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Narrating crises of Europe’s southernmost borderscapes: the case of Melilla and Lampedusa
(2025-06) Marino, Anna
This paper presents the qualitative content analysis of claims in mainstream media made around crises related to immigration at specific borderscapes of the European Union located in two Southern European Member States, namely Italy and Spain. The two selected border crisis cases are the tragic shipwreck of Lampedusa, which occurred on the 3rd of October 2013, and the Melilla massacre, which occurred on the 24th of June 2022. I argue that both events were pivotal in shaping the view (local, national and international) on these borders given their broader mediatic reach, which gave these borderlands unprecedented attention, despite being only two of the numerous tragedies that took place on the Central and Western Mediterranean migratory routes since the early 2000s. The aim of the analysis is thus to compare claims made in the media around the mentioned events on these specific borderscapes, peculiar areas shaped by transnational flows that have existed and developed beyond the constructed idea of the national state and its clear-cut borders. Indeed, I argue that what happens on these borderscapes and its consequential media representation profoundly shapes the way we think about these territories, migration flows, and migrants at the national and European levels. The aim is thus to detect potential similarities and differences in how these events are narrated through claims made in the media. These claims and their comparative analysis give us an idea of how these events and these territories are perceived in the two member states and then translated at the European level.
Expulsions from Algeria to Niger: a postcolonial approach to IOM-assisted "voluntary" returns
(2024-09) Puig Cepero, Oriol; Stephens, Lillie; Eiksund, Mathilde Sjøhelle
The expulsion of migrants, mainly black Africans, from Algeria to the border with Niger has increased in recent years, since 2014 and especially since 2017. In this context, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) assists vulnerable migrants and incorporates them into its"assisted voluntary return" program. However, in line with the results of our fieldwork, several scholars and social organizations question the "voluntary" character of these returns and the interests behind these repatriations. In this article, we examine the power relations at play between the IOM, the European Union (EU) and returned migrants and, through a critical approach framed in postcolonialism, analyse the role of the IOM as an actor at the service of the EU's border externalisation efforts.
Rethinking agency: towards a collaborative approach on political agency of people on the move in the Mediterranean
(2024-01) Nohr, Isabell
Situated at the intersection of the autonomy of migration approach and critical citizenship studies, the working paper proposes a research approach and paradigm change within Mediterranean migration scholarship that integrates people on the move as active agents influencing knowledge production. Illustrating the suggested approach, the working paper uses the case example of political agency and acts of citizenship of people on the move in Libya. To examine how communicative acts of citizenship enable people on the move to express political agency, the proposal suggests a qualitative, collaborative, and explorative research design using photo-elicitation and photo voice methodologies. While people on the move are mostly constructed as voiceless victims in dominant humanitarian discourse and as security threats in dominant media and policy discourse, the research aims to amplify the voices of people on the move themselves within a post-colonial and reflective research paradigm. By shifting the focus to subject-centred understanding of the situation of people on the move in Libya, the working paper proposes a conceptualization that will be able to challenge dominant discourses that construct people on the move as inferior ‘Other’ and suggest new conceptual frameworks to conduct research on mobility.
The external relations of mediterranean cities with civil society organisations in migration governance
(2022-11) Casanovas i Oliveres, Aida
Following the attention brought by a ‘local turn’ (Zapata-Barrero, Caponio & Scholten, 2017) and multi-level migration governance theory, this paper aims to prove that city diplomacy does not describe well the decoupling of local governments from national agendas in their foreign relations. The guiding question that the paper addresses is why some cities have decoupled from State agendas and engaged with ICSOs to tackle migration challenges. The analysis is based on the city-to-CSO agreements of Barcelona with ProActiva Open Arms and Marseille with SOS Méditerranée on the one hand, and the involvement of Terre d’Asile Tunisie with the municipality of Sfax (Tunisia) in the ICMPD-led Mediterranean City-To-City project on the other. The findings reaffirm that mayors play a major influence in migration governance (Lacroix, Hombert and Furri, 2020; Bazurli, Caponio, and de Graauw, 2021), and on the detachment of the city’s relations from the security-oriented and managerial idiosyncrasies of national governments.
Cosmopolitanism and Mediterranean cities
(2022-04) Gastaut, Yvan
What place is given to foreigners and migrants in the cities of the Mediterranean basin? At a time of radicalism and withdrawal, rethinking common values on the different shores is becoming an urgent necessity. In this context, the urban space as a place for deciding the place of the "Other" within society appears to be the best possible laboratory for mixing. In order to envisage the future, this article proposes a reflection on the past of Mediterranean cities and their real or supposed cosmopolitanism. This memory of cities with mixed and variegated populations, linked together by a common culture that is sometimes fantasized, can serve as a reference point for implementing tolerant urban policies capable of moving away from restrictive state management. Between reality and representation, we question the specificity of cosmopolitanism in Mediterranean cities, which, in spite of systems of domination sometimes difficult to support like the colonization, can be.
Rafah border: between terrorism, exogenous and endogenous pressures
(2021-12) El Kordy, Mostafa Mohamed
This working paper tackles border control policies in Egypt, focusing on Rafah border, possibly one of the most complex in the region and also in the entire world. Furthermore, I analyze the possible relation between the control of this border and terrorism in Sinai during different ruling regimes in Egypt – Mubarak, Morsi and el-Sisi- filling a crucial gap in the literature. This has been based on qualitative methodology, using case selection to identify and select major terrorist attacks during the different ruling regimes, and analyzing primary and secondary documents, jointly with expert interviews, to analyze the decisions taken by the different actors and reveal the inter-subjective reasoning behind each reaction in terms of border control. The results show that, surprisingly, all the different regimes analyzed took very similar paths of the adversarial approach. Also, despite the supposed relevance of terrorist attacks for border control, exogenous and endogenous pressure play a major role in shaping the border policies.
The impact of international remittances on poverty: evidence from the southern and eastern Mediterranean
(2021-11) Ismaili Idrissi, Boutaina; Kawkaba, Sara
Workers Remittances represent an important source of financing for recipient countries to the extent that it exceeds sometimes foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. International remittances flowing into developing economies has gained an increasing importance with view to the volume of these flows, their importance for the financial sector as well as their overall impact at the economic and social level. Based upon a review of theoretical and empirical literature, this paper uses an econometric model to assess the impact of remittances in terms of reducing the level of poverty. It is based on panel data of 8 southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey and West bank and Gaza) over the period 2000-2018. In most of these countries, remittances represent the largest foreign exchange earnings and represent an average of 8% of GDP. The results suggest that remittances have a positive impact on growth and therefore contribute, through income generation to poverty reduction. This impact becomes significant as the level of remittances relative to GDP increases.
The Syrian refugee labor supply shock in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon: a literature review of critical impacts on labor markets, economies and policies
(2021-04) Barazesh, Sonay
It is well documented that Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan are the countries accepting the highest number of Syrian refugees in the world. Syrians have helped to increase the growth rate of economies and create jobs but concerns exist about competition and stagnation in wages for low skilled nationals due to the labor supply shock. This paper, based on a thorough exploration of the literature, finds a critical lack of sustained research on refugee impacts on host countries' labor markets, economies and politics in Middle Eastern contexts. It endeavors to identify the impacts of the Syrian refugee labor supply shocks in the host countries of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan on national economies and labor markets and on national policies.
Migration and municipal militancy in the Mediterranean
(2020-09) Lacroix, Thomas; Hombert, Louise; Furri, Filippo
From the US to Italy, from Brazil to Japan, cities from all over the world are increasingly vocal on migration issues. Advocating for alternative approach to immigrants’ welcome, their stand and policies may at times be in blunt contradiction with national approaches. This paper gives an overview of this new form of urban militancy, its recent evolution, its forms, its networks. Drawing on case studies in France, Spain and Italy, it seeks to explain why the Mediterranean has been an important setting for the politicisation of municipal involvement. The recent Palermo Platform Process shows how the combination of the support civil society organisations and the driving force of influential mayors has allowed the upscaling of such commitment at a European scale.
Rescaling Mediterranean migration governance : setting a research agenda that establishes the centrality of cities for region-making
(2020-06) Zapata Barrero, Ricard
This article seeks to delineate a research approach and agenda with the ambition to rethink the governance of Mediterranean migration on a different scale: Mediterranean cities. The general purpose is to offer conceptual, theoretical, empirical and methodological preliminary arguments to support this rescaling proposal and to share insight on how it may contribute to reboot region-making and a potential paradigm change. Additionally, as I will frame it in the Introduction, the Med-Thinking approach will be key for this research enterprise. To go into more detail, in the first section I enter into the foundations of this research approach criss-crossing four critical reviews. In the second section I sketch the key-concepts shaping the theoretical basis of this research agenda. Then, in the third section I schematically present the main research areas following a multi-layered approach. In the concluding remarks, I tentatively channel the overall contributions towards a governance paradigm change argument.
(In)stability and migration in North Africa
(2020-03) Awad, Ibrahim
This paper addresses the relation between political instability and international migration in the three North African countries that have experienced instability in the 2010s, namely Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. This instability ranged from uprising and revolution to state failure. The paper is particularly concerned with migration to the European Union but also that between the three North African countries. The paper invalidates the assumption that instability and ensuing economic crisis magnify already large international migration outflows. These were not large to begin with. And neither from Tunisia, nor certainly from Egypt, did instability in the 2010s engender larger outflows to the EU than previously. It is instability at destination in the same North Africa, in Libya, that produced large return and transit flows to Egypt and Tunisia. This confirms what Egypt experienced in the 1990s, when occupation and war in Kuwait and Iraq sent Egyptian workers back to their country.
Mediterranean’s migration dilemma and the EU’s Readmission Agreements: reinforcing a centre-periphery relation
(2019-12) İçduygu, Ahmet; Demiryontar, Birce
The EU emphasis on externalisation of migration governance hinders cooperation in the Mediterranean and consolidates pre-existing power inequalities. The most controversial examples have emerged in the content and context of the EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement and the EU-Turkey Joint Statement. By analysing the case of Turkey and adding comparative perspective through the cases of Morocco and Tunisia, this article argues that the EU policy instruments of externalisation consolidate an asymmetrical relationship in the long run. They shift the economic, social, political and normative burden of migration management and reinforce a centre-periphery relationship between the EU-Med and non-EU Med regions.

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