Naturalizing ‘Black Spaces’ in the Mediterranean: Towards a political ecology of bordering infrastructures

This paper introduces the terminology of border infrastructures as a way to enrich a multi-perspectival approach to territorial bordering processes that takes seriously their stratifying and racialising dynamics. Building on the analysis of migrant informal dwellings, or ghettos, which are increasingly constructed as naturalised ‘black spaces’ in the Mediterranean, the paper’s contribution is twofold. First, it calls for more situated research into the multiple networks, connections and agencies involved in bordering processes, which often comprise complex interactions across ‘formal’ and ‘informal’, ‘human’ and ‘more-than-human’ boundaries. Second, it proposes to foreground the socio-materiality of borders-as-infrastructures by analysing how these actively reproduce a logic of separation in both a political and an ecological sense. The article pushes forward a more immersive understanding and methodology that is able to unearth the stratifying, racialising dimensions of contemporary borderwork across and within the confines of nation-state territoriality.