Paper short abstract:

By drawing on recent literature on the ‘Black Mediterranean’ as well as my own fieldwork into refugee and migrant disappearances, this paper examines the colonial history of the various present day coercive measures used in the Mediterranean region to deter Europe-bound migrations.

Paper long abstract:

Strategies, technologies, and measures employed to deter Europe-bound migrations through the Mediterranean region have multiplied, intensified, and become increasingly sophisticated over the course of the past two decades. However, behind the technological sophistication of thermal cameras, heartbeat sensors, drones, triple-fencing, and modern patrol boats lie practices and logics of mobility curtailment which can be traced back to Europe’s colonial conquest and domination. Colonial expansion entailed not just slave trade, but also other forms of enforced curtailment of mobility—as well as enforced mobility, such as the case of forced convict labour. Furthermore, for example in the British colonies, the abolition of slavery did not bring an end to these practices but, instead, they were carried on as expanded laws on ‘vagrancy’.

A lot of important recent work done on border regimes and migration have rightly highlighted the interconnections between borders, bordering practices, and racial capitalism. In this paper, however, I seek to historicise these developments further and argue, drawing on literature on the ‘Black Mediterranean’ and on my work on refugee and migrant disappearances and border deaths, that the control of ‘suspect’ populations now eagerly embraced across Europe draw their acceptability from their long colonial legacy. Furthermore, in contrast to literature on ‘governmentality’ I propose to examine the unabashed necropolitical brutality and coercion, in other words, direct use of force, involved in such anti-migration projects.