Date: Thursday January 30th, 2020

 

Time: 18:30 - 20:30

 

Place: IEMed, Carrer Girona, 20, Barcelona.

 

Title: Hostile Environments in the Mediterranean.

 

Abstract: Far from a creation of Theresa May in 2013, the hostile environment captures what has become the dominant approach to migration control around the world. It is difficult or expensive to physically prevent unwanted migrants from moving and once they have arrived, it may be too late. So migration controls seek to convey a message that it is not worth their while coming. At the same time, it sends a related message to anxious publics that no expense is being spared to protect them. This is true for migration into wealthy parts of the world, but it is equally the case for migration into cities and for movement of refugees away from certain camps. This paper considers this situation in relation to local and regional contexts in Morocco and Libya, arguing that much of what is usually interpreted as direct control is more usefully understood in terms of deterrence. The concentrated focus on border architecture around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla is as easily explained by messaging as the effectiveness of direct controls. This is also the case for more humanitarian forms of deterrence. What has been called ‘warehousing’ is explored in the case of refugees from a range of countries attempting to cross from Libya into Egypt in 2011. These migrants were stopped in between the Libyan and Egyptian border posts in a camp that become home to more than 2,000 people. In both cases, the physical barriers were as significant as the messages they were designed to send. 

 

Bio: Michael Collyer is Professor of Geography and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. He is a political geographer with an interest in the relationship between people on the move and state institutions. His most recent book is Migration, in Routledge’s Advanced Introductions series (with Michael Samers, 2017). This presentation is from an upcoming book Hostile Environments (Zed, forthcoming 2020).