Reframing regimes of mobility: narratives and counter-narratives of migration in Europe

This article examines the continued significance of borders and boundary constructions in the allegedly ‘borderless Europe’. It analyses the events in 2011 that led to the temporary closure of borders in France and in Denmark, and aims to show how some European nation-states attempted to reclaim their power of border control by tweaking the Schengen agreement. We argue that these events are not only examples of how countries manage the inflow and outflow of people. By closing or restricting their physical borders, both countries were also trying to reinstate narrative identity boundaries around the French and the Danish people. We advocate that physical borders find legitimacy in boundaries, i.e. narratives that conceptually separate groups and territories, and illustrate this through an analysis of local media in the countries involved.