Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the relationship between localized power structures in a (post-) crisis setting in the EU borderlands and the mobility strategies migrants use, this paper explores how sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya experience a system of serial confinement and economic exploitation.

Paper long abstract:

Sub-Saharan migrants' experiences in Libya highlight a series of sites of confinement characterized by money extortion by a range of actors, including state authorities, smugglers, militia and criminal groups.

This paper is based on several months of ethnographic fieldwork in both Libya and Malta and traces migrants' experiences across these different sites, ranging from spaces in the desert, government-run detention centres, to smugglers' houses and checkpoints. I explore how these domains, where formal and informal activities overlap, are part of the lived worlds of migrants' trajectories and strongly influence the opportunities and constraints they face. How migrants navigate these sites, reconfigure mobility, as well as the effect this has on their aspirations and onward movement is the centre of investigation.