Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation looks at the refugee-crisis in 2015, the covid-crisis and more recently the fear of seemingly contagious gang criminality and the connections to bio-politics related to the Öresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark.

Paper Abstract:

Before and during the building period of the Öresund bridge in the late 1990´s, the diminished importance of nation-states was predicted. A new Europe of the border regions would emerge and more and more decision-making would take place at a supranational EU or regional level. The new transnational Öresund connection would, both symbolically and practically, be at the forefront of this development and be a growth engine for the entire new border region. On an everyday level the bridge would facilitate croos-border contacts, thus fostering a new regional identity.

The development since then with the refugee crisis in 2015, the introduction of border controls in Europe and the region shows that the regional identity project was slowly emptied of meaning.

This presentation seeks to show, with ethnographic examples from border-crossing experiences at the Bridge in 2000, 2015 and the present, how changes in the notion of borders opens up for a new form biopolitical regime at the bridge.