By focusing on local situations involving the Schengen border zone, we reflect upon the systematic fencing-off of physical spaces for socio-political and economical reasons in today’s world. Such a deployment of barriers, justified as a response to ‘security risks’ associated with freedom of movement (as in the ongoing refugee crisis) forms a quickly spreading grid network of physical boundaries. Border fences reshape rural and urban landscapes, change ecosystems, participate in the creation of different statuses for different human beings. Accordingly, they channel our movements and affect our behaviours, they parcel public and natural spaces into impermeable zones, and ultimately establish a standardized aesthetic for security and identity driven ideologies.

In Europe nowadays, hundreds of kilometers of fence are redrawing and materializing borders that we considered fallen into desuetude. Fencing systems enhanced with razor-wires are a developing part of our environment. Several countries challenge their own laws concerning freedom of movement and create perennial states of emergency, while similarities to historical precedents stay mostly unaddressed.