Border regime

Border regime is the summary term for all institutional, administrative, legislative and technical measures and facilities for border security and control .

In the political science sense, regimes denote sets of rules that define principles, procedures and norms in certain political fields.

Border regime in the Federal Republic of Germany

The research association Flight and Migration divides the German border regime into the four pillars of foreign policy, border protection, involvement of the border population and legislation on foreigners.

Foreign policy

With the EU's eastward expansion , the EU's external border was moved away from Germany. In the accession negotiations, the accession countries' adoption of the border regime designed according to European ideas played a central role. To this end, Germany has been providing training and equipment assistance in the Central and Eastern European countries since 1990 .

Central to this EU policy is the so-called “ safe country of origin regulation”, which was introduced in 1993 as part of the amendment to asylum legislation ( asylum compromise ). Germany is surrounded by so-called safe third countries and can send asylum seekers back from these countries. Even those who come from a safe country of origin can be deported again immediately. This procedure is regulated in several bilateral readmission agreements.

Border Guard

The Federal Police as the border protection authority of Germany was given far-reaching powers by the new Federal Border Protection Act (today: Federal Police Act ) in 1994. The innovations included the veil manhunt in the border area to a depth of 30 km, missions abroad and support from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the field of radio technology. In 1998 the law was expanded. The powers of the Federal Police now also extend to transit roads, train stations and their surroundings.

In the 1990s, the Federal Police underwent a technological upgrade. The Schengen Information System (SIS) has been in use since 2001 , in which not only the data of persons wanted for extradition, but also those of persons unwanted on the territory of a signatory country are stored.

Frontier population

According to a study by the research company “Flucht und Migration” from 1999, 50 to 80 percent of the arrests of clandestine cross-border commuters were due to tips from people living near the border. Private vigilante groups secure the borders in close informal cooperation with the federal police and the federal customs administration . In Brandenburg, this cooperation between state and private border guards was institutionalized under the name of security partnerships. The relocation of the EU's external border has reduced the importance of this aspect.

Aliens legislation

As part of the tightening of the asylum and foreigners legislation in 1993, the regulation was introduced for the case of entry by plane that asylum seekers who enter from safe third countries or who do not have a valid passport with them, as part of the airport procedure, through rapid procedures in the transit area of Be rejected at the airport. In this case, the airline is obliged to return the vehicle. On the other hand, anyone who manages to enter German territory by land or sea is entitled to apply for asylum. In the subsequent procedure, the rules of the Dublin Convention are to be applied, which in principle also enables a transfer back to a safe third country or to a safe country of origin . However, this principle was de facto partially overridden during the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015 when German authorities lost control in view of the large numbers of refugees. Migration researchers also speak of a crisis in the European border regime in this context.

Border regime in the German Democratic Republic

In addition to its repressive character, the border regime of the German Democratic Republic was primarily characterized by its internal orientation. The border troops of the GDR were supposed to prevent the escape from the GDR, especially at the inner-German border and the Berlin Wall, by giving orders to shoot and using self- shooting systems .

literature

Sabine Hess, Bernd Kasparek (Ed.): Grenzregime. Discourses, practices, institutions in Europe. Association A, Berlin et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-935936-82-8 .
Peter Joachim Lapp : Border regime of the GDR. Helios, Aachen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86933-087-7 .
Lisa-Marie Heimeshoff, Sabine Hess, Stefanie Kron, Helen Schwenken, Miriam Trzeciak (Eds.): Grenzregime. II. Migration - Control - Knowledge. Transnational Perspectives. Association A, Berlin et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-86241-432-1 .
Sabine Hess, Bernd Kasparek, Stefanie Kron, Mathias Rodatz, Maria Schwertl, Simon Sontowski (eds.): The long summer of migration: Grenzregime III . Association A, ISBN 978-3-86241-453-6

Individual evidence

^ Mathias Fiedler, Fabian Georgi, Lee Hielscher, Philipp Ratfisch, Lisa Riedner, Veit Schwab, Simon Sontowski: Contested movements to and through Europe. As an introduction . In: movements. Journal for critical migration and border regime research . tape 3 , no. 1 . Transcript Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-8376-3571-3 , pp. 9-19 . ( movements-journal.org [accessed April 22, 2017]).

[1] Mathias Fiedler, Fabian Georgi, Lee Hielscher, Philipp Ratfisch, Lisa Riedner, Veit Schwab, Simon Sontowski: Contested movements to and through Europe. As an introduction . In: movements. Journal for critical migration and border regime research . tape 3 , no. 1 . Transcript Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-8376-3571-3 , pp. 9-19 . ( movements-journal.org [accessed April 22, 2017]).