Paper short abstract:

In Fall 2015, the EU set up the "EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa" (EUTF) in order to fight "the root causes of irregular migration" in Africa. This paper aims to examine the effects of the new field of humanitarian assistance for migrants, which emerged in Egypt as a result.

Paper long abstract:

Responding to the arrival of nearly 800,000 refugees in summer and autumn 2015, in November, the EU set up the "EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa" (EUTF) earmarking 3.4 billion Euros to fight "the root causes of irregular migration" (European Commission 2017). European Union leaders started once again to work intensively with countries all over Africa, tying development aid to countries' willingness to accept returnees from Europe, and offering assistance in exchange for pledges to confine migratory movements.

For Egypt, the EUTF provides a €60 million program entitled "Enhancing the response to migration challenges in Egypt". Although the bigger part of this money flows into the strengthening of migration governance, another huge part is used for reintegration programs, educational training, and poverty alleviation programs in order to improve protection of migrants' rights and to support host communities and migrants. Accordingly, national and international organization, INGO's, NGO's, and other professional and humanitarian actors have started to work newly, or increased their activities in the field in Egypt. Drawing on Ruben Andersson (2014), who sees these emerging migration industries in the Global South not as a homogeneous field of actors, but rather as a networked entity in which objectives oppose sometimes each other and roles overlap, we aim in this paper to examine this new field of humanitarian assistance and its interplay with European, as well as Egyptian and regional migration policies, in addition to non-governmental organizations and the movement of people.

Paper short abstract:

This paper situates EU border externalisation within extant processes of racialised exclusion in Mauritania. This deepened historical gaze is then broadened ethnographically. From here, the "illegality" produced by the border regime appears to be a variant of a more general postcolonial condition.

Paper long abstract:

Much of the literature on EU border externalisation restricts its analytical scope to the dialectical relationship between the border regime and its target: the irregular, Europe-bound migrant. While yielding diverse and valuable insights, such two-dimensional perspectives tend to neglect the deeper histories upon which the externalisation process builds, as well as the broader socio-spatial relations in which illegalised migrants are embedded. This paper addresses these two related gaps through a historically informed discussion of ethnographic data gathered in Mauritania during 11 months of fieldwork. It proceeds in two phases. Firstly, through a brief but focused discussion of colonial and postcolonial context, it highlights how border externalisation in Mauritania intervenes within older re-orderings of territorial sovereignty and processes of racialised inclusion and exclusion. It then proceeds with an analysis of ethnographic data gathered in various settings of the urban informal economy in Nouakchott, Nouadhibou and Rosso. At each of these sites, the experiential presence of the EU border is evident within the subjectivities of those it illegalises. It can take the form of memories of violence undergone elsewhere in the EU's extended southern buffer-zone, future aspirations to cross into Europe, or experiences of deportability and brutalisation at the hands of Mauritanian security forces. Situated within the context of the historical processes under discussion, however, these experiences reveal the "migrant illegality" produced by the EU border regime to be a surface-level manifestation of a more deep-seated postcolonial condition, one that transcends the national/other divide.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the intersections of privatization and externalization of border security. In particular, it outlines how private security corporations engage in the politics of externalizing border control and the continuing colonialities of the involved public and private actors

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I aim to uncover the intersections of privatization and externalization of border security. The increasing role of private security companies in practicing and consequently externalizing border security represents a shift in power relations which this paper aims to problematize. The main interest lies both in how states and public institutions cooperate with private companies in the domain of externalization politics as well as the innate logics of private security actors. In particular, I am interested in examining colonial continuities and discussing the coloniality of privatizing externalization.

Drawing on the concept of migration industries (Andersson 2014, Gammeltoft-Hansen and Sørensen 2013), I describe the assemblage of private and public actors in the politics of externalization as a part of the "control industry", which describes the actors that enable practices that control and possibly even hinder migratory movements. In this regard, I will investigate specifically how corporate actors become involved into externalization practices through policy initiatives but also examine their specific objectives. Privatization of security has been shown to change complexions, power relations, and to cause problematic consequences, such as militarization. This paper aims to outline how private corporate actors engage in externalization politics. In doing this, it aims to uncover the (neo)colonial logics of externalization and how privatization exacerbates this aspect.

Empirically, I will outline two domains where externalization and privatization intersect, through migration control practices and through the technologization of border security. This will enable an analysis of how companies become engaged in different practices of externalization.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the normalization of supranational regions as ideal units of refugee governance while arguing the border externalization literature could better assess migration control's broader spatial logics, adopt historical analysis, and engage with seminal immigration debates.

Paper long abstract:

This paper demonstrates that since the 1970s, influential state and non-state actors have sought to normalize supranational regions as the ideal politico-territorial units of forced displacement governance. Border externalizations have been part of this grander geopolitical strategy. Indeed, the interdisciplinary literature on border externalization has shown how states deploy extra-territorial migration controls to transnationally confine, delay, and otherwise deter potential migrants in source and transit countries. Such work is important and should continue. Yet I argue the border externalization literature could be productively broadened in three ways. Firstly, border externalization scholarship could better analyze how bordering reflects broader spatial logics and projects. Secondly, border externalization research could better incorporate historical analysis. And finally that border externalization scholarship could better engage with seminal moral and ethical debates surrounding immigration and border control. I make these claims while showing how the supranational region has been discursively produced as a spatial diagram of asylum and refugee governance, with border externalizations deployed to confine asylum-seekers to their 'region of origin'. Despite growing advocacy for 'regional solutions' to asylum seeking, explanations for why regions are ideal - what regions do or solve, exactly - are often opaque or altogether absent. As such, I also will analyze supranational regions as geographic units of forced displacement governance and how this regionalism relates to the major normative debates in immigration and border control.