The Threshold and the Line: Bodies, Migration, and a Pier in Lampedusa

The tragic shipwreck off the island of Lampedusa on 3 October 2013 spurred the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to take up the issue of border deaths by setting up the Missing Migrants Project (MMP), which compiles and monitors data on border deaths worldwide. By the summer of 2015, the project was online and increasingly cited as the source of data on border deaths. This chapter provides a critical analysis of the MMP and the IOM’s emergence as an authority on border deaths. It argues that taking up the issue of border deaths and incorporating it into the main tasks of the IOM’s new Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, as well as IOM Country Offices, has aided the IOM in presenting itself as both a technical and humanitarian actor. This has helped the IOM in gaining political legitimacy and in strengthening its position as the leading global player in the field of migration and border management. The chapter aims, firstly, to raise the question of how the MMP, while not being an official death count, has become a leading authority on border death data. Secondly, the chapter asks how the IOM presented the MMP to the public and stakeholders. Thirdly, the chapter critically analyses the IOM’s ‘neutral’ politics of counting.

Migration management is at the heart of the world's political agenda. The enormous institutional experiment that has taken place in Kosovo since 1999 shows that the relation between migration, security and effective sovereignty is fundamental for the correct development of national and international relations, particularly in the course of a nation-building operation. Border management can be defined as an ensemble of legal and operational tools that regulate the inflows and outflows of persons and goods through territories. The overall inefficiency of UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) in addressing border management challenges is a reflection of an obsolete concept of peace operations, especially with regard to the importance of criminal justice and policing in peace operation theaters.Keywords: border management; migration management; UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK)

For a long time, the Central Mediterranean migration route was the most popular among those which went to the European Union from Africa. However, data from 2018 show that the trend is about to turn, and the Western Mediterranean route to Spain is about to become the most popular. Changes in Italy, the entering point to Europe presumably means changes in the African internal routes as well. This article intends to track the reasons which could affect the migratory pattern to the EU. The research focuses on the condition changes along the Central Mediterranean route, from Italy, to Mali. The article aims to sum up both the political and security domains, including the CSDP missions and operation from the southern border of the EU to the heart of West Africa.

In this article, we seek to challenge some of the ways in which the ‘2015 Mediterranean migration crisis’ has been scripted by elites. Situated within – and contributing to – a flourishing research agenda on everyday geographies and ontologies of personal (in)security, we aim to bring non-elite knowledge and experience to the foreground. We do so by examining the diverse grounded perspectives of those on the move who are arguably the key dramatis personae in the so-called ‘crisis’ and yet whose voices are often absent in dominant representations of it. Specifically, we focus on the dynamic interplay between contemporary European Union border security apparatuses and mobile subjects who encounter, negotiate and challenge these apparatuses. Drawing upon 37 in-depth qualitative interviews with recent arrivals as part of a multi-sited research project across the Mediterranean region, we offer a historicized and geographically situated analysis of the contested politics of ‘irregularity’ on the island of Malta. As a geopolitically significant site along the central Mediterranean route, the changes in migratory dynamics witnessed in Malta over the past two decades offer an instructive lens through which the ‘crisis’ narrative can be usefully problematized and disaggregated.

In recent years, within the context of the so-called European reception crisis, there has been a marked intensification of securitarian approaches to border management, accompanied by a rise in deaths along increasingly treacherous migratory routes. This process unfolds within a scenario of growing migratory turbulence and the escalating exercise of necropolitical violence and its humanitarian justification. The policies implemented by the European Union and third countries to control and contain irregular migration – framed within a paradigm that we define as "migration prohibition" – have proven ineffective, instead generating ripple effects that are problematic for different actors and spaces. This article presents the findings of a multi-sited collective ethnography conducted between December 2020 and April 2025 across the Mediterranean space between Italy and Tunisia, along an increasingly externalised border. The ethnographic data, emerging from interconnected research experiences between the island of Lampedusa and Tunisia, aim to contribute to the ongoing debate on Central Mediterranean migration. The study offers a transnational perspective and proposes a new conceptual framework for understanding current forms of border crossing, cohabitation, and the production of imaginaries within the Afro-European maritime space.

