This paper suggests that current policies for the management of migration across the Central Mediterranean route aim more at the physical and metaphysical removal of black African migrants from the public sphere, than at dealing with structural factors. Such process, that the author names ‘absence policy’; is explored in three crucial stages of present migration dynamics: Libya, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. The author argues that absence is instrumental to claim that migration flows can be and are managed, but in reality, it subsumes only a politics of containment of migration that creates concern for the protection of the migrants’ human rights.
Zoppi Marco (2020). The ‘three absences’ of black Africans in European migration debates. MEDITERRANEAN POLITICS, 25(5), 627-649 [10.1080/13629395.2019.1663662].
The ‘three absences’ of black Africans in European migration debates
Zoppi Marco
2020
Abstract
This paper suggests that current policies for the management of migration across the Central Mediterranean route aim more at the physical and metaphysical removal of black African migrants from the public sphere, than at dealing with structural factors. Such process, that the author names ‘absence policy’; is explored in three crucial stages of present migration dynamics: Libya, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. The author argues that absence is instrumental to claim that migration flows can be and are managed, but in reality, it subsumes only a politics of containment of migration that creates concern for the protection of the migrants’ human rights.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.