As if there was a border. Bordering through excision in Melilla and the Canary Islands

This article investigates the social life of excision at Southern Spanish border. Scholars have documented how expands border project, and it uses law to make more defensible as a practice. Less attention has been paid is challenged by activist networks, used an instrument un-make borders. I expand literature on complex relation between geography in bordermaking arguing that rather dynamic nature. A comparative ethnography Melilla Canary Islands reveals de facto borders created through are vulnerable legal activism. The strategic use can set back expansion tenuously restoring some rights for asylum-seeking undocumented foreigners. Such setbacks tenuous because is, nevertheless, deeply integrated into dense web containment tactics. ‘The undesirables’ might thus recuperate their one point but then still face exclusion another expanded frontier.