Abstract
The Southern Mediterranean border has in the past decade become one of the most deeply contested political spaces in Europe and has been described as a site of the border spectacle. Drawing on textual and visual analysis of Twitter messages by two of the most prominent actors in the field, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, and the humanitarian and medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, the article examines the split nature of the Mediterranean border which is, among others, visible in radically different narratives about migrantsâ journeys, border deaths and living conditions. The findings challenge previous scholarship about convergence of humanitarianism and policing. The two actors are waging a fierce media battle for moral authority, where they use widely diverging strategies of claiming authority, each of which carries a particular set of ethical dilemmas.
Highlights
Introduction‘The visual economy of clandestine migration’ (Andersson, 2014 : 142) involves the highly politicized discourses of threat and invasion, as well as the production, distribution and consumption of images of migrant suffering and death (Franko, 2020)
The Southern Mediterranean border has in the past decade become one of the most deeply contested political spaces in Europe and has been described as a site of the border spectacle
Drawing on textual and visual analysis of Twitter messages by two of the most prominent actors in the field, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, and the humanitarian and medical nongovernmental organization (NGO) Médecins Sans Frontières, the article examines the split nature of the Mediterranean border which is, among others, visible in radically different narratives about migrants’ journeys, border deaths and living conditions
Summary
‘The visual economy of clandestine migration’ (Andersson, 2014 : 142) involves the highly politicized discourses of threat and invasion, as well as the production, distribution and consumption of images of migrant suffering and death (Franko, 2020) The article explores this two-sided nature of the border spectacle, and the media economy supporting it. There seems to have been a transfer of actual authority for SAR from state to humanitarian actors, and a growing disagreement regarding how to deal with border deaths: with criminalization and inaction on the one hand, and unconditional priority given to search and rescue on the other. If the Mediterranean is a political space where the actual task of the saving of lives has been transferred from one set of actors (nation state and EU authorities) to another (NGOs), how has this transfer (or abdication) been framed and justified? When different emotions are set in motion in communications about the situation at the EU’s southern border, stories are being created about migrants and their suffering, and about authority, sovereignty, values and legitimacy
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