refugees and migrants seeking entry into Britain, as one manifestation of the border in the context of asylum and migration in Europe. This paper draws on contemporary Marxist and feminist theory to think through how those on the borders of the state provide real, material insights into practices that subvert the power of the sovereign state and its corollary hegemonic projects of violence, and to argue that attempts to envision alternatives to the contemporary hegemonic political orders in Europe must begin at the political apertures opened up by thinking the border as paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]