The European Union–West African sea border: Anti-immigration strategies and territoriality (2017) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Unwanted sea migrants across the EU border: The Canary Islands (2017)
Political Geography
In the early 2000s, the Canary Islands emerged as the main gateway for unwanted sea migrants from Senegal into Spain. In this paper, I draw from a year of multi-sited ethnographic work to discuss the relationship between state actions to secure the border against these migrants, on the one hand; and smugglers and migrants' efforts to subvert those actions, on the other. My argument is that the relationship between the two is mutually constitutive: anti-immigration policy is a reaction to the actions of unwanted migrants, and unwanted migrants adapt to state efforts to seal the border against unwanted migration by finding and exploiting spaces of opportunity in the border. In the context of sea migration from Senegal to the Canary Islands, 2005 marks a major shift in this relationship. That year the European Union adopted a new framework for migration control (the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility), Frontex became operational, and Spain and Senegal deepened their cooperation to stop unwanted Europe-bound sea migration. This forced unwanted migrants to find creative ways to enter EU territory. I argue that combining the institutional and migrant perspectives allows us to explore the decentering of the state in the contemporary anti-immigration border regime, the emerging spatialities of the contemporary border, and understand the migrant's journey. This perspective also illuminates the messiness, violence, and multiplicity of interests involved in the bordering of Europe.
Island Studies Journal, 2012
Islands play a significant role in international irregular maritime migration. Frequently they are part of maritime interstitial spaces between states, and their location, combined with institutional membership, makes them part of international migration routes and subject to border management strategies. In this paper borders are analysed as social institutions used for regulating relative permeability through rules of entry and exit for persons, goods and capital. Borders institutionalize territoriality and are politically implemented by states. They are selective, also in migration, and irregular border transit is not always indicative of an inability to control. The Canary Islands are used as an illustrative example of how border management at the southern edge of the European Union has evolved towards more coercive deterrence and tighter surveillance. The Canary Islands experienced irregular maritime immigration from the west African coasts during the first decade of the 21st c...
In recent years border externalization has emerged as a central policy framework for European Union (EU) border and migration management. New multi-lateral and bi-lateral agreements on border management have been forged between the EU, its member states, and its North African neighbours and neighbours-of-neighbours. In the process, what is meant by the ‘border’ is being transformed with implications for where the border is located, who has jurisdiction over particular spaces, and how border and migration management is undertaken. This paper analyses the spatial logics of EU border externalization practices as they are being applied to and in North and West Africa. It focuses on Operation Seahorse and the transnationally coordinated border control projects and infrastructures implemented by the Guardia Civil of Spain. Seahorse serves as an implementation case of the Migration Routes Initiative, an approach toward migration management emphasizing interregional cooperation between designated origin-transit-destination countries. The initiative is the organizing strategy of the Global Approach to Migration, the EU’s overarching framework toward migration policy. The paper shows how Seahorse is changing migration policy and re-articulating Europe’s relations with African countries, producing new bordering processes, creating new geographies of integration and border management, and redefining the practices of territory, sovereignty, and extra-territoriality.
The Making and Un-making of Border Scales European Union Migration Control in North and West Africa
The Tumultuous Politics of Scale: Unsettled States, Migrants, Movements in Flux, 2020
While living in Zaragoza, Spain, from 2011 to 2013, I was a member of the pro-migration activist group La Red de Sin Papeles. This was a network of both local and immigrant youth, organizing under the principles of "Right to Migrate" and "Freedom of Movement." Besides working on obtaining papers with migration lawyers, one main focus of La Red was to organize an ongoing campaign of "Cities without Borders." This meant denouncing and protesting random arrests, usually based on racial profiling, that ended up in deportation back to assumed countries of origin. Mainly from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Algeria, many of these no-borders activists had successfully crossed the recent EU-led migration control operations in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters. At their fullest, these operations include military vessels, surveillance technology, and the deployment of multicountry border guards on sea and land, thousands of kilometers away from the actual EU borderlines. According to the EU's external migration policy, the mission of these operations is to manage migration flows at origin and transit points. These forms of extraterritorial intervention under the goal of migration control are referred to as "border externalization." This chapter elaborates a critical engagement of the unsettled scales of action being unfolded by the EU's externalized forms of migration control. From 1999 onwards, a series of institutional infrastructures have been put in place among EU and non-EU countries to carry out practices of remote migration control: from diplomatic agreements and the twisting of national laws, to multinational police workshops and yearly conferences of migration experts and cartographers attempting to analyze, trace, and map the ever-changing itineraries of populations in flux. Such high-budget activities financed by the EU and its member-states are legitimized by an official discourse that mixes arguments between efficiency, humanitarianism, and self-defense. Currently, the most visible practices of border externalization are the so-called "rescue" operations at sea and the subsequent retention
Managing the maritime borders of Europe: Protection through deterrence and prevention?
Events of the last three years have breathed a new air of urgency in the EU regarding not only the management of irregular migration and asylum but also on the issue of maritime arrivals. Since the Arab Spring, the maritime borders are once more in the spotlight, receiving thousands of irregular arrivals annually coupled with an increase in loss of life at sea. The working paper,discusses recent events and policies implemented by states in the Southern Mediterranean, aiming to achieve on the one hand an efficient border control and on the other a protection of migrants at sea. The paper argues that there is still a long way to go towards balancing prevention and deterrence with protection; even more so, when the focus is on policies and regulations in place that seek to management a multifaceted phenomenon solely from a security perspective.
