Paper short abstract:

In this presentation the notion of normative state conviviality is used to probe the changing role of state borders in Europé through the 20 year history of the transnational Öresund Bridge, between Sweden and Denmark.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation the concept of normative state conviviality will be used as an analytic concept around which recent developments concerning the changing role of state borders in Europe will be discussed. It aims at highlighting a specific kind of normative state-driven conviviality through the example of the transnational Öresund Bridge, between Sweden and Denmark, thus showing how the concept can be used in an analysis of the changing roles, or even states of the state. The Bridge and the surrounding region was part of a bi-national project of conviviality at its inauguration in 2000, but 15 years later the border controls that were put in place in response to the so called refugee-crisis of 2015, signaled a breakdown of this specific form of conviviality. This article seeks to show, with ethnographic examples from border-crossing experiences at the Bridge in 2000, 2015 and the present, how this breakdown of state conviviality opens up for a new form of biopolitical regime at the border.

Keywords:

State conviviality

The Öresund bridge

Border controls

Refugees

The states of the state

The plasmatic state