Abolitionist vistas of the human. Border struggles, migration and freedom of movement

Abstract

We are confronting today in many global borderscapes (including the US/Mexico borderlands and the Mediterranean Sea) a criminalization of humanitarian intervention in support of people in transit. This raises important questions with respect to the critique of the governmental turn of the ‘humanitarian reason’ articulated in recent years by critical border and migration scholars. This article discusses such questions through an engagement with the issue of the ‘human’ inspired by black abolitionist thinkers. It also dwells on the transformations of the maritime border regime in the Mediterranean, emphasizing the relevance of the stubbornness of migrants challenging that regime and examining emerging forms of border activism and the practices of solidarity they embody. A discussion of freedom of movement as a political project concludes the article.