Free spirit! Wikicommons/Pranjal Kumar. Some rights reserved.“Freedom is that possession which
permits the enjoyment of all other possessions”, wrote Montesquieu. Yet,
today we are led to believe that the only way to enjoy personal safety within
society, and guarantee our individual and collective freedoms, is through
preventive security and reinforced controls.
How have we arrived at a situation where our reasoning has been so
thoroughly turned on its head that the movement of millions of people is now
being brought into question in case it might – owing to the way it is organised
and its great speed – lead either to the departure of combatants abroad (so
called foreign fighters) or the entry of clandestine groups with violent
intentions?
How is it that, instead of regarding freedom as a principle on the basis
of which state interference in terms of security needs to be limited, we have,
like in a game of ‘Othello’,
witnessed the development of a topsy-turvy rhetoric in which freedom has become
nothing more than the limit-point of security, which has itself been redefined
as a necessary and indeed vital level of suspicion? There is now an obligation to place everything under tight security.
There is now an obligation to place everything under tight security: our
living-spaces, our cities, our transport systems, our movements, our bodies,
our writings and our ideas. The constant anxiety that, whether outside our
borders or among us, people are using freedom of movement and the trusting
nature of a societal space in which the presumption of innocence (still)
constitutes the guiding principle behind the social bond, is now deeply
engrained in the ways in which we see and think about the world.
These perceptions are fed by ever-more catastrophic scenarios which
present two equally sinister alternatives: the inevitable destruction of
civilisation in the future, or the prevention of this coming danger in the
present.
Complete coverage
When prevention is presented as the entire set of measures which aim not
only to guarantee the integrity and continuity of institutions, but also
maintain social order, then complete territorial and digital coverage, along
with the targeting of whole populations and individuals alike, become its
hallmark.
All those who move thus become somehow guilty by association, for moving
too much, for creating flows that are becoming uncontrollable due to their
scale, especially when they are fleeing or are prevented from travelling by air
and instead arrive by sea or overland.
As Zygmunt Bauman pointed out, the face of the terrorist enemy has
changed.[1]
It is now not so much that of an infiltrating danger hidden among refugees and
migrants, who are themselves under rigorous surveillance, but that of an
infiltrator amidst the travellers and tourists that we ourselves are, the
couples who have found love abroad and have brought their partner and family
with them.
Whereas territorial security coverage focuses on a continuum of insecurity
whose limits are determined by varying levels of alterity, in contrast, the
logic of security which applies to movements and mobility focuses on the self,
on the private, intimate sphere, on the untraceability of potentially violent
intentions, as well as on the idea that we are consequently all suspects – on “probation”,
as it were.
The masquerade that is the spectacle of the security apparatus at our
borders and in our streets, which deploys a certain form of violence made
entirely discretionary through its varied range of practices – but which
prevents nothing and arrests and dissuades no-one – merely generates unease,
transforming a potential danger into a permanent state of anxiety which is then
relayed ad nauseam by the games of
the media.
Restricting the limits of alterity, redefining nationalism using
alarmist discourse and counter-measures which seek to purify a reinvented
identity based on a traditional past, stripping individuals of their
nationality as a means of preventive banishment, instead of subjecting them to
surveillance, judgment and punishment – these are the ingredients of the
political recipe now followed by right- and left-wing governments alike.
While freedoms, such as the principles of equality and
non-discrimination, the presumption of innocence and respect for privacy,
undoubtedly still exist, they have been relegated to the margins, to the
limit-points of security, which seeks to be internal and external, repressive
and preventive, protective yet discriminatory. This
maximum level of security, which aspires to be global, total and unlimited, and
projects itself into the future in order to forestall any uncertainty, is a
political idea which has now usurped autonomy as a value.
The collateral effects of this relegation matter little, as they are
perceived as negligible insofar as they only affect others, our enemies and not
ourselves. This maximum level of security, which aspires to be global, total
and unlimited, and projects itself into the future in order to forestall any
uncertainty, is a political idea which has now
usurped autonomy as a value.
Consequently, both the notion of freedom as the
constitution of the self through the recognition of the other, his existence,
his human rights, and the notion of security as a means of guaranteeing a
harmonious dynamic amidst heterogeneity and the Brownian movement of an economy
of differences have almost disappeared. In this latter
perspective, freedom is replaced by the fact that the use of force remains always
a possibility, even if it must be subordinated to the principle of justice.
This balance between the use of force and its justification, its necessity and
its proportionality has so far been upheld by judges, in those intermediary
bodies which still believe in the separation of powers as a means of avoiding a
form of despotic power spelling the end for freedom.
However, the simple fact is that more and more governments see
themselves as tutelary powers which no longer have citizens, but rather
subjects. Subjects who are beholden to their origins, to old ideas, to their
home turf, and who no longer move around.
Remembering Schengen
However, what is increasingly being spoken of in terms of “genuine
security” is in no way a necessity imposed by the ‘terrorist threat’ and an
answer couched in surveillance and suspicion; it has a history that must be
mobilised in order to recall the time, before this ‘voluntary servitude’; when a
positive history of individual and collective freedom was still possible and
desirable. It does exist, even though it is increasingly caricatured as a
‘constraint’.
Let us therefore cast our minds back over how, in the space of 30 years,
our collective vision of free movement in Europe has changed profoundly. One no
longer visits the European Union, but rather enters the Schengen area. Or
indeed does not enter it. One can also be expelled or turned away from it. The
little Luxembourgian village of Schengen, with its population of 600, can thus
lay some claim to being the centre of attention since the signing in 1985 of
the eponymous agreement which aims to establish a zone of freedom and security.
