Border closures and the externalization of immigration controls in the Mediterranean: A comparative analysis of Morocco and Turkey – RETRACTED

Abstract

This article traces the recent history of border closures in Turkey and Morocco and their impact on human mobility at the two ends of the Mediterranean. Border closures in the Mediterranean have produced new spaces where borders are often fenced, immigration securitized, and border crossings and those facilitating border crossings criminalized. Here, bordering practices are conceptualized as physical bordering practices, border controls, and legal measures. Turkey and Morocco constitute comparable cases for an analysis of border closures insofar as they utilize similar mechanisms of closure, despite having quite different outcomes in terms of numbers. The article’s findings are based on fieldwork conducted at both locations between 2012 and 2014, as well as on analysis of Frontex Risk Assessment Reports from 2010 to 2016. The first part of the article reflects on the concepts of border closure and securitization, together with their implications, and draws for its argument on critical security studies and critical border studies. The second part of the article is an overview of controls over mobility exercised in the Mediterranean from the 1990s onward. Then, in the third and fourth parts, we turn to the particular cases—respectively, Turkey and Morocco—in order to discuss their processes of border closure and the various implications thereof. Through analysis of the two country cases, we show that border closures are neither linear nor irreversible.

A Widening Moral Rift: The Complex Interactions between EU Externalization and Afghan Border Ecosystems

“…This approach is highly centralized-it is rooted in the Tampere agenda developed in the early 1990s (Papagianni 2013) and consolidated in the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM), defined in 2005and refined in 2007(European Commission 2011. From this central policy structure, externalization has been implemented across a range of contexts; externalization measures include (1) development of national laws and policies that corresponded with the United Nations Convention against Transnational Crime, (2) training of border forces and police forces, and (3) negotiating movement protocols (Carlotti 2021;Ghráinne 2013;Üstübici and İçduygu 2018). Border externalization and migration governance take place not only through changes in processes at borders but also through efforts to change opinions and attitudes toward irregular migration and those who facilitate it.…”

“…Border externalization approaches have been justified through a specific moral argument associated with guaranteeing the safety of EU citizens. The elimination of internal borders within the EU was conditional on the strengthening of external borders; this, combined with changes in the global security context, gave rise to new security concerns and perceptions of migrants as a threat to social cohesion, the functioning of the welfare state, and the functioning of the Common Market (Carlotti 2021;huysmans 2006;Üstübici and İçduygu 2018). The EU's security-migration nexus can be considered to bundle together migrants, smugglers, and terrorists into a group to be excluded from the EU for the sake of security (Bigo and Guild 2016).…”

Mediterranean in Dis/order

“…Both academic literature (Turner 2002) and policy papers (Yuliani 2004) distinguish between political decentralization (or simply "decentralization") and administrative decentralization (also called "deconcentration"). For the World Bank, "Political decentralization aims to give citizens or their elected representatives more power in public decision-making," whereas "administrative decentralization seeks to redistribute authority, responsibility and financial resources for providing public services among different levels of government" (CIESIN EU's borders expanded considerably with the eastern enlargement, it again began to copy its model of liberal market democracy to what it now referred as "circles of friends" in the eastern and southern "neighborhoods," an evolution that was accompanied by the rise of the "Normative Power Europe" (Manners 2002;Pace 2007) and the externalization literature (Lavenex and Schimmelfennig 2013;Üstübici and İçduygu 2018). In 2011, however, a historic rupture happened with the Arab uprisings and a subsequent geopolitical earthquake in the Middle East and North Africa, which has made these space-making initiatives history at a time in which the EU itself struggles with internal politics of contestation.…”

African Perspectives on South–South Migration

“…But since the early 1990s, Morocco also became a place of residence for a growing number of migrants from West, Central Africa, and Europe as well as Syrian refugees. Whereas European immigration to Morocco has rather been neglected by academic scholars, 2 'sub-Saharan' migration in Morocco has, since early 2000, become a popular research topic (see for example Barros et al 2002;Escoffier 2008;Alioua 2009;AMERM 2009;Péraldi 2011;Norman 2016;Mourji et al 2016;Mouna et al 2017;Üstübici et al 2018;Berriane 2018;Stock 2019;Haouari et al 2020;Gazzotti 2021).…”