A moving target: locating the Senegalese-Spanish border

Abstract

ABSTRACT The fall 2005 Moroccan and Spanish police attacks on unarmed African migrant men left fourteen dead and led Spain and the EU to take various actions to prevent the entrance of future migrants at the Ceuta and Melilla border fences. In 2006, nearly thirty-two thousand migrants arrived at the Canary Islands by boat from departure points in Senegal and Mauritania, almost a seven-fold increase from the year before. These years are pivotal in demonstrating how violence and subsequent bolstering of a border make migrants rethink their point of entry. Contrary to the media attention around the Spanish borderlines, border security has taken place far from them – creating borderspaces in and around the African continent. This paper points to Senegal as the start of the border with Spain/Europe, since the EU has, along with other means, exported police to retain and detain black Africans seeking an irregular method of exit. Two works that memorialized the 2005 tragedies – Me llamo Suleimán and Partir para contar: Un clandestino africano rumbo a Europa – expose the movement of borders and the existence of the Senegalese-Spanish border, leading us to understand how migrants actively negotiate border changes to achieve entry into Europe.