Multiple Frames

Remarks on the Framing of Borders and Migration

Abstract

The paper attempts a preliminary framing of what we can understand by the work of ‘framing’ in the context of borders and migration and its inherent tensions. These are articulated in current biopolitics which are committed to life, care and humanitarian reason (Frame 1: Life). At the same time however, current biopolitics produce death zones. Therefore, the current politics in the Mediterranean are framed by what, following Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, Roberto Esposito calls thanapolitics and Achille Mbembe necropolitics (Frame 2: Death). These tense, overlapping and intertwined framings of migration and the discursive networks also refer to legal norms and norm-setting, the law and its violence, the right to life and the limits of current humanitarian law and Human Rights (Frame 3: Law).