European borderscapes: The management of migration between care and control

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.