Migrants' Passage - The Making and Unmaking of the European Border in Malta (original) (raw)
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In this article, we seek to challenge some of the ways in which the ‘2015 Mediterranean migration crisis’ has been scripted by elites. Situated within – and contributing to – a flourishing research agenda on everyday geographies and ontologies of personal (in)security, we aim to bring non-elite knowledge and experience to the foreground. We do so by examining the diverse grounded perspectives of those on the move who are arguably the key dramatis personae in the socalled ‘crisis’ and yet whose voices are often absent in dominant representations of it. Specifically, we focus on the dynamic interplay between contemporary European Union border security apparatuses and mobile subjects who encounter, negotiate and challenge these apparatuses. Drawing upon 37 in-depth qualitative interviews with recent arrivals as part of a multi-sited research project across the Mediterranean region, we offer a historicized and geographically situated analysis of the contested politics of ‘irregularity’ on the island of Malta. As a geopolitically significant site along the central Mediterranean route, the changes in migratory dynamics witnessed in Malta over the past two decades offer an instructive lens through which the ‘crisis’ narrative can be usefully problematized and disaggregated.
Engendering Borders : some critical thoughts on theories of borders and migration
Klagenfurter Geographische Schriften, 2013
This paper examines migration from the perspective of border theory. It is argued that in the changed contexts of border situation, whereby modern concepts of national territoriality and cultural boundaries are being dismantled by processes of globalization, the usual view at migration as involving border crossing between two sedentary (state) entities no long-er is theoretically adequate. To the contrary, notions of migration and rootedness, mobility and stillness, fluidity and permanence have lost their power of concepts by which to frame the debates on migration. Moreover, while the modern nation-states are being transformed from culturally homogenous to ‘liquefied’ societies, discourses on immigrants, aliens and foreigners face a serious challenge in terms of how they organize their reference point. Namely: who, or what, is the norm against which the immigrant is conceptualized as another subject, an Other, no longer is a self-evident realm. Final-ly, if the borders themselves have become moving objects, either as extraterritorial administrative points of control (e.g. Frontex) or as tools of social segregation and exclusion within a given territory (e.g. zoning), what are the conditions by which one becomes a migrant: is the legal status of citizenship still the proper means of describing one’s relationship towards the state, or have other factors, such as economic, social or cultural capital and possessions, become more rele-vant in defining the status of belonging and identity?
Nordic journal of migration research, 2021
The book Migration, Borders and Citizenship: Between Policy and Public Spheres, edited by Ambrosini, Cinalli, and Jacobson, is a volume that is both theoretically challenging and empirically rich. It proposes to address the relationship between borders and citizenship in a multilevel governance setting where policy at different levels interacts-in cooperation or in conflict-with the public sphere and its various actors. The book gathers authors from different disciplines (chiefly sociologists but also lawyers and geographers) who, resorting to different qualitative methods, tackle a wealth of interesting issues, such as inter alia: borders in the European Union (EU) and in the larger Euro-Mediterranean region (Chapter 3), the contorted situation of the Dreamers in the United States (Chapter 4), the roles of medical expertise in the EU's hotspots (Chapter 7), and the narratives surrounding the construction of the French-Italian border in a historical perspective (Chapter 8). This brief review does not do justice to the variety of contributions, but selects some of the main take-aways the book offers for academics and students interested in migration and governance. In the lines that follow, I first present the theoretical contribution of the book and notably the original conceptualization of borders as seams stitching entities together rather than dividing them. Second, I outline some of the empirical findings of interest, which I group in two categories: one that reflects the local turn in migration policies while nuancing the role of local authorities, and another that provides insights in the activities of nonorganized civil society as actors of solidarity. From the theoretical standpoint, the book proposes a range of approaches to the bordercitizenship relationship. While borders are looked at as limits between territories, which consequently determines membership to the citizenry, they are also considered as less tangible walls that may erect within the state and entail different treatment between natives and foreigners or between different categories of citizens. But, the key conceptual contribution
Democracy presupposes the existence of a political body – the demos – which is the legitimate holder of the sovereign rights. The identity of the State, as well as the possibility of the existence of a democratic political regime, is founded upon the cohesion of this political body. In 19th and 20th centuries Europe, this cohesion was expressed through a certain idea of the 'nation', a constructed notion of cohesiveness of a territorial community. But what is becoming of this political body at a time when porousness of State borders allows for the massive intrusion of populations perceived as being fundamentally extraneous, therefore threatening (Girard 1982)? Which is the place of the immigrant in the Western democracies? And which are the means through which the State reacts when confronted to this type of identity threat? Our contribution will try to map the main interrogations that cross the relation between democracy, migrations and sovereignty in the 21st century. We will argue that, while the political body of the nation-State is fragilized by immigration, new ways of re-institute the cohesiveness of its political community are set up by the State in order to enhance its identity through difference with respect to others. These include the consolidation of external borders (a policy trend in the EU), but also enhancing the symbolic internal boundaries between “us” and “the others”. The recent discourse of the European leaders about the failure of the multiculturalism is an example of this attempt to re-institute difference.
Is there a European space for transnationalism? asked Alisdaire Rogers three years ago in his lecture of the same name (2001). To make it short, of course one has to answer "YES", considering alone the mobility of East European travelling salesmen and -women, seasonal workers that has been spanning across whole Europe since the end of the cold war or the life practice of the migrant workers of the first hour who have altered their connection to their context of origin without ever giving it up. And yet a small "no" remains. The hidden message of the lecture's title, to transnationalise migration studies themselves, has passed widely unnoticed. Yet at the latest since the end of the cold war and the new formation of the European Union the national migration policies of the west European states can no longer be explained out of a nation-state frame alone. A nation-state focused view must furthermore misjudge the new dimension of the West European states' regulation efforts in migration politics that have taken on a European to global if not imperial character. This transnationalisation of migration politics, which is accompanied by and answering to the increasing transnationalisation of the "practices of migration" itself, also calls for a revision of migration studies in the sense of the "transnational approaches".
Most critical discussions of European immigration policies are centered around the concept of Fortress Europe and understand the concept of the border as a way of sealing off unwanted immigration movements. However, ethnographic studies such as our own multi-sited field research in South-east Europe clearly show that borders are daily being crossed by migrants. These findings point to the shortcomings of the Fortress metaphor. By bringing to the fore the agency of migrants in the conceptualization of borders, we propose to understand how borders are being shaped by taking as a starting point the struggles of mobility. Against the background of our two-year transdisciplinary research project TRANSIT MIGRATION European migration and border policies cannot be longer conceptualized as being simply oriented towards the prevention of migration. Since migrants cross the borders daily, what happens if the borders' permeability is part of the way they work? If so, we have to investigate the mechanisms of border policies and practices anew. One is the concept of the border or migration regime. The other is the concept of the autonomy of migration. Our concept of ethnographic regime analyses is based on a transdisciplinary approach, comprising political studies, anthropology and sociology.