Migration: Security and humanitarianism across the Mediterranean border

This chapter highlights scholarly and activist insights into the interplay between migratory movements and border enforcement in the Mediterranean. First, it contextualises the mobility conflict that results from the clash between Europe’s restrictive migration policies and migrant movements from the Global South. Second, it discusses how the political geography of the sea and its overlapping jurisdictions shape this clash between exercises of the freedom to move and attempts to govern them. Third, it explores the entanglement of security and humanitarian rationales in border governance, and the ways different actors – migrants, activists, NGOs or state actors – seek to challenge them.