Changing Borders, Rethinking Sovereignty: Towards a Right to Migrate

Abstract

The intervention of European Union border authorities in countries of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe has shown how the European state "border" has been displaced from its national moorings and externalized across the territories of neighboring states. Our research examines the outsourcing of the southern European Union border, focusing on the case of Spain and its relationship with Morocco and countries of Western Africa. In this paper we describe the development and implementation of this strategy of migration management, signaling implications of border externalization from the point of geopolitics and legality, including a suggestive call to reclaim the legal tradition of the Right to Migrate.

Migraciones internacionales, fronteras y Estados. ¿Cómo interpretar el régimen de frontera desde América del Sur?

“…Estos acuerdos, como parte de la externalización, modifican la comprensión misma de la frontera al reelaborar quién, dónde y cómo se practican los controles, al replantearlos más allá de la línea divisoria entre Estados-nación y como gestión dispersa entre varios Estados. Este es un esfuerzo explícito para estirar la frontera de forma tal que se multipliquen las instituciones involucradas en la gestión y en el control de quiénes ingresan a un territorio y de las prácticas de manejo dirigidas a donde están los posibles migrantes (Casas Cortes et al, 2015).…”

The European Union–West African sea border: Anti-immigration strategies and territoriality

“…(Featherstone andRadaelli, 2003, quoted in Jones, 2006: 417) In Senegal, the main forces behind the Europeanization of national institutions in the area of migration have been the GAMM and Frontex. More subtle but equally effective in this regard have been the ongoing bilateral negotiations between the Spanish and Senegalese state since 2005, which have consolidated Spain's 'seminal role' in the externalization of the Southern EU border in the region (Casas-Cortes et al, 2015a). An example of Europeanization was the passing, in 2005, of an anti-smuggling and trafficking law, which imposed fines and prison sentences of up to 10 years on human traffickers, smugglers, and document forgers (the Loi No.…”

“…Such spaces are differentially integrated (Mezzadra, 2014) into the anti-immigration border complex. This extension of migration responsibilities to territories beyond the EU (and even the larger EU neighborhood) has led Casas-Cortes et al to talk about the ‘spatial and institutional stretching of the domains of migration control beyond sovereign territories,’ and also about a new kind of frontier where ‘a traveling reticular system is established with the aim of identifying and classifying mobilities’ (2015a: 49). Here, I argue that the two factors determining a site’s level of integration are location, which defines the capacity to impose the categories created by the new border regime (undocumented, documented, temporary migrant, forcibly returned migrant, and so on); and connectedness or relevance within a network of decision-making centers (Madrid, Brussels).…”

Border policies and the construction of walls: violations and resistances

“…In addition to the construction of physical barriers at borders, another phenomenon that has gained considerable strength was: the multiplication of external barriers to receiving countries (the so-called "border externalization" or outsourcing; cf. Casas-Cortes, Cobarrubias, Pickles, 2015), the multiplication of internal barriers and, above all, the multiplication of intangible barriers, bureaucratic impediments and obstacles to the integration of migrants and refugees.…”