The Bridge: Redux-The Breakdown of Normative Conviviality

Abstract

In this chapter the concept of conviviality is used as an analytic concept around which recent developments concerning the changing role of state borders in Europe are 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, which signaled a breakdown of this specific form of conviviality. The chapter shows how this breakdown of state conviviality opens up for a new form of biopolitical regime at the border.