Introduction: Borderwork in the Expanded EU-African Borderlands

Europe has been deeply involved in the management of African borders for centuries; from the trading posts of precolonial times to the negotiation of the colonial boundaries at the 1884 Congress of Berlin and the subsequent support for contested and fragmented forms of sovereignty shaped by European access to exploit raw materials and labour. In recent years, Africa has become the scene of a wide range of European interventions with the purpose of restraining sub-Saharan migration to Europe. Much recent interdisciplinary scholarship in critical border studies is addressing the expansion of borders into new geographical and policy domains, emphasising how border externalisation is increasingly achieved through hi-tech surveillance technology, data collection and cybersecurity assemblages that, in unexpected ways, reinforce global borders. In different ways, the contributions show how restriction on mobility is not a one-way street, imposed by Europe upon a passive Africa.