Hotspots: Questioning the Future of Europe through Its Borders

The article examines recent research on hotspots – the EU system for the management of incoming asylum seekers, implemented in Greece and Italy – to raise some questions on Europe’s relation to its external borders, and its others. Briefly discussing Abdelmalek Sayad’s writings on “state thinking” and the migrant condition, and drawing attention to the repeated failures that characterise the government of the external borders of the EU, we question Europe’s capacity to articulate its relation to the external world and to people on the move beyond the space of the border. This question, we think, will be central in the next European century