The Central Mediterranean is the most deadly body of water in the Mediterranean Sea with at least 15,062 fatalities recorded by International Organization of Migration between 2014 and 2018. This article aims at highlighting the rise of a variety of new civil society actors engaged in the rescue of people undertaking dangerous journeys across the sea in the attempt of reaching the southern European shores. The peculiarity of the humanitarian space at sea and its political relevance are pointed out to illustrate the unfolding of the maritime border management on the Central Mediterranean route and its relation with the activity of the civil society rescue vessels. The theoretical aspiration of the article is to question the role of a proactive civil humanitarianism at sea, discussing the emergence of different political and social meanings around humanitarianism at the EU’s southern maritime border. In recent years, the increasing presence of new citizens-based organizations at sea challenges the nexus between humanitarian and emergency approaches adopted to implement security-oriented policies. This essay draws on the findings of a broader comparative work on a variety of civil society actors engaged in the search and rescue operations on the maritime route between Libya and Europe, focusing in particular on Italy as country of first arrival. The fieldwork covers a period of time going between 2016 and 2018. The research methodology is built on a multisited ethnography, the conduct of semidirective and informal interviews with both state and nonstate actors, and the analysis of various reports unraveling the social and political tensions around rescue at sea on the Central Mediterranean route.

About five routes have been identified as channels of illegal crossings: The Central Mediterranean route (CMR), the Western Mediterranean route (WMR), the Eastern Mediterranean route (EMR), the West African route and the Western Balkan route. The CMR is the most dangerous and at the same time commonly used route to transit into Europe with Italy and Malta as first countries of entry. It is estimated that 1 in 10 migrants who attempt crossing via the CMR is likely to die or missing on their way. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Libya were departure countries for irregular migration to Europe via the CMR. The WMR connects Morocco to Spain and the two Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. Nationals from Morocco, Guinea, Mali and Algeria were more detected on the WMR. The West African route is used by irregular West African migrants to transit to Canary Islands (an autonomous community of Spain). Cities of Goa (Mali) and Agadez (Niger) are used as main hub of irregular migration to link the WMR and the CMR respectively. The EMR is used by unauthorized migrants to travel into the EU through Turkey with Greece as the first country of entry. It was the “migration and refugee crisis” along this route in 2015 that put the whole of Europe under alert. However, irregular migration along the EMR has substantially declined.

On 29 May 2023, the vexed subsidy on PMS was finally removed after the unilateral border closure imposed since 2019 failed to prevent cross-border smuggling of the petroleum products in Nigeria. The ceaseless transborder smuggling despite border closure, raises questions about the effectiveness of border management in Nigeria. This study analyses the inefficacy of border policing against smuggling in Nigeria, arguing that strategies to monitor porous borders can only prevent cross-border smuggling of fuel in the absence of relationships between smuggling gangs and compromised border inspectors at various border crossings. The study identifies how the pervasive corruption and neo-patrimonialism characteristic of the Nigerian state has aided oil theft in the country and rendered border enforcement inefficient in addressing smuggling. By drawing attention to the profound socio-cultural ties as well as close economic relations between communities and villages on both sides of the border in the smuggling activities, the paper brings scholarship on the trans-border criminal cartel into international relations and contributes to the debates on contemporary border management politics in Africa.

Traditional customs clearance processes for goods arriving in ports or at border crossings involve declaration, inspection, revenue collection, and release procedures focused in time and space at the point of arrival. This paradigm for government management of cross-border trade in goods has been incrementally impacted in the 21st century by change drivers ranging from heightened concerns about security and safety risks in international supply chains to the increasingly sophisticated use of prearrival data collection and IT automation in border management processes. Over the past decade, the rapid growth of online retailing, sometimes referred to as e-commerce, has led to an exponential increase in goods, often individually packaged, shipped directly from the seller to consumer. Existing border clearance models for international goods shipments were established in the context of an environment dominated by business-to-business commercial shipments of cargo for further distribution (for example, by retailers) in the country of destination. The rapidly expanding volume of cross-border direct-to-consumer shipments generates large numbers of small package consignments, presenting a challenge for existing goods clearance models in many countries. Contemporary border clearance processes may not be ideally suited to the rapidly expanding volumes of such shipments, and the limited reporting requirements often associated with such consignments may make effective risk management and revenue collection very difficult for governments. Border management modernisation initiatives spearheaded by multilateral organisations have generated some clarity in confirming that e-commerce’s effects do challenge traditional border clearance models, highlighting many of the underlying issues, but they have not generated a clear path forward on policy solutions. As a result, individual countries have been re-examining their national border clearance processes and are starting to take actions to tackle the e-commerce border clearance challenge on their own, highlighting the need for further multilateral work in this area to develop a consensus on policy measures to address the border management concerns identified.

