Since the 1990s, most tools of dissuasion, repression and confinement have featured European immigration and asylum policy from a security approach. At the same time, while constructing an Elysium-like sanctuary protected by perimeter fortifications and remote control border strategies, most EU and national actors commonly depict the consequences of this border regime as a ‘humanitarian’ crisis with its root causes always attributed to troubles ‘elsewhere’ – Africa, the Middle East and Asia – usually desperate and chaotic places beyond the borders of Europe. This article examines the complex logic of threat and benevolence that allows for a security-humanitarian response by focussing on the hidden relationship between the narratives produced by the Italian Navy during Mare Nostrum (2013) – the military-humanitarian operation in the Mediterranean targeted at both rescuing migrants and arresting smugglers – and by the media campaign Aware Migrants (2016) funded by the Italian Government to dissuade African migrants from attempting the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea.
Musarò Pierluigi (2019). European borderscapes: The management of migration between care and control. Manchester : Manchester University Press.
European borderscapes: The management of migration between care and control
Musarò Pierluigi
2019
Abstract
Since the 1990s, most tools of dissuasion, repression and confinement have featured European immigration and asylum policy from a security approach. At the same time, while constructing an Elysium-like sanctuary protected by perimeter fortifications and remote control border strategies, most EU and national actors commonly depict the consequences of this border regime as a ‘humanitarian’ crisis with its root causes always attributed to troubles ‘elsewhere’ – Africa, the Middle East and Asia – usually desperate and chaotic places beyond the borders of Europe. This article examines the complex logic of threat and benevolence that allows for a security-humanitarian response by focussing on the hidden relationship between the narratives produced by the Italian Navy during Mare Nostrum (2013) – the military-humanitarian operation in the Mediterranean targeted at both rescuing migrants and arresting smugglers – and by the media campaign Aware Migrants (2016) funded by the Italian Government to dissuade African migrants from attempting the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.