The Inclusive Border: Institutional Legitimation Through Invited Participation

This article develops the concept of the inclusive border as an interpretive lens for studying how migration governance combines exclusionary control with institutionalised invitations to participate. Border regimes police mobility, disperse asylum seekers, and stratify rights, while inviting migrants to self-manage, express preferences, and advise. The inclusive border captures the political logic of arrangements that invoke democratic norms without conferring equal political membership. Under asymmetrical authority, these spaces may reproduce, blur, or contest differential inclusion. The article maps three recurring dynamics – the responsibilisation of migrants, the optimisation of differential inclusion, and the mediation of membership claims – across three spatial logics: containment in refugee camps, allocation through algorithmic matching systems, and residence in municipal participation venues. The article positions the inclusive border as a mode of institutional legitimation and as a democratic counterpart to the humanitarian border. While the humanitarian border presents exclusion as compatible with care, the inclusive border presents it as compatible with democratic norms. It organises the unresolved democratic boundary problem institutionally.