Since the beginning of the ‘reception crisis’ in 2015, the term ‘solidarity’ has been widely employed in Europe by networks supporting migrants in transit. These networks – while increasingly important and prominent in contemporary Europe − are still understudied and have only recently been addressed in migration studies. The research takes place in two crucial border zones: on the one hand, the island of Lampedusa, which is a sea point of entry into Europe through Italy; on the other, the Susa Valley, an alpine point of exit from Italy that allows the passage to France. How are the solidarity networks put together? How do they interact with the mobility practices of migrants in transit? How do the practices of solidarity fit in with the ways authorities act at the border? The ethnographic fieldwork was developed in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to answer these interconnected research questions.

The present chapter explores the impact that EU border management policies have on the respect for human rights of third-country nationals in Greece. It also verifies whether effective remedies and oversight mechanisms exists in Greece and assesses that country’s capacity to deliver justice against abuses suffered by migrants and asylum seekers. First, we focus on accountability challenges affecting sea border management operations taking place in the East Mediterranean route. Secondly, we assess the human rights consequences deriving from the restrictive policies (in terms of detention and geographical limitations imposed on asylum seekers) introduced since the publication of the EU-Turkey Statement of March 2016. Afterwards, border management practices in the Evros region are examined, with particular focus on the surveillance, detention, deportation, and return/denial of entry practices adopted in that context. The analysis reveals a lack of effective remedies available to challenge removal, detention, illegal pushback practices, and geographical limitation orders.

Social movement scholars have been discussing the limits of prefigurative initiatives, based on the present enactment of desired futures, in promoting supportive institutional structures. However, research has yet to explore fully how prefigurative means can be meaningfully converted into structural ends. Our paper explores the role of decolonial social movements, centered on challenging institutional legacies of colonialism, and their translating processes into filling this gap. Through our decolonial analysis of the International Monsanto Tribunal, we show how prefigurative translation—that is, process through which alternative organizing principles are converted into proposals of enabling policies and laws—connected prefiguring principles to structuring efforts by bridging alternative voices and negating Monsanto’s damaging actions. As a result of bringing together actors’ sharing similar struggles and horizons and deconstructing current problematic structures, they helped translating their principles and practices into political and legal change tools. Our research contributes to the nascent perspective of decolonial social movements as translators by exploring the process through which they help to defend and promote alternatives from a position with, against, and beyond entrenched hostile structures, often a product of colonial heritage. Furthermore, we propose the prefigurative translation role of negating actions as essential to creating “concrete utopias” anchored on real-world struggles and deconstructing problematic translations. Finally, our analysis suggests that, in this process, the presence of “translation arbiters” is important in recognizing, connecting and balancing alternative organizing principles that are traditionally hidden or devalued.

