SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

Sipping my morning coffee and lazily browsing through Facebook I could not avoid to see the main news of the region: Hungary is building a fence along its borderline to Serbia in order to stop refugees from Middle East - now called illegal immigrants in order to generate massive animosity towards them - entering Hungary. Sincerely, I would not give it a second thought if I did not came upon this map: 

It did remind me of an article I had written during my PhD studies, in 2009. It was an article about https://www.academia.edu/9799885/SPATIAL_PATTERNS_OF_THE_CRYSIS" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Spatial patterns of crisis, trying to utilize the concepts of Qi and Form and their interactions in understanding and prognosticating our social and spatial realities and outlined some probable scenarios for post-crisis development of situation. Let me quote and put parts of this article into present context.

"The course of events leading to fragmentation of global mechanisms, state unions and national states on one side, and creation of rigid controlling systems and raising number of extremist, racist or xenophobic organizations within the established segments becomes even more likely having in mind that the movement is precipitating forms at its stop." The crisis of EU is too well known, as is the constant shifting to the political right in many countries of the union. The fence-building Hungary with its right-wing government is arguably one of the countries presently most inclined to embrace hard-lined right-wing politics. Before the idea of the ffence surfaced, the Hungarian government declared a hatemongering poster-war on immigration, and the official statements like "we don`t need the EU" are nothhing new to this administration. And that is the administration that was elected by 2/3 of total votes.

"The slower parts, left with increased amount of forms and decreased amount of movement will probably try to disintegrate forms in order to increase their own momentum (which came forth as Arab spring and the conflict in Syria), which tendency could cause series of social unrests, revolutions, more or less localized armed conflicts. In this process movement would be devaluated and re-interpreted as danger (conflicts generate refugees), while the value of the forms, expressed in terms of safety would rise. The resulting picture of the world is that of another hard-bordered polarization between the “messy and dangerous” and the “well-ordained and safe” parts." Clearly EU as a whole, and especially Northern and Atlantic Europe, sees itself and is seen by others as a safe and well-ordered part, that should be safeguarded against the turmoil and disorder outside the borders. And since the neighbors of Hungary to the south and southeast, Romania and Croatia are members of the EU, naturally the fence is built only along the border of the non-member Serbia. The building of this fence besides being a materialization of a set of values and prejudices linked to the collective identity of Europe, shows utter disregard for physical-spatial and social realities.

At first glance the dimensional disparity becomes obvious, which allows some doubts to rise regarding the success of the project in terms of decreasing influx of refugees. Hungary has a 2246 km long borderline according to https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarorsz%C3%A1g" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia. The same source has it, that the border to the instable regions to the south and southeast that generate the flux of refugees is some 972 km long (border to Romania 453 km, to Croatia 355 km and to Serbia 164 km). The fence along the border with Serbia shall be some 175 km long, which leaves 797 kilometers of the border (some 82%) vulnerable to illegal border crossing.

The other oversight that I can only attribute to infatuation with "our great and heroic past" so typical for the right-winger mindframe. Of the two routes marked on the map above, the one leading through Hungary carries the associations of the late medieval times and the resistence to the expansion of Ottoman Empire while it was advancing towards Vienna. The other route was activated in the XX century, this direction being the main traffic artery of Yugoslavia while it existed. The fence is aimed to cut the medieval route, not recogniying how convenient the other route can be for illegal immigrants, being close to the Croatian-Hungarian border and offering a wide stretch of easily walkable terrain to enter Hungary if they wish. Some of the immigrants could acquire maps or look at the map apps of their cellphones and see the possibilities.

The fence rises yet another concern, namely that even if it succeds in holding up illegal immigration, it might increase legal one. A few years back Hungary opened up its citizenship to the citizens of surrounding countries, enabling them to hold citizenship of Hungary along with the citizenship of their own country provided that they can prove that at least one of their ancestors was born at the territory belongiing to Hungary before WW I. I do not know how many citizens of Serbia hold Hungarian citizenship too, but the number probably has 6 digits. Many of them will probably start to think about leaving the region where the desperate, homeless refugees - through no fault of their own - are massing up on the Serbian side of the border, which does not exactly increase the overall air of safety. Certainly there is a point when one starts to weigh upon the greener grass on the other side of fence. And having paralell citizenship, they are free to do as they deem appropriate.

And finally, Hungary should contemplate the role of "last line of defence" of Europe, which is assumed by building thiis particular fence. They had some historical experiences in playing that role, and should know better by now.