The WatchTheMed Alarm Phone - a disobedient border-intervention

The activist project ‘WatchTheMed Alarm Phone’ was launched in autumn 2014 and functions as a hotline for travellers in distress at sea. Various individuals, groups and transnational movements came together to intervene practically to support precarious human mobility in often deadly spaces. This article focuses on the emergence of the Alarm Phone and its first three months in operation in the three main regions of the Mediterranean Sea. Countering the violence of the EU border regime and underpinned by a belief in the freedom of movement for all, the activists regard the Alarm Phone as a political mobilisation in solidarity with the political struggles enacted by people on the move throughout and beyond Europe

Do no harm? The impact of policy on migration scholarship

The mass migrations of 2015 were not merely a watershed moment for ‘EUrope’ but also for the scholarly study of migration to EUrope. With academic expertise and insights becoming much sought-after in the media and political discourse, migration scholarship has gained in unknown popularity over recent years. This current ‘migration knowledge hype’ has particularly benefited scholarship that claims to be of relevance for EUropean policymakers in finding responses to ‘migratory pressures’. This article critically interrogates the increasing intimacy between the worlds of migration scholarship and migration policy and seeks to unpack how the quest for policy-relevance has shaped the process of research itself. The impact of policy on migration research can be discerned when policy categories, assumptions, and needs constitute the bases and (conceptual) frames of research that seeks to be legible to policymakers. However, with EUropean migration policies causing devastation and undeniably harmful effects on migrant lives, what is the responsibility of researchers for the knowledge they produce and disseminate? Should the ‘do no harm’ principle prevalent in the migration discipline be expanded to also include the potentially harmful consequences resulting from research made relevant to migration policymakers? This article makes the case for an engaged scholarship that does not shy away from intervening in the contested field of migration with the intention not to fix but to amplify the epistemic and other crises of the EUropean border regime

The “Covid excuse”:EUropean border violence in the Mediterranean Sea

This article examines developments along the central Mediterranean border, following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in EUrope. In response to the pandemic, EU member states enacted emergency legislation, further curtailing movements across borders. Italy and Malta declared their harbours “unsafe” for migrant arrivals, withdrew rescue operations, and installed offshore detention facilities. Though ostensibly enacted in the name of “saving lives”, these measures had the opposite effect. The article assesses how border violence has become justified by reference to the pandemic, what we call the “Covid excuse”. We highlight how people on the move were subjected to both biopolitical and necropolitical modalities of control through pushbacks, offshore containment and abandonment. Instead of being exceptional, we argue, these measures must be situated in longer continuities of EUropean border violence. We also discuss how people on the move are not only shaped by racialized border violence but enact fugitive practices of resistance

Re-imagining EUrope through the governance of migration

In its own tale, EUrope conceives of itself as a post-national and trans-border project, often through tropes of movement and the transgression of borders. In light of this imaginary, the recent mass migrations provoked a serious conundrum. How would this EUropean polity reconcile the dominant idea of itself with its desire to erect barriers to cross-border movements from the ‘Global South’? This article enquires into tensions between, first, Hungary and, second, Italy vis-à-vis the European Commission and other EU member states over the control and regulation of unauthorised migrations in 2015 and 2018. Both examples seem to allude to divergent and conflictual ways of governing migration, often associated with different levels of governance, particularly the supra-national and the national, and different values, particular those of tolerance and intolerance vis-à-vis the ‘migrant other’. While the illusion of ‘EUropean’ and ‘un-EUropean’ ways of governing migration is meant to be kept intact, not least through a recoding of anti-migrant violence, a closer look reveals the deep entanglement of forms of migration governance that has given rise to a thoroughly EUropean border regime. This article points to the need to develop a new conceptual vocabulary in order to capture the EUropeanness of the border

Freedom of movement activism in the Sahara

Activists in the Sahara have mobilised to protect the rights of migrants to mobility and safety during their journeys to North Africa but they face significant challenges in a hostile political environment

Activismo por la libertad de movimiento en el Sáhara

Los activistas del Sáhara se han movilizado para proteger los derechos de los migrantes a la movilidad y la seguridad durante sus desplazamientos al norte de África, pero se enfrentan a retos significativos en un entorno político hostil

Struggles of migration as in-/visible politics

Ever since the Hungarian authorities enacted a temporary halt on international train travel from Keleti Station in Budapest and more or less abandoned thousands of stranded refugees, countless images, both impressive and deeply disturbing, reach us daily: Refugees by the hundreds making their way on foot through Hungary, Austria, Germany and Denmark, walking on motorways and train tracks because international train and bus travel has been shut down; overwhelming transnational willingness to support refugees by offering rides in private cars, by welcoming them and providing for them at train stations, or by organising aid convoys to Hungary, Croatia, Greece and Macedonia. But we also witness violent behaviour of border officials and camp personnel, neo-Nazis stirring up hatred, bawling ‘concerned citizens’, and the burning down of refugee shelters. During this “long summer of migration” (Kasparek/Speer2015), Schengen and the project of the European Union as a whole have entered a severe crisis, as highlighted not only by the reinstated controls along the borders of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark, but also by the de facto suspension of the Dublin system. In the past months, through these marches and other enactments of the freedom of movement, the struggles of migration have become more dynamic every day and asserted their self-determined mobilities, thereby exposing the contradictions of the European border regim

Activismo por la libertad de movimiento en el Sáhara: Freedom of movement activism in the Sahara

Los activistas del Sáhara se han movilizado para proteger los derechos de los migrantes a la movilidad y la seguridad durante sus desplazamientos al norte de África, pero se enfrentan a retos significativos en un entorno político hostil. Activists in the Sahara have mobilised to protect the rights of migrants to mobility and safety during their journeys to North Africa but they face significant challenges in a hostile political environment

Activisme pour la liberté de circuler dans le Sahara: Freedom of movement activism in the Sahara

Les activistes du Sahara se sont mobilisés pour protéger les droits des migrants à la mobilité et à la sécurité au cours de leur voyage vers l'Afrique du Nord, mais ils sont confrontés à des défis importants dans un environnement politique hostile. Activists in the Sahara have mobilised to protect the rights of migrants to mobility and safety during their journeys to North Africa but they face significant challenges in a hostile political environment

حرية الحركة والنشاط الحقوقي في الصحراء الكبرى: Freedom of movement activism in the Sahara

عمد النشطاء الحقوقيون في الصحراء إلى عمليات التعبئة لحماية حقوق المهاجرين في التنقل والسلامة أثناء رحلاتهم إلى شمال إفريقيا لكنهم يواجهون تحدّيات كبيرة في بيئة سياسية معادية. Activists in the Sahara have mobilised to protect the rights of migrants to mobility and safety during their journeys to North Africa but they face significant challenges in a hostile political environment