The current pandemic emergency reveals how the intra-EU space of ›free‹ movement continues to be a bordered space. During the first wave of the pandemic, in the spring of 2020, EU member states introduced strict border controls and mobility restrictions as an instrument to contain the further spread of the virus. We examine exemplary border situations at one German airport, and argue that the border management and security practices of German federal authorities enforces a regime of differential bordering that has effectively suspended free mobility rights for certain categories of EU citizens. We identify such practices as part of a »spectacle of security« unfolding within an emergency-routine continuum, and we look at its effects on the conditioning of highly precarised migratory patterns of East European migrants. At the same time, we take these border situations as sites of contestation, where migrants claim rights, resist disciplining, and seek ways to circumvent punitive regulations by forging networks of mutual support. Furthermore, such episodes serve as occasions in which migrants are encouraged to openly voice their indignation with everyday exclusion, exploitation and racialised treatment.