Externalization at work: responses to migration policies from the Global South

Abstract

The term "externalization" is used by a range of migration scholars, policy makers and the media to describe the extension of border and migration controls beyond the so-called 'migrant receiving nations' in the Global North and into neighboring countries or sending states in the Global South. It refers to a wide range of practices from controls of borders, rescue operations, to measures addressing the drivers of migration. The ambition of this Special Issue is to contribute to the mapping of the responses to externalization dynamics. The different articles in this volume are chosen to exemplify some of these processes at different levels of analysis. Through diverse disciplinary perspectives, the authors show how practices of externalization are being confronted, succumbed, modified and contested by individual (would-be) migrants, civil society actors and the host states' institutions in different parts of the globe. In an effort to move away from a sole focus on border zones in the Global North, the Special Issue contributes to emerging literature shifting the locus of analysis to places in the Global South, which are conventionally understood as "transit" or "sending" countries in Africa, America as well as within Europe itself.

Commemorating the deadly other side of externalized borders through “migrant-martyrs”, sacrifices and politizations of (irregular) migration on the international migrants' day in Mali

“…The funds and public attention raised parallel to the progressive externalization of EU borders facilitated this process. With the shooting of migrants in Ceuta and Melilla in 2005, and unprecedented media coverage (see Stock, Üstübici, &Schultz, 2019 andTyszler, 2019 in this issue), a new type of response to the EU had been emerging at the level of migrant-sending countries through the activism of migrant associations supported by European civil society groups (Dünnwald, 2017). This political and institutional setting in Mali also favored the formulation of alternative discourses on the migration management.…”

Ripensare l'esternalizzazione. Per una critica dell'euro-centrismo e dello stato-centrismo negli studi su migrazioni e confini

“…Come ricordano Üstübici, Stock e Schultz (2019), inoltre, l'esternalizzazione ha uno stretto rapporto anche con il concetto di 'management' ('migration management' o 'border management'), nella misura in cui il know-how necessario per una corretta 'gestione' dei confini e delle frontiere è parte del capitale trasferito -direttamente o per il tramite delle OI -dai paesi del 'Nord' a quelli del 'Sud' globale, e a loro volta i parametri gestionali ai quali sono chiamati a uniformarsi questi ultimi sono mirati a facilitare il controllo delle migrazioni da parte dei primi. Il paradigma della 'gestione', grazie al suo sapore manageriale, tecnocratico e depoliticizzato (Pécoud, 2015), si è andato negli ultimi vent'anni progressivamente affiancando, fin quasi a sostituirlo, a quello del controllo.…”

The proximity of the past in Mauritania. EU border externalisation and its colonial antecedents

“…This is also the case for analyses of asylum and refugee law and externalisation (Hyndman and Mountz, 2008;Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2012;Triandafyllidou, 2014) and ethnographic analyses of the EU border regime on the ground (Andersson, 2014). On the other hand, calls have been made to decolonise critical migration and border scholarship (Korvensyrja, 2017), by highlighting the agency of third country states in navigating the dictates of EU external border policies (El Qadim, 2014;Cassarino, 2018;Karadağ, 2019;Stock et al, 2019). Rather than viewing these approaches as mutually exclusive, this article follows the observation that "from colonial past to current European externalization politics, local partners are far from passive socialisees of external dictates" (Lemberg-Pedersen, 2019: 3).…”