Clandestine migration and the business of bordering Europe

301 Pages·2016·3.16 MB·English

by  Ruben Andersson

The London School of Economics and Political Science

Clandestine migration and the
business of bordering Europe

Ruben Andersson

A thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology of the London
School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
London, October 2012
Declaration

I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of
the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work
other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which
case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is
clearly identified in it).

The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted,
provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced
without my prior written consent.

I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the
rights of any third party.

NB: some edits have been made to this thesis, for instance to ensure
anonymisation, in order for the thesis to be published online by LSE in
accordance with the School’s policy.
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To Cristina
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Abstract

Irregular, clandestine or so-called “illegal” migration by land and sea is rarely
out of the political and media agenda in Europe despite its statistically limited
significance. Taking this mismatch as its starting point, this thesis explores the
industry that has emerged around clandestine migration in recent years – the
transnational policing networks, aid organisations and media outlets that all make
the “illegal immigrant” their target, beneficiary and source. It focuses on the
migration circuit between West Africa and Spain, where a joint European
response to irregular flows was first tried and tested under the umbrella of the
border agency Frontex. It is also here that success in “fighting illegal migration”
has been most readily announced following the brief, spectacular migration
“crises” in Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005 and in
the Canary Islands in 2006.
The thesis explores ethnographically how clandestine migration has been
constituted as a field of intervention and knowledge-gathering since this time. In
this field, it is argued, the roles of policing, caring for and informing on migrants
intermingle while producing shared models, materialities and classifications that
impinge upon the travellers labelled “illegal”. Drawing on the dynamic
nominalism of Ian Hacking, the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour and a
growing body of critical migration and border studies, the thesis explores the
interfaces where specific modalities of migrant illegality are produced. The
exploration of these interfaces – in deportation, surveillance, patrolling, rescues,
reception and activism – relies on an extended field site, with research carried
out in Senegal, Mali, Morocco, southern Spain and European policing
headquarters. Throughout, the thesis highlights not just the workings of the
migration industry but this industry’s excesses and absurdities, which make the
business of bordering Europe a fraught and contradictory enterprise.

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Acknowledgments

A great many people and institutions have helped make this project possible, too
numerous to mention here.
I am very grateful to the young repatriates of the Dakar neighbourhood I
call Yongor for welcoming me despite their difficult circumstances and for
setting my whole project on a new track. I am greatly indebted to all those who
have shared their stories with me, in Yongor and elsewhere: protecting their
identities prevents me from mentioning them by name here.
In Ceuta, I am indebted to Pepi Galván, without whose hospitality,
kindness and help my experience in the city would have been completely
different. I am also grateful to the director of the CETI and its workers for
receiving me, as well as to the Spanish Red Cross staff and volunteers in Ceuta.
Many journalists, aid workers, academics and activists have helped give
shape to this project through friendship, support, contacts and exchanges of
ideas. I especially wish to thank Papa Demba Fall for receiving me at IFAN in
Dakar, and the team at Aracem for their warm welcome in Bamako. I am also
thankful to the Spanish Guardia Civil and the Senegalese border police for
having received me on numerous visits.
At LSE, I am deeply indebted to my supervisors, Mathijs Pelkmans and
Deborah James, for their unfailing support and guidance. Mathijs has been a
constant source of inspiration and help, and Deborah has not only given me
much-needed support but her eye for detail has also helped improve my thesis no
end. Both have been incredibly patient and helpful, not least during the times
when my spirits, ideas or energies have waned, and I am equally grateful to them
both. I also wish to thank Chris Fuller for his supervision during my pre-
fieldwork year. My colleagues at LSE and elsewhere have been very helpful and
inspiring, and their feedback most useful; no one named, no one forgotten.
My PhD project was funded by an Economic and Social Research
Council Studentship (award number ES/G01793X//1). I am very grateful for this
assistance.
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Above all, I am grateful to Cristina for her support and inspiration
throughout, as well as for her almost superhuman levels of patience with me
during the preparation, research and writing of this thesis; without her, the thesis
would never have been finished, let alone begun.

