Where the Exception is No Longer Exceptional: Sovereignty, Violence and Refusal in the Spanish-Moroccan Borderscape

Abstract

Borderscapes are spaces of exception: On one side, the state’s unrestrained, violent exercise of sovereignty in attempting to secure the border, on the other citizens and non-citizens who subvert the state’s authority by refusing to acknowledge its existence. Thus, borders are socially constructed liminal spaces extending beyond the borderline. To understand these complex bordering processes and practices, both monolithic and ideographic academic analyses are required. By visualising the borderscape we uncover the multi-faceted realities at borders, the performative acts constituting them, why and how exceptional violence and refusal are performed and give agency to non-state actors otherwise hidden from history.