Paper details
| Paper authors | Léa Nivoix (Mesopolhis, Aix-Marseille Université) |
| In panel on | Resisting Border Violence: The Role of Civil Society, Local Actors, and Researchers |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting | In-Person & Online |
Abstract
Since the emergence of a civil Search and Rescue (SAR) movement in the Central Med area around 2024, the management of the border has been transformed by an array of policies originating from the European Union, and which nowadays translates as a border death regime (Cuttita & Last, 2019). This specific regime has a number of actors interacting with groups of vulnerable people on their journey across the sea to find a safe haven, as well as the bodies of those they couldn’t assist. Although at first the NGOs assisting migrants crossing the sea mainly from Libya to Southern Europe were perceived as doing a necessary action in the context of a migration crisis, the European public opinion and political treatment of their action took a turn in 2018 towards what is seen by scholars and the NGOs themselves as a criminalization of their work (Du Jardin, 2022).
The purpose of this communication is therefore to offer an analysis of Mediterranean borderscape (Brambilla, 2015) by centering SAR NGOs. By comparing the way the numerous NGOs communicate, denounce and illustrate violence happening within the border on their social media as well as by analyzing their discourses on violence against specific vulnerable groups, I would like to better apprehend the outlines and margins of what has become a difficult to resist border death regime.
Bibliography
Brambilla, Chiara. « Il confine come borderscape ». InTrasformazione: rivista di storia delle idee, vol. 4, no 2, 2, octobre 2015, p. 5 9.
Cuttitta, Paolo, and Tamara Last, eds. Border Deaths. Causes, Dynamics and Consequences of Migration-Related Mortality. Amsterdam University Press., 2019.
Du Jardin, Mathilde. « Solidarité en Europe : état de l’art sur la criminalisation de l’aide aux personnes en situation irrégulière ». Déviance et Société, vol. 46, no 4, 2022, p. 519-46.
Scharenberg, Antje, and Peter Rees. “The Sea in Sea Rescue: Conceptualising Solidarity with Maritime Migrants.” Political Geography 115, 2024.
