Border Regimes in Twentieth Century Europe

151 Pages·2022·1.851 MB·English

by  Péter Bencsik

Border Regimes in Twentieth
Century Europe
This book offers a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the history of
passports, border surveillance, border crossing, and other elements of European
border regimes in the 20th century. Border regime is interpreted widely, including
inbound and outbound travels, permanent and temporary movements, distance and
local border traffic, borderland fortifications, penalties for borderland offences,
and also restrictions of free movement, even inside a given country. Based on
archival sources from Hungary and the Czech Republic, extensive literature and
more than two decades of research, the author distinguishes between two basic
border regimes: the restrictive eastern and the permissive western systems, and a
transitional zone between them. The historical development of these regimes is
discussed in the framework of waves of globalisation and territorialisation.
Border Regimes in Twentieth Century Europe offers the first-ever systematic
comparison of European border regimes for students, scholars, and any readers
who are interested in travel history, border studies, globalisation, area studies and
20th century Europe, including everyday history. By presenting their different
historical experiences, the book contributes to a better understanding between old
and new member states of the European Union, as well as between member and
non-member states.
Péter Bencsik is Associate Professor at the University of Szeged, researching
border regimes and territorialisation in East Central Europe, Hungarian—
Czechoslovak relations, and history of the communist bloc. He is author of New
borders as local economic possibility? The case of post-1920 Hungary (2020).
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For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
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Border Regimes in Twentieth
Century Europe
Péter Bencsik
Translated by Attila Török and the author
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 Péter Bencsik
The right of Péter Bencsik to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-032-28079-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-28084-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-29525-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003295259
Typeset in Times New Roman
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With love to Szonja
The research has been financially supported by the
MTA—SZTE—ELTE History of Globalization Research
Group (project number: 0322107)
Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA, project
number: K 115988)
and the National Research, Development and Innovation
Office (NKFIH, project number: K 138048)

Contents
Introduction 1
1 Theoretical background 6
2 The emergence of the Western and Eastern model 31
3 The period of the two World Wars 45
4 Cold War tendencies 71
5 Border regimes of East Central Europe, 1945–1989 89
Conclusions 120
Sources and bibliography 124
Archival sources 124
Printed sources (laws, decrees, orders,
international agreements) 127
Books and studies 128
Index 138

Introduction
International migration is a movement across state boundaries. Border crossings
have four basic types. On the one hand, a cross-border journey can either be entry
(from abroad) and exit (to a foreign country). On the other hand—based on the
intention of the traveller—this movement can cause a temporary or a permanent
change of residence. Therefore, we can distinguish between temporary entry,
temporary exit, permanent entry (immigration), and permanent exit (emigration).
Western scholarly literature tends to focus on permanent movements (emigra-
tion, immigration),1 while East Central European scholars put their emphasis
mostly on temporary travels. This difference is caused by the following reasons:
(1) Permanent migration had much less significance in the Eastern part of Europe.
Large-scale immigration was absent in this region in the last two centuries, except
during the periods of the two World Wars. Even then, “immigrants” were mostly
compatriots arriving from the other side of the border, fleeing persecution.2 Bigger
emigration was also typical only during short periods, like the two decades before
World War I. In Western Europe, however, permanent migration was always sig-
nificant. Until the 1960s, emigration was more important; since then, however,
immigration outpaced it. It seems, though, that it was immigration that always
raised more concerns in the West. (2) Freedom of temporary travel was always
taken for granted in the West, while in Eastern Europe—including East Central
Europe after 1945—this kind of movement was often severely restricted.
In addition to social mobility and political mobilisation, spatial mobility also
became a prominent subject of study. Over the past two decades, there has been
a renewed interest around the world in temporary migration (tourism) as well,
although it is somewhat different on either side of Europe. Research into passport
history has also boomed in the West, but border surveillance systems are seldom
part of these investigations, mostly in the area of immigration control. Scholars in
the Eastern part of Europe, however, have dealt with problems like the Iron Cur-
tain, border zone restrictions, passport control, visa policy, small border traffic,
etc. Systematic comparison of border regimes of the East Central European states
started only in the previous decade, but no such attempts have been made to com-
pare passport and border regimes of Western and Eastern Europe. It would raise
awareness of the different historical experiences of the old and new member states
DOI: 10.4324/9781003295259-1