The EU’s borders, and those of its member states, are shifting zones of power arranged by novel institutional strategies and the subsequent proliferation of legal texts, maps, technologies and actors, reconstructing where and what the border is. This paper focuses on the phenomenon of “border externalization” in the European Union, in particular the case of Spain, describing it as a stretching of the borderline. Externalization includes the outsourcing of border control to non-EU countries, as well as the spatial extension of where EU governments and forces can patrol, thus a literal expansion of the borderline. The latest EU strategy of border policy and migration control yet to be fully implemented is called “the Migration Routes Initiative” and involves spreading checkpoints, migration control experts and other dispositifs of migration management along shifting migrants itineraries passing through sending, transit and destination countries. In this paper we identify different policies and institutions that constitute this “external dimension” of border management for the EU as a whole and for Spain vis-a-vis its Southern borders with Africa, mainly focusing on the Rabat Process. These changes in migration management practices present possible reconfigurations in the exercise of sovereignty and its relationship to territoriality.
PAIX ET SÉCURITÉ INTERNATIONALES Journal of International Law and International Relations Num 7, janvier-décembre 2019 | ISSN 2341-0868, 2019
GONZÁLEZ GARCÍA, I., «Immigration in Spain: Migratory Routes, Cooperation with Third Countries and Human Rights in Return Procedures » Paix et Sécurité Internationales, num. 7, 2019, pp. 201-230 Abstract Following a brief overview of immigration in Spain, the present paper first analyses the main routes of illegal immigration into Spain, giving recent data on the number of arrivals by sea and land to the Iberian Peninsula, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands and Spanish territories in North Africa. The sea has traditionally been the main route of entry to Spanish territory for immigrants primarily from Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the years 2013 to 2015 proved an exception to this rule, with immigration by land outstripping that by sea due to an increase in the arrival of Syrian immigrants to the cities of Ceuta and above all Melilla. Next, a description is given of the political and operational mechanisms established by the Spanish authorities to control Spain’s maritime borders, especially in the Canary Islands. Such border control is achieved through unilateral surveillance measures (the Integrated External Surveillance System, Spanish initials: SIVE), bilateral cooperation (inter-state agreements with Morocco and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa) and regional cooperation within the European Union (EU). This is followed by a discussion of how immigration routes have been affected by increased cooperation between Spain and African States to intercept immigrants in their countries of origin or during transit. There is likewise an analysis of Spain’s use of summary returns or pushbacks following assaults or jumps on the border fences surrounding Ceuta and Melilla and attempts of arrival by swimming in Ceuta or by sea to Spanish islands and islets in North Africa, within the framework of the 1992 Spanish-Moroccan agreement on readmission of foreigners who have entered illegally. Lastly, we argue that the reinforcement of border control alone is insufficient to curb migration flows: to be effective, it must be accompanied by common policies in the European countries of destination and increased investment in the countries of origin to provide their citizens with the opportunity to obtain a higher standard of living and overcome the temptation to emigrate as a first option. Keywords Immigration, Spain, West African route, Western Mediterranean route, Ceuta, Melilla, border, border control, Spanish-Moroccan agreement on readmission, Morocco, Human Rights
2018
The European Union (EU) implemented a maritime interdiction network using search and rescue which interdicted at least 462,813 “illegal migrants” in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2006 and 2015. This involved 15 discrete, militarised and semi-secret maritime interdiction operations (MIOs) at a minimum cost of 126.9 million 2014 Euros. In this dissertation, I will explore and map these operations and their geographies between 2006 and 2015. First, and based on the given existence of the European Patrols Network, I examine how this network came into being in the first place. This serves to show that the EU purposely created regular maritime interdiction operations using search and rescue to interdict migrants by 2006. This approach also justifies and underpins my subsequent analyses of their histories, functions and outcomes, all of which depend on the network having two specific properties. First: that the EPN was a system intentionally designed to internalise migrants and boa...
Human Security and Migration in Europe's Southern Borders
2019
This book examines the management of migratory flows in the Mediterranean within an international security perspective. The intense migratory flows registered during the year 2015 and the tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea have tested the mechanisms of the Union’s immigration and asylum policies and its ability to respond to humanitarian crises. Moreover, these flows of varying intensities and geographies represent a threat to the internal security of the EU and its member states. By using Spain and Italy as case studies, the author theorizes that the EU, given its inability to adopt and implement a common policy to effectively manage migratory flows on its Southern border, uses a deterrence strategy based on minimum common denominators.
Assembling Containment at European Union Borders: Between Inclusion and Exclusion
The Age of human Rights Journal, 2024
The European Union migration governance is characterised by non-linearity and complexity. Such governance represents the competition of a multitude of actors that compete for power and visibility. The policies designed by its member states-based on the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights-oscillate between an inclusive and an exclusive migration governance approach. A concept that can offer a comprehensive understanding of the social and normative dynamics that transformed the Mediterranean Sea as a space of inclusion and exclusion is assemblage. The article suggests that the EU and its member states design migration governance policies on an instrumental assemblage of borders, territory and human rights. From the discussion of these assemblages, it emerges how the compromise developed by the European Court of Human Rights contributed to further exclusion and human rights violations in the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, assemblage offers a critical perspective on the normative limits of the migration management policies unfolding at EU borders.