Indeed, on the anniversary of the agreement in June 2015, the President of the
European Parliament, Martin Schulz, reminded his audience that “Schengen may be
a small village, but it is a big idea”. There can be no doubt that in Schengen,
in the depths of rural Luxemburg, on the banks of the Moselle and not far from
the German and French borders, Europe in 1985 became more than an economic
reality by embracing the political dimension of free movement. So how is it
that the glowing pages of the history of free movement within the European
Union have dulled over time, and the realities and practices of the Schengen
area, together with our thinking on it, are now being articulated through a
grammar of security rather than one of freedom?
It was quite clear, as the 1980s went on, that this idea of a political
Europe underpinned by the free movement project, was accompanied by misgivings
on the part of certain states which perceived the opening of borders as a
renunciation of the very idea of sovereignty. While certain agencies – chief
among them customs officers – were worried about the future of their
professions, Schengen also marked the concrete realisation of one law-enforcement
dream, namely the ability to pursue individuals from one side of the continent
to the other in an entirely legal manner, no longer having to rely on networks
of discreet connivance and cooperation between different national agencies.
Schengen is also the visa document which bears its name, that magic key which
filters, opens or blocks the doors of the European Union and represents the crystallisation
of the latter’s efforts to control immigration, including, and indeed
especially beyond European borders, far from our eyes and from any possible
legal recourse or even any legal protection. Schengen is, finally, the ambiguity
inherent in this culture of security which has come with the project for the
free movement of capital, goods and people, these compensatory measures which
aim to strengthen external border checks just as free movement has been
established within the zone. Almost as if we were frightened by the project, we
were willing to give with one hand while taking away with the other, offering concessions
on the security front in order to make swallowing the excessively libertarian
pill of border-free movement that bit easier.
The official history of the Schengen area is worded in such a way that
this concern for security, presented as an inevitable corollary of the end of
internal borders, is essentially taken as read, glossed over in summary
fashion. A Europe of free movement is a fine aspiration, but a borderless
Europe is necessarily weak and vulnerable. Is it not therefore logical to
compensate for this vulnerability with greater internal cooperation and a
strengthening of external borders?
This idea of a deficit needing to be compensated, of vulnerability
needing to be nursed, is more than just the flipside to the implementation of
free movement. It is in fact the core maxim, the very epicentre of the Schengen
area, around which those who cherish the fundamental freedoms, the rights of
individuals and the right of free movement, are forced to contort themselves. This
maxim takes the metaphor of a set of scales, weighing security against freedom,
as both its raison d’être and its ultimate realisation. In 2001, Lord
Strathclyde, the leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords, elegantly
invoked this metaphor when he declared that it was necessary to find “the right
balance between the need for security and the protection of liberty”
(Bigo-Tsoukala-2008). Surely greater freedom requires greater security, as the
scales must be kept in balance? It matters little that this metaphor is
erroneous and contributes to producing profound shifts in our relationship to
the political sphere and the notion of citizenship. For it has set down
permanent roots deep in our collective imagination thanks to its simplicity –
after all, who would be foolhardy enough to argue against a theory based on
balance and proportion? Weighing up civil liberties in response
to violent events is a calculation based on short-term political gain. How many
absurd decisions were taken in reaction to 9/11?
Yet this metaphor is dangerous and dishonest, for the representation it promulgates
undermines those very civil liberties which, in the context of our liberal
democracies, are fundamental and non-negotiable. Civil liberties are
essentially and fundamentally normative, providing a framework for state legal
systems, and are not subordinated to the whims of events, no matter how violent
or frightening these may be. Weighing up civil liberties in response to violent
events is a calculation based on short-term political gain. How many absurd
decisions were taken in reaction to 9/11? “Exceptional circumstances require
exceptional measures,” we are increasingly often being told. This is a maxim based
on raison d’état and, while it undeniably possesses a strong rhetorical appeal,
it is in truth little more than a piece of off-the-shelf, default policy for
whoever wishes either to show themselves to be capable of reacting in the face
of adversity, or to reinforce practices of suspicion towards, or outright
refusal of the liberal practices of our liberal regimes.
Rejecting the metaphor of the tipping scales is one thing, but is it not
more urgent to first repudiate all of those interpretations which are cast from
a mould of catastrophic extinction and a heuristic of fear? A fear of what might
happen, first of all, of a continuing escalation of violence that is always
possible in which each new attack would act as the harbinger of the end of
days. Then, a fear of numbers, as successive waves of migrants and refugees
crash against the gates of Europe, each bringing its share of corpses. Finally,
a more general fear of the Other, in which we all retreat into our little nationalistic
bubbles, breathing new life into the weird idea that some identities and
cultures are naturally compatible, while others are not.
Free free movement
We need to remove free movement from the vicious circle of security. Whether
we are talking about tourism, programmes to assist mobility among students and
trainees, legal protection or victims’ rights, the Europe-wide harmonisation of
legal aid for the most vulnerable individuals, or the setting of a ceiling on
telephone charges throughout the European Union, free movement is an
opportunity. We need to remove free movement from the
vicious circle of security.
An opportunity, and also a virtuous circle. Surely, reinforcing free
movement would create an opportunity for curiosity and, by doing so, help open
minds? What else is the driving principle behind free movement if not the
concrete demonstration that diversity is not a problem but, in a very real
sense, a solution? In our toxic political climate, fearful and inward-looking
as it is, the free movement of people and ideas could very well contribute as
much to the fight against radicalisation as it could to the fight against
selfish nationalisms, truly the most important political issue for all of our futures.
[1] Zygmunt Bauman, “From
Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity”, in, Stuart Hall and Paul
du Gay (eds), Questions
of Cultural Identity, London, Sage publications, 1996, pp.18-36.