Cross-Border Police Cooperation and ‘Secondary Movements’. On Reconfigurations in Enforcing Differential Mobility Rights within the Spatial-Legal Schengen Space

Abstract

In the context of the so-called ‘migration crisis’, besides the politically more contentious introduction of border controls, on intra-European borders member states responded to onward mobilities – so-called ‘secondary movements’ – through border-area controls, bilateral (fast-track) readmissions and increasingly through joint patrolling of main cross-border routes. This article sets out to reflect upon the ‘Schengen crisis’ not by discussing the introduction of border controls, but by focusing on ordinary means of enforcement through border-area policing (Article 23 Schengen Borders Code) and through instruments of police cooperation, such as through joint patrolling or bilateral readmissions. By scrutinising the legal regimes of these instruments, plural in both scale and temporality, this article contributes to reflecting upon the productive reconfigurations in times of ‘crisis’ of the EU order and its enforcement.