The EU's effectiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean migration quandary: challenges to building societal resilience

This article explores the hidden geographies of what has been widely referred to as the ‘Mediterranean migration crisis’ of 2015 and 2016. Specifically, it draws on a large-scale analysis of migratory testimonies from across the central and eastern Mediterranean routes, in order to explore the claims or demands posed to European policy-makers by people on the move. Reflecting on the idea that migration forms a subversive political act that disrupts spatialised inequalities and longer histories of power and violence, the article sets out the argument advanced by scholars of the autonomy of migration approach that migration forms a ‘social movement’ involving subjective acts of escape. It makes the case for a move beyond an abstract account of migration as a social movement, to emphasise the importance of an analysis that unpacks the concrete ways in which multiple ‘nonmovements’ expose the hidden geographies of the so-called ‘crisis’. In so doing, it draws attention to two specific ways in which migration forms a political act. First, the article highlights anti-colonial acts that contest the spatialised inequalities of global migration along with longer-standing historical dynamics of exploitation and dispossession that these implicate. Second, it highlights anti-war acts that reject securitised responses to cross-border migration along with longer-standing spatial and historical dynamics of masculinist violence. While imperceptibility remains a critical dimension of many migratory acts, the article concludes that paying attention to the perceptible claims to justice that subversive political acts of migration involve is crucial in understanding the distinct transformations put into motion by people on the move.

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Immigration in the Covid-19 Era: The role of Greece and Turkey, the necessity for a common European immigration and foreign policy

HAPSc Policy Briefs Series ◽

10.12681/hapscpbs.24960 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 149

Author(s):

Konstantinos Papadakis ◽

Konstantinos Zafeiris

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Immigration Policy ◽

Eastern Mediterranean ◽

Political Reaction ◽

New Challenges ◽

European Immigration ◽

Mediterranean Migration ◽

Of Greece ◽

The Eu

Immigration and refugee flows in the Eastern Mediterranean migration path have been increased the last two decades, a fact that created the need for coordinated political reaction from the EU, which now faces new challenges because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This article analyses the new challenges Covid-19 creates by focusing on the “lesson learned” of previous pandemics and their effect on mankind and also on the necessity of a common European policy both in the fields of immigration policy and foreign policy towards the stabilization in the Eastern Mediterranean, mainly by focusing on the role of Greece and Turkey.

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TACLING IRREGULAR MIGRATION IN EUROPE

CONTEMPORARY MILITARY CHALLENGES ◽

10.33179/bsv.99.svi.11.cmc.23.2.5 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 91-104

Author(s):

Miklós Böröcz

Keyword(s):

Eastern Mediterranean ◽

Western Mediterranean ◽

Migration Route ◽

Security Risk ◽

Irregular Migration ◽

Central Mediterranean ◽

Irregular Migrants ◽

Pass Through ◽

Mediterranean Migration ◽

The Eu

Povzetek Nezakonite migracije predstavljajo varnostno tveganje za Evropsko unijo, a se s tveganji zunaj Evrope ne moremo učinkovito spopasti brez izgradnje zmogljivosti na mednarodni ravni. Zaradi tega lahko to področje umestimo v okvir SZVP. To stališče so potrdili tudi val nezakonitih priseljencev, ki je Evropo dosegel leta 2015, ter tveganja in posledice nepripravljenosti držav na ravni zagotavljanja nacionalne varnosti. V študiji predstavljamo tri glavne poti nezakonitih migracij, ki so prizadele Evropo. Predstavljene so tudi države, ki so jih priseljenci prečkali ter ukrepi organov EU. V zaključku članka so predlagane morebitne rešitve za nastalo stanje. Ključne besede nezakonite migracije, varnostno tveganje, vzhodnosredozemska pot migracij, osrednjesredozemska pot migracij, zahodnosredozemska pot migracij. Abstract Irregular migration is a security risk for the EU. This risk from outside Europe cannot be dealt with effectively without capacity building at foreign interfaces, so it could be assessed as an area of the former CFSP. This position was supported by the influx of irregular migrants that reached Europe in 2015, and the risks and consequences of unpreparedness for national security. This study presents the three main routes for irregular migrants which affect Europe, the countries they pass through, and the actions of EU bodies. In addition to the discussion, later in the article potential solutions to the issue will be formulated. Key words irregular migration, security risk, Eastern Mediterranean migration route, Central Mediterranean migration route, Western Mediterranean migration route.

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Failing to Stem the Tide: Lebanese Migration to French West Africa and the Competing Prerogatives of the Imperial State

Comparative Studies in Society and History ◽

10.1017/s0010417511000211 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 53 (3) ◽

pp. 450-478 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Andrew Kerim Arsan

Keyword(s):

West Africa ◽

Palm Oil ◽

Eastern Mediterranean ◽

West African ◽

Men And Women ◽

French West Africa ◽

The Government ◽

Territorial Government ◽

Mediterranean Migration ◽

Imperial State

In the years before 1939, the functionaries of Afrique Occidentale Française, or AOF, as France's West African possessions were known, consistently failed to introduce effective legislative controls upon Eastern Mediterranean migration under their purview. This was not for lack of trying; from 1905 onwards, administrators both in the territorial government of Guinea and in the Government-General of the Federation in Dakar repeatedly attempted to close their gates to these interlopers of empire, most of them from present-day Lebanon, who first began to venture into West Africa in the last years of the nineteenth century. By the late 1930s, some six thousand citizens of the Mandatory states of Lebanon and Syria resided across AOF. Most worked as produce brokers, shopkeepers, and traders, buying up groundnuts, palm oil, or kola nuts from African producers, and supplying them in turn with consumer goods such as textiles and clothes, processed foodstuffs, alcohol, and matches. Despite their attempts to channel and stem this flow of men and women, AOF administrators proved unable to impose effective legislative checks upon their movements.

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