Homogenous and Extra-territorial Border Regime? Migrations and Control Efforts Across the Eastern EU External Border

In light of the high amount of refugees wishing to cross the EU’s external borders into the Union, the border regime is becoming more and more standardized and, to a great extent, involves the EU neighbor states. These are confronted with a double strategy with regard to their involvement in the EU’s migration policy. On the one hand, the EU tries to guarantee its own security by setting up a tough border regime. On the other hand, the EU strives for a closer connection with its neighbors by including them more and more into its migration regulations. By having a look at Ukraine and Moldova, the paper asks what this involvement in EU policies means for the mentioned countries and focuses on their perspectives. How does their participation in EU extra-territorial migration regulation look like? What does the extra-territorialized border regime mean for those actors wishing to cross the border? For this purpose, a concept of the EU’s eastern external border regime will be developed first, including its targeted homogeneity and its partly extra-territorial functioning. By discussing the results of an ethnographic border regime analysis, the paper will present the perspectives of specific actors in third states who implement EU migration regulations on a local level by carrying out concrete EU-driven projects. Furthermore, voices from refugees and inhabitants of the border regions in third states are taken into account.