Border Studies emphasizes that bordering takes place not only at the physical frontiers of nation-states but beyond as well as within those frontiers (Balibar 1998; De Genova 2005, Vaughan-Williams 2008). This paper examines the variety of borderings that occur at, beyond and within Europe’s formal frontiers in an effort to control migration from the Middle East. The study analyzes (mostly) current policies of the European Union as well as Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. In addition to spending billions of euros to fortify their formal frontiers, European governments have also increasingly made international development aid to Middle Eastern countries (for example, Libya, Tunisia and Turkey) conditional on stricter emigration measures. The measures, such as the establishment of sophisticated detection systems, detention centers, refugee camps, and visa-processing bureaux (some of which are operated by private companies) amount to the erection of de facto European borders within the Middle East, or what border scholars term “the externalization” or the “off-shoring” of border control (Frelick, Kysel and Podkul 2016: 197; Vaughan-Williams 2008: 67). And yet, neither these nor the formal borders of Middle Eastern countries prevent millions of refugees and migrants from annually reaching European lands (with or without proper documentation). To draw attention to the (mostly informal) bordering that transpires within Europe, the paper employs the theory of “inclusive exclusion” (Agamben 1998: 7).The theory hypothesizes the widespread toleration and even facilitation of the entry and residence of both documented and undocumented migrants (inclusion) simultaneously combined with their marginalization and exploitation (exclusion). The paper concludes that the popular preoccupation with formal frontiers (walls, fences, etc.) common in the media provides a woefully inadequate understanding of the myriad borders that migrants and refugees from the Middle East confront.