Human Rights and Groups:Beyond the Particular/Universal Dichotomy Leora Bilsky (bio) James Loeffler's new book entitled Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century suggests that our contemporary understanding of international human rights as fundamentally opposed to national politics is based on the false dichotomies between particularism and universalism and between politics and law. By turning our attention to the history of the human-rights field—and particularly to the struggles of five Jewish founding fathers of international human rights—we find that from their perspectives, human rights were actually closely related to national-group politics; that specifically Zionism, as a national movement, was not contrary to international law or human-rights law or human-rights law but was rather a catalyst for legal creativity; and that human-rights law was not created out of indifference or hostility toward group politics but was rather integrated into attempts to protect and provide political maneuvering space for the group. In fact, the struggle for collective group recognition and protection was at the heart of the legal tools and institutions that they proposed, including the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the recognition of crimes against humanity, and others. Could this historical understanding of the development of human rights through the biographies of its Jewish founders, who tried time and again to tie the particular with the universal and the political with the legal, shed light on the legalism that characterizes the field today? Is there indeed a necessary tension between human rights and national politics? And if not, what is the reason behind our collective amnesia of the different possibilities to integrate both? What could explain the contemporary limitation of our legal and political imagination in this regard? What is the force behind the anachronistic story we tell ourselves about this false dichotomy? And especially today, at a time when [End Page 162] human rights, international law, and globalization are portrayed by populist leaders as chief threats to the protection of national collectives and identities, could Loeffler's book provide new answers that do not reinforce the validity of this false dichotomy? In my research, I have dealt extensively with a puzzle relating to a similar difficulty—that is, the difficulty of integrating law and politics in a manner compatible with the liberal conception of law, in order to account for the phenomenon of political trials, prevalent in transitional settings. This question is not new and has been studied by numerous jurists through the years, but since the mid-1990s, it has been redefined as the field of transitional justice, a term that has attempted to allow for political trials in times of transition from military or dictatorial regimes to democracy. Transitional-justice literature views the restoration of the rule of law (accountability, end of impunity) and the unveiling of the truth about the previous regime's crimes as essential and central components of the transition process and examines the unique legal and political tools that were developed to address such transitions, including truth and reconciliation commissions, international criminal law, restitution, and reparations. Despite the strong links between the fields of transitional justice and human rights, they differ in their prevalent approaches to the relation between law and politics. While prominent transitional-justice scholars are willing to accept political action as an integral part of the legal field, the human-rights field is characterized by an apolitical legalism that is seen as necessary for its very legitimacy.1 Here we can find an important contribution of Loeffler's book to contemporary legal debate. Today, the transitional-justice field is going through a transformation as it moves away from the earlier recognition of the necessity of accommodating politics and balancing strict legalism with the political needs of particular communities toward a return to a hegemony of criminal law over transitional-justice processes (under the struggle to end impunity and the transition from national to international law), and over the human-rights field more generally.2 This flight from "politics" in order to strengthen the legitimacy of international law is questioned by Loeffler's historical narrative. [End Page 163] The political in Loeffler's book relates to national...

This paper looks at the Central Mediterranean Route, and assesses the relationship between migration-related NGOs/CSOs and EU border externalisation in this liminal, transnational, mobile spatial configuration. In so doing, it introduces the notion of anti-externalisation, with its variants counter-externalisation and counter-delocalisation, identifying relevant practices among NGOs/CSOs. The paper further explores connections between anti-externalisation activities on land and at sea, and analyses how the different spaces, places and contexts along the Central Mediterranean Route impact on the relationship between externalisation and NGOs/CSOs. The terrestrial and maritime environments, with their political and legal specificities, provide opportunities for and obstacles to both externalisation and anti-externalisation policies and practices. NGOs/CSOs can accept or oppose the relevant constraints, and exploit the place-specific opportunities. While some of these actors support externalisation, others oppose it through forms of counter-externalisation (resorting to the same spatial specificities of which externalisation policies take advantage) or counter-delocalisation (transnational, transborder and de-territorialised practices similar to those used by externalisation actors). The paper also underscores the itinerant character of NGOs/CSOs’ anti-externalisation action, which, like governmental control, adopts the route perspective and follows migrants’ trajectories over land and sea (also resorting to the air dimension to increase monitoring capacities) in order to support their right to mobility.

Migration control policies at Europe’s borders that lead to human rights violations are widespread. As a result, NGO s, law clinics and individual lawyers mobilise the law against different actors in an attempt to seek accountability for these violations and end the policies that cause them. Accordingly, the aim of this article is to present an overview of and initial reflection on strategic litigation concerning the Central Mediterranean migration route. The article first depicts European migration control policies in the Central Mediterranean and their human rights consequences. It then provides an overview of recent strategic litigation before various domestic, regional and international forums. Finally, the article discusses the potential of these litigation efforts to overcome the accountability challenges caused by European migration control policies in the Central Mediterranean.