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................10
Illegality in context ........................................................................................................................... 15
West African mobility: from exode to ‘exodus’ .............................................................................................. 16
Dakar-Madrid: Spain between emigration and immigration ................................................................. 18
The research frontier of clandestine migration ............................................................................................ 23
The illegality industry as research object .............................................................................. 25
The extended field site ..................................................................................................................... 30
Ethics and access .......................................................................................................................................................... 33
Thesis outline ....................................................................................................................................... 34
MOHAMMADOU AND THE MIGRANT-EATERS ............................................................39
The birth of a tragedy ...................................................................................................................... 42
Migrants as human deterrents .................................................................................................... 45
Migrants as money-spinners ........................................................................................................ 53
Migrants as content providers..................................................................................................... 61
Repatriation and the economics of affliction ....................................................................... 67
A GAME OF RISK .....................................................................................................................72
Joint Operation Hera: drawing the line ................................................................................... 74
Risk’s golden arrow: Frontex and the border business....................................................... 80
Seahorse: hardwiring the African frontier ............................................................................ 88
Surveillance: the men who stare at screens .......................................................................... 93
Kill the cyclops: Eurosur and the informatised border .................................................... 97
Conclusion: the making of a Euro-African frontier ........................................................ 103
HUNTER AND PREY ............................................................................................................ 107
Rucksacks and biscuits: clandestine-spotting in Dakar ................................................ 109
Reading the illegal mind at the Rosso border ................................................................... 115
Nouadhibou: the numbers game ............................................................................................. 122
The dehumanisation machine: crossing Africa’s internal sea ................................... 128
Oujda and the Strait: the politics of recognition .............................................................. 131
Conclusion: illegality put to work ........................................................................................... 138
THE CROSSING ..................................................................................................................... 140
The spectacle, Act one: guardian angels of the high seas ............................................ 143
Part I: symbiosis ........................................................................................................................................................ 145
Part II: transformation ........................................................................................................................................... 149
Part III: the rescue image ...................................................................................................................................... 153
Part IV: the backroom of migration ................................................................................................................. 155
The spectacle, Act two: keepers of the gate ........................................................................ 159
Part I: mimesis............................................................................................................................................................ 162
Part II: ambivalence ................................................................................................................................................. 165
Part III: the spectacle hijacked ........................................................................................................................... 170
Part IV: backstage entrance ................................................................................................................................. 173
Curtain call: beyond the spectacle .......................................................................................... 174
WHITE MOTHER, BLACK SONS ...................................................................................... 179
The camp ............................................................................................................................................ 180
Spaghetti and cigarettes ............................................................................................................. 183
Broken slippers ................................................................................................................................ 189
The yellow card ............................................................................................................................... 194
A cardboard rebellion ................................................................................................................... 198
On veut le responsable! ................................................................................................................ 204
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The cordon ......................................................................................................................................... 209
STRANDED IN TIME ........................................................................................................... 213
Buying time: pauses, lies and parking lots .......................................................................... 216
Killing time: schedules and dossiers ...................................................................................... 224
Stretching time: surveillance and escape ............................................................................ 231
Taking time: life in the observatory ....................................................................................... 235
Waiting for deliverance: the time beyond ........................................................................... 240
MARCHERS WITHOUT BORDERS .................................................................................. 244
Deported, globalised, trafficked: producing migrant victims .................................... 246
We want the victims! Mobilising against the border ..................................................... 253
Activism unleashed: the protests begin ................................................................................ 257
Bamako-Dakar: searching for the border ........................................................................... 261
Finding Frontex at the Forum .................................................................................................. 265
Conclusion: the absent perpetrator ....................................................................................... 269
CONCLUSION: THE ABSURD BATTLE ........................................................................... 274
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 281

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Irregular migratory routes between Africa and southern Europe. Based on the
2012 version of MTM i-Map: imap-migration.org.

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Introduction

The illegality industry at Europe’s African frontier

MELILLA, NORTH AFRICA. 6 OCTOBER 2005. It was after darkness had fallen that the
migrants came running towards the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Hundreds of
road-weary Africans descended from their Moroccan forest encampments, threw
makeshift ladders onto the border fences circling the territories and scrambled to climb
across. Silhouetted figures crowded in between the tall fences, cameras capturing their
blurry movements between reams of barbed wire. Spanish border guards and soldiers
rushed to the scene. Journalists called it el asalto masivo, the massive assault: newscasts
and front pages showed the black migrants, many “violent” and “desperate”, advancing
swiftly and silently. Then Moroccan or Spanish security forces – it was never clear who
was responsible – fired into the crowds. At least 14 people died.1 The ramshackle migrant
encampments outside the enclaves were razed and burned by Moroccan soldiers; their
inhabitants were rounded up, detained and put on buses bound for the faraway Sahara.
Many were never heard from again. Then controls tightened, the border was cleaned up,
the media moved on. But soon a new front would open up in Europe’s “fight” against
clandestine migration: the sea route to the distant, improbable destination of the Spanish
Canary Islands.

LOS CRISTIANOS, TENERIFE, SPAIN. 13 SEPTEMBER 2009. The holiday high season
draws to a close on the southernmost fringes of Europe. At the sun-drenched seaside
promenade, next to the pizza parlours and tax-free shops, beckons a vast, blue Atlantic:
European Union flags and rent-a-parasols flutter in the breeze. A Fred Olsen shuttle
ferry rests at the shore in between trips to other resorts in the Canary Islands
archipelago. But wait – another boat, a wretched little fishing boat, is wedging its way
into the port. The holidaying Britons, Germans and Swedes stop in their tracks. For the
vessel, hand-painted and wooden, comes escorted by patrol boats and groans under the
weight of almost 80 people: all dishevelled, all poor, all black. The unseaworthy rafts
with their unlikely human cargo, beamed across the world’s media, had since the summer

1 This officially acknowledged death tally does not include those who later perished in the desert.
An investigation into the deaths has repeatedly been called for without luck (Migreurop 2006)
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