Contribute to Our Special Issue on Underground Migration at the Margins of Europe

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, migratory movements to and across Europe have been forced to adapt to the severe restrictions on South–North mobility and to the militarised control of unauthorised passages. In particular, the Mediterranean Sea has increasingly become a mirror of differentiated and