Border Anxiety: Culture, Identity and Belonging

Abstract

AbstractThis paper considers the ethical choices confronting European countries in relation to what has been described as border anxiety. Last year over a million migrants and asylum-seekers crossed European Union borders and the flow has shown no sign of diminishing. This unprecedented movement of people has attracted two main responses. A core issue for both is the Schengen principle of open borders and opinion is split between those who believe that the sheer weight of numbers of would-be migrants requires the reintroduction of strictly controlled frontiers, and those who demand a prompt and sympathetic response to the plight of refugees from war-torn countries. These two positions, however, do not constitute the sum of the moral debate. A broader appraisal of the issues must take account of matters of culture and identity, partiality and preference, and also of some rather more arcane questions about the ethics of ownership, the notion of belonging, and the legitimacy of preferring your ‘own’, whether at a global, national, or personal level. The complexity of this debate and its internal paradoxes throw light on some contemporary concerns about the threat the current situation may pose to Europe's own historic culture and identity.