The Changing Policies of International Institutions: Human Mobility in the Mediterranean

A large literature exists regarding explanations for the emergence of cooperation in the Mediterranean basin, but there is less information regarding the effectiveness of Mediterranean cooperation and its programs. Through a case study of Israel's implementation and compliance with the Barcelona Convention and the Mediterranean Action Plan, we evaluate the effectiveness of these international institutions. We find that international institutions and their efforts to target state capacity as the mechanism to improve compliance and effectiveness are often misguided unless their efforts are also directed towards enhancing societal capacity. We then explicate the way in which societal actors such as environmental NGOs can improve domestic compliance and effectiveness. These findings are illuminated through an assessment of the activities of several environmental NGOs in Israel to target Mediterranean pollution and coastal management policies. Where NGOs have taken action, they have often proved successful in forcing the Israeli government and the business sector to honor its environmental commitments.

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Border closures and the externalization of immigration controls in the Mediterranean: a comparative analysis of Morocco and Turkey

New Perspectives on Turkey ◽

10.1017/npt.2018.16 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 60 ◽

pp. 179-202 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ayşen Üstübici ◽

Ahmet İçduygu

Keyword(s):

Risk Assessment ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Border Studies ◽

Security Studies ◽

Border Crossings ◽

Critical Security Studies ◽

The Third ◽

History Of ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Border Controls

AbstractThis 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.

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

New Perspectives on Turkey ◽

10.1017/npt.2018.21 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 59 ◽

pp. 7-31 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ayşen Üstübici ◽

Ahmet İçduygu

Keyword(s):

Risk Assessment ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Border Studies ◽

Security Studies ◽

Border Crossings ◽

Critical Security Studies ◽

The Third ◽

History Of ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Border Controls

AbstractThis 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.

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The Bioarchaeology of Migration in the Ancient Mediterranean

Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology ◽

10.1558/jma.18784 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 211-241

Author(s):

Thomas P. Leppard ◽

Carmen Esposito ◽

Massimiliano Esposito

Keyword(s):

Behavioral Change ◽

Large Scale ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Human Movement ◽

Cultural Effects ◽

The Mean ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Late Roman Period ◽

And Migration

The Mediterranean is often regarded as characterized by high levels of human mobility and migration, which are in turn considered to have driven large-scale cultural effects. However, this supposition is problematic, in that it relies on various types of proxy for human movement, rather than on direct bioarchaeological evidence. Accordingly, in this study we attempt to quantify diachronic Mediterranean mobility and migration by undertaking the first meta-analysis of the burgeoning radiogenic isotope datasets now available from the Mediterranean. We gathered 87Sr/ 86Sr data derived from funerary populations from the Neolithic to the late Roman period. We imposed a data-hygiene regime, discarding low-quality, methodologically idiosyncratic, or other potentially erroneous data; this resulted in a cleansed and trimmed dataset (n = 899). Within this dataset, we find that mean rates of post-juvenile migration are relatively low. Utilizing the methodologies specific to individual studies, the mean nonlocal rate is 9.57%. Imposing a standard methodology on the most statistically robust data (resulting in n = 702) allows us to recompute a mean nonlocal rate of 5.84%. In both the data as originally reported and as recomputed, we detect comparatively higher levels of migration in the period 7000–3500 BC, followed by decreasing levels of migration in the later Holocene. We discuss the implications of these results for how we understand longterm cultural and behavioral change in the Mediterranean.

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Diplomatic Communication in the Ancient Mediterranean

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386844.003.0016 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sheila L. Ager

Keyword(s):

International Institutions ◽

Third Parties ◽

Mediterranean World ◽

The Mediterranean

This chapter takes up the topic of diplomacy in the Mediterranean world. Ager shows that, in this world of manifold networks, the safeguards provided by formal, permanent international institutions of the modern type were lacking, and diplomacy by no means necessarily took improved relations as its goal. Although envoys were not professionals, the means of conducting diplomacy were varied and sophisticated, and the slowness of ancient travel did not prevent extensive exchanges. Symbolic messages of various kinds (including inscriptions, monuments, and coins) had an important role to play. In certain circumstances, kinship diplomacy might prove decisive, as might “deprecation” offered by third parties to avert a catastrophe.

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