Introduction -- Countering migrant-smuggling : the EU's policy approach -- The role of EU agencies in policing migrant-smuggling : EU home affairs agencies and national actors involved in anti-migrant-smuggling -- Anti-smuggling in national law and perceptions among civil society actors -- Effects of countering facilitation of entry : CSOs involved at external EU sea and land borders -- Humanitarian assistance in the context of the EU hotspots approach -- The effects of countering facilitation of residence : access to services and rights -- The three faces of policing the mobility society in the EU -- Conclusions
Policing Humanitarianism examines the ways in which European Union policies aimed at countering the phenomenon of migrant smuggling affects civil society actors' activities in the provision of humanitarian assistance, access to rights for irregular immigrants and asylum seekers. It explores the effects of EU policies, laws and agencies' operations in anti-migrant smuggling actions and their implementation in the following EU Member States: Italy, Greece, Hungary and the UK.The book critically studies policies designed and implemented since 2015, during the so called 'European refugee humanitarian crisis'. Building upon the existing academic literature covering the 'criminalisation of migration ' in the EU, the book examines the wider set of punitive, coercive or control-oriented dynamics affecting Civil Society Actors' work and activities through the lens of the notion of ' policing the mobility society'. This concept seeks to provide a framework of analysis that allows for an examination of a wider set of practices, mechanisms and tools driven by a logic of policing in the context of the EU Schengen border framework: those which affect not only people, who move (qualified as third-country nationals for the purposes of EU law), but also people who mobilise in a rights-claiming capacity on behalf of and with immigrants and asylum-seekers.
Winner of the 2023 International Political Sociology Book Award The seamy underside of humanitarianism What does it mean when humanitarianism is the response to death, injury and suffering at the border? This book interrogates the politics of humanitarian responses to border violence and unequal mobility, arguing that such responses mask underlying injustices, depoliticise violent borders and bolster liberal and paternalist approaches to suffering. Focusing on the diversity of actors involved in humanitarian assistance alongside the times and spaces of action, the book draws a direct line between privileges of movement and global inequalities of race, class, gender and disability rooted in colonial histories and white supremacy and humanitarian efforts that save lives while entrenching such inequalities. Based on eight years of research with border police, European Union officials, professional humanitarians, and grassroots activists in Europe’s borderlands, including Italy and Greece, the book argues that this kind of saving lives builds, expands and deepens already restrictive borders and exclusive and exceptional identities through what the book calls humanitarian borderwork.
An extensive history examining how North American nations have tried (and often failed) to police their borders, Border Policing presents diverse scholarly perspectives on attempts to regulate people and goods at borders, as well as on the ways that individuals and communities have navigated, contested, and evaded such regulation. The contributors explore these power dynamics though a series of case studies on subjects ranging from competing allegiances at the northeastern border during the War of 1812 to struggles over Indian sovereignty and from the effects of the Mexican Revolution to the experiences of smugglers along the Rio Grande during Prohibition. Later chapters stretch into the twenty-first century and consider immigration enforcement, drug trafficking, and representations of border policing in reality television. Together, the contributors explore the powerful ways in which federal authorities impose political agendas on borderlands and how local border residents and regions interact with, and push back against, such agendas. With its rich mix of political, legal, social, and cultural history, this collection provides new insights into the distinct realities that have shaped the international borders of North America.
In the current debates on sea migration there is a dearth of works drawing on the rule of law. This important book addresses this failing. Considering the question from that conceptual framework, it is able to broaden the sometimes fragmented and incomplete perspective of existing scholarship. The book takes as its central case study the experience of Italy, exploring the legal issues at play there and its institutional practices and policies. From here its focus broadens out to the wider EU experience, looking in particular at those problems common to southern EU states, such as failures and delays in assisting migrants in distress at sea and contested legal grounds and practices concerning interceptions at sea. It combines both legal and empirical data, charting both the black letter law and how it operates in practice. In a field as complex as this, this clarity is key; it allows lawyers, political scientists and policymakers to truly engage with the challenges sea migration poses today.
Among the world's hotly contested, obsessively controlled, and often dangerous borders, none is deadlier than the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2000, at least 25,000 people have lost their lives attempting to reach Italy and the rest of Europe, most by drowning in the Mediterranean. Every day, unauthorized migrants and refugees bound for Europe put their lives in the hands of maritime smugglers, while fishermen, diplomats, priests, bureaucrats, armed forces sailors, and hesitant bystanders waver between indifference and intervention—with harrowing results. In Crimes of Peace, Maurizio Albahari investigates why the Mediterranean Sea is the world's deadliest border, and what alternatives could improve this state of affairs. He also examines the dismal conditions of migrants in transit and the institutional framework in which they move or are physically confined. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of places, people, and European politics, Albahari supplements fieldwork in coastal southern Italy and neighboring Mediterranean locales with a meticulous documentary investigation, transforming abstract statistics into names and narratives that place the responsibility for the Mediterranean migration crisis in the very heart of liberal democracy. Global fault lines are scrutinized: between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; military and humanitarian governance; detention and hospitality; transnational crime and statecraft; the universal law of the sea and the thresholds of a globalized yet parochial world. Crimes of Peace illuminates crucial questions of sovereignty and rights: for migrants trying to enter Europe along the Mediterranean shore, the answers are a matter of life or death.
The third edition of this work sets out a comprehensive and analytical manual of international humanitarian law, accompanied by case analysis and extensive explanatory commentary by a team of distinguished and internationally renowned experts.
"Casualties of Care is a well crafted, intelligent and carefully argued study of the social and policy effects of a seemingly benevolent set of 'humanitarian practices' used in the French immigration and asylum processes. One of the leading anthropologists of humanitarianism, Miriam Ticktin is well placed to write this definitive study, having undertaken nearly ten years of thorough ethnographic research in France. Her research findings draw from ethnographic interviews and participant observation as well as broader, more structural data on the movement of foreign labor within the French economy." --Richard Ashby Wilson, Gladstein Chair of Human Rights, University of Connecticut "Ticktin cuts to the heart of contemporary concerns, speaking provocatively and incisively about humanitarianism and security through the topic of immigration." --Peter Redfield, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
