Thesis title: Border Architectures From Spatial Violence to Design Strategies for ‘EU-Third-Nation’ lands
After the Berlin Wall Fall in 1989, the European Union (EU) begun to implement a strict control system at its new political-maritime-and-land borders. This research will focus on analyzing the land ones, whose dissimilar constructive layers and land strips defined its architecture.
It exists a vast territory monitored on an EU-continental scale that can detect body movements. The architecture is one of the countless instruments at the service of border guards to track down intruders in areas classified as restricted. The purpose of it is to prevent migrants from approaching border fences and/or attempting to jump over them. Therefore, many individuals looking for alternative routes to land European territory jump into the sea. Consequently, 24,443 people perished or disappeared when trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea between 2014 and 2021. Many others have been suffering untold violations of their human rights on an easily larger and more serious scale than the already alarming estimates.
This inquiry concentrates on looking into the spatial violence of European borderlands. The only two land borders of the EU in Africa are chosen as a study sample: the cities of Ceuta and Melilla (Spain). Migratory flows from manifold parts of this continent have been heading off these cities with the aim of reaching an apparently accessible Schengen territory. When people try to enter these cities in a regulated manner by border customs, the bureaucracy lengthens waiting times, causing frustration and creating the breeding ground for future massive assaults on the border walls. This is where the humanitarian damages of border architecture are most noticeable.
This thesis will bring together border architectures by describing its real implementation on the ground, its spatial order and its building composition. It has been checked that there are two types of areas prone to massive assaults: areas with less surveillance but more steep (sections of fence), and areas of ginormous control, but more accessible (border crossings). The results show there is a deliberate spatial violence exerted by border architectures. It aims to replace police violence and freeing the miscellaneous governments from responsibility. It will be put into practice the would-be lines of research that can be implemented from architecture so that spatial violence becomes a spatial cure.