4. A Diverse Archipelago: Borderscape Features

This chapter presents the spatio-material border ‘features’ that I define as particular combinations of bordering forms and functions that take place in particular settings. The chapter provides a typology of the key features that comprise the Central and East European Borderscape and uses a series of conceptual metaphors to express their manifestations, particular effects and relations to identities and orders. The five types of border feature it identifies—‘Firewalls’, ‘Shadows’, ‘Filters (Not Fortresses)’, ‘Curtain Walls’ and ‘Twisted Mirrors’—are shown to constitute the EU’s diverse ‘border archipelago’ that stretches from the cities of the Schengen interior, through intra-Schengen and external frontiers, into Ukraine and the Eastern Neighbourhood. The chapter shows that the EU has created an ambiguous array of border features, which in some cases defy commonplace ‘critical’ characterisations and support the Union’s order and interests, but in others have proved self-defeating as well as detrimental to the mobilities and lives of Ukrainians. The chapter thus offers a unique spatio-material analysis of European borders and shows how EU bordering has long contained the seeds of avoidable crises in its neighbourhood—and of migration more widely.