Humanitarian Border Research Articles

The micropolitics of border struggles: migrants’ squats and inhabitance as alternatives to citizenship

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the struggles of the We Are Here movement in Amsterdam as resistance to both securitarian and humanitarian border regimes. It explores the tensions between everyday forms of commoning emerging in migrants’ squats and technologies of enclosure and capture. In the first place, the paper contends that the creation of housing squats marked an important shift in migrants’ struggles that went from acts of protest to the performance of resistance at the level of the micropolitics of borders. By squatting buildings and creating common living spaces, current struggles mobilize material, affective and political solidarities and constitute a politics of inhabitance beyond and against dependency on the state and humanitarian practices. The second part of the paper discusses the government’s attempts to repress, govern and enclose the We Are Here movement within confined fields of action. With negotiations and humanitarian concessions through the provision of emergency shelters, local authorities attempted to re-direct the movement into politics of rights and recognitions. However, these tactics did not succeed to contain the struggle in its entirety: many migrants rejected humanitarian solutions, continued to create radical home spaces through squatting, enacting a politics of inhabitance beyond citizenship.

The Multiple Movements of the Humanitarian Border: The Portable Provision of Care and Control at the Aegean Islands

ABSTRACT The “humanitarian border” that emerged at the Aegean Islands of Chios and Lesbos during the so called “refugee crisis” arose out of various engagements with care and control. A humanitarian border can be said to consist of the entanglements between humanitarianism and securitization. But how do care and control materialize in practice and how can they move from one place to another? By combining the notion of the “humanitarian border” with the concept of “viapolitics” and an actor-network lens, and based on interviews with state authorities, volunteers and NGOs, this article brings in three claims. First, by studying the “missing masses”, the humanitarian border can be said to arise out of “conjoint actions” that concern engagement with peoples and objects of all sorts. Second, the humanitarian border is not only of a composite nature but of a mobile nature as well. Third, the interstructure of the humanitarian border is generated by a productive relationship between the fluidity of network configurations on the one hand and emerging frictions on the other. By studying the situated tensions between humanitarianism and securitization and focusing on the circulation of materialities of all sorts the movements that make up a humanitarian border can be displayed.

Refugeeness as political subjectivity: Experiencing the humanitarian border

Building on the idea of the humanitarian border, the paper seeks to theorise its fluctuating geographies as growing from particular governmental strategies, yet shaped by social elements operating beyond the migration regime. We approach the humanitarian border topologically as a relational space experienced by refugee-subjects and constituting of regulations, techniques, tactics and (counter)practices that have emerged, and keep evolving, when people seek asylum in different parts of the world. We suggest that one of the asylum seekers’ key assets in navigating the humanitarian border is agency based on subjective relatedness with the figure of the refugee. Hence, we direct our analytical attention to experiences of refugeeness that we have studied empirically in the context of forced migration in Finland and Jordan. The analysis identifies asylum seekers’ ambivalent emotions and agencies, foregrounding political subjectivities both in the context of immobile life in Amman, and on the move along the Western Balkans route. This reveals the dual politics of the humanitarian border, at once constitutive of and constituting in encounters between asylum seekers and its other actors. In conclusion, the paper makes two suggestions regarding the study of refugeeness as political subjectivity and the topological theorisation of the humanitarian border.

Refugee Hospitality in Lebanon and Turkey. On Making ‘The Other’

AbstractThis paper examines the hospitality provided to Syrian refugees during the refugee crisis spanning from 2011 to 2016 in the border areas of Gaziantep (southeastern Turkey) and the Akkar region (northern Lebanon). Hospitality, apart from a cultural value and societal response to the protracted refugee influx, is a discursive strategy of socio‐spatial control used by humanitarian agencies, local and national authorities. This paper, first, argues against hospitality as an assessment to ethically compare host countries (i.e. more welcoming versus less welcoming states). Second, drawing on Walters’ notion of “humanitarian border”, it shows how the governmental, humanitarian, and everyday workings of hospitality exercise an assertive politics of sovereignty over the social encounter between locals and refugees. We examine the state‐centered hospitality in the Turkish case and a humanitarian‐promoted hospitality in the Lebanese case. We also show how the hospitality discourse shapes the spaces that refugees, citizens, and earlier migrants partake in.

Turkey’s governance of irregular migration at European Union borders: Emerging geographies of care and control

Combining insights from critical studies on humanitarianism and scholarly work emphasising everyday practices, this study examines Turkish policing of human mobility at European Union borders in two border cities: Edirne and İzmir. Through a focus on the central understandings, justifications and operational responses by Turkish border officials, the article highlights the intertwinement of care and control as inherent to humanitarianism in the daily governance of mobile populations at Turkey’s western borders. In so doing, the findings draw attention to discursive articulations and practices, while pointing to their moral, emotional and cultural elements. The article advances the literature by underlining the centrality of geography in impacting on the logics and practices of governing mobility within the territory of the nation state. The findings also underscore variations in border practices and the embodiment of humanitarianism between the two border cities under investigation as well as across the country. In addition, the article adds to debates on the emerging spaces of humanitarianism by bringing into focus the operation of humanitarian border policing in Turkey before departure and/or after the unsuccessful attempt of border crossing.

The EU Humanitarian Border and the Securitization of Human Rights: The ‘Rescue‐Through‐Interdiction/Rescue‐Without‐Protection’ Paradigm

AbstractThis article looks at securitization/humanitarianization dynamics in the EU external sea borders to track and critique the substantial transformation of the role played by human rights in the Mediterranean. Mapping the evolution of maritime engagement up to the ‘refugee crisis’, it is revealed how the invocation of human rights serves paradoxically to curtail (migrants') human rights, justifying interdiction (‘to save lives’), and impeding access to safety in Europe. The result is a double reification of ‘boat migrants’ as threats to border security and as victims of smuggling/trafficking. Through a narrative of ‘rescue’, interdiction is laundered into an ethically sustainable strategy of border governance. Instead of being considered a problematic (potentially lethal) means of control, it is re‐defined into a life‐saving device. The ensuing ‘rescue‐through‐interdiction’/‘rescue‐without‐protection’ paradigm alters the nature of human rights, which, rather than functioning as a check on interdiction, end up co‐opted as another securitization/humanitarianization tool.

An Interview with Polly Pallister-Wilkins: Mediterranean as a Humanitarian Border

An Interview with Polly Pallister-Wilkins: Mediterranean as a Humanitarian Border

Humanitarian Border Workers in Confrontation with the Swedish State’s Border Making Practices: “The Death of the Most Generous Country on Earth”

ABSTRACT We most often talk about state bordering practices: those activities engaged in by states that constitute, sustain or modify borders between states. While the role of states is central in the study of migration processes this, however, underestimates the roles that non-state actors play in borderwork. State bordering practices are to a large degree performed in interaction with other types of non-state actors, processes and organizations. In focus for this study are the state’s border making practices in confrontation with the borderwork of humanitarian volunteers, which brought into sharp relief the underlying tension between the Swedish state’s humanitarian commitments and securitization. In this paper I will discuss the role of ordinary people in border practices on the basis of media sources, relevant websites and secondary sources collected in Sweden in autumn 2015 during what has been called the “refugee crisis.”

Developmental borderwork and the International Organization for Migration

ABSTRACTThe global governance of borders and migration is increasingly carried out by intergovernmental organisations. Organisations like the IOM epitomise this trend, and with the backdrop of ‘migration crisis’ govern mobility by deploying humanitarian assistance as much as by providing border security expertise. This article argues that we should pay attention to the ways the IOM brings together these seemingly distinct rationales and practices of care and control. It argues that the IOM can be understood as a ‘developmental borderwork’ actor, whose practices are underpinned by a sincere but procedural humanitarianism, a technical focus on best practices and implementation, and an intervention approach drawn from the development industry. To make this argument, the article draws from two empirical trends. First, it examines IOM projects building new border infrastructures and technologies in Mauritania and South Sudan, seeing in these a fusion of security and statebuilding. Second, the article traces the organisation’s development of a humanitarian border management (HBM) concept through which it works to reconcile its emerging migrant protection self-image with member states’ security needs. Each of these cases reflect the tensions within the IOM between humanitarianism, statebuilding, and the persistent reality of state sovereignty.

Stopping boats, saving lives, securing subjects: Humanitarian borders in Europe and Australia

In April 2015, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott called on European leaders to respond to the migration and refugee crisis in the Mediterranean by ‘stopping the boats’ in order to prevent further deaths. This suggestion resonated with the European Union Commission’s newly articulated commitment to both enhancing border security and saving lives. This article charts the increasing entanglement of securitisation and humanitarianism in the context of transnational border control and migration management. The analysis traces the global phenomenon of humanitarian border security alongside a series of spatial dislocations and temporal deferrals of ‘the border’ in both European and Australian contexts. While discourses of humanitarian borders operate according to a purportedly universal and therefore borderless logic of ‘saving lives’, the subjectivity of the ‘irregular’ migrant in need of rescue is one that is produced as spatially and temporally exceptional — the imperative is always to act in the here and the now — and therefore knowable, governable and ‘bordered’.

(Re)Branding the State: Humanitarian Border Control and the Moral Imperative of State Sovereignty

By taking the 2014 US Customs and Border Protection 'Dangers Campaign' as an exemplar of what we see as an emerging new form of border control management, we argue that the sovereign state is re-branding the politics of migration under the guise of a humanitarian imperative. Three intertwined phenomena allow for this humanitarian and moralistic shift: first, a strategic designation and staging of a state of nature; second, an emphasis and utilization of the materiality of death; and third, the de-branding of state sovereignty so as to employ neoliberal market mechanisms as means to depoliticize its strategy for migration control.

Broken Systems: The 2014 Humanitarian Crisis in the Us and Policy Insights for Europe

Both the US and Europe are grappling with migration systems in need of reform and repair. The US has made several attempts towards a comprehensive reform of its immigration system, but partisan divides stand in the way. With large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers coming to Europe, EU leaders have been forced to address the broken Dublin system. It has become clear that the current refugee crisis is not just a European crisis. The US has also been facing a humanitarian crisis, one less noticed by Europeans. With an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors trying to make their way to the US from Central American countries, the US–-like Europe–-is tasked with balancing humanitarian protection and border control requirements. In response, the US has employed policy responses to bring down the number of unaccompanied minors. These measures can provide insights for Europe.

THE DESULTORY POLITICS OF MOBILITY AND THE HUMANITARIAN-MILITARY BORDER IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. MARE NOSTRUM BEYOND THE SEA

Abstract This article investigates the reshaping of the military-humanitarian border in the Mediterranean, focusing on the Italian military-humanitarian mission Mare Nostrum, that started for rescuing migrants at sea after the deaths of hundreds of migrants in October 2013 near the coasts of the island of Lampedusa. The main argument is that in order to understand the working of the military-humanitarian border at sea and its impacts, we must go beyond the space of the sea, and analysing it in the light of the broader functioning of migration governmentality. The notion of desultory politics of mobility is deployed here for describing the specific temporality of the humanitarian border working and its politics of visibility. In particular, an analytical gaze on the military-humanitarian operations at sea to rescue-and-control of migrants’ movements shows that what is at stake is the production of some practices of mobility as exceptional. Then, this article takes on Mare Nostrum operation for exploring the ways in which the military and the humanitarian are rearticulated and how they currently work together.

From humanitarian exceptionalism to contingent care: Care and enforcement at the humanitarian border

Throughout the world, increasingly securitized and militarized border enforcement efforts have made transnational migration an increasingly deadly endeavor for unauthorized migrants. The deadly consequences of unauthorized migration has compelled the emergence of what William Walters refers to as the humanitarian border—the concentration of humanitarian aid and services along the edges of the global North. This paper expands on Walters work through an in-depth analysis of the emergence and transformation of the humanitarian border in southern Arizona, USA. Through an examination of transformations in how migrant care is provisioned, overseen, and regulated in southern Arizona, this paper traces a shift from humanitarian exceptionalism to contingent care whereby care is increasingly linked with enforcement efforts. In doing so, this analysis illustrates how care functions as a technology of border enforcement, increasing the reach of the state to govern more bodies and more spaces.

“We are not animals!” Humanitarian border security and zoopolitical spaces in EUrope

This article juxtaposes two prominent discourses accompanying the neoliberalisation of EUrope's borders. The first is the emerging notion of humanitarian ‘migrant-centredness’ found in the policies of elites and security professionals in the field of EUropean border security and migration management. The second is the use of animalised metaphors and imagery that pervade narratives of ‘irregular’ migrants' embodied experiences of detention across and beyond EUrope. It argues that what is at stake in this juxtaposition is more than simply a discrepancy between the ‘rhetoric’ of neoliberal bordering and the ‘reality’ of ‘irregular’ migrants' experiences. Such a view, which is commonly held among diverse critics of border violence, ultimately makes a problematic appeal back to the very humanitarian frame that has already been coopted by authorities associated with or even complicit in that violence. Seeking an alternative diagnosis and ground for critique beyond the ‘rhetoric/reality’ bind, the analysis draws on conceptual resources found in (post)biopolitical theory – particularly Jacques Derrida's concept of ‘zoopolitics’ – in order to identify and explore animalisation as a specific spatial technology of power. Understanding the work that the zoopolitical threshold does in shaping contemporary spaces of incarceration and producing animalised subjects offers new insights into both governmental logics of border security and the limits of humanitarian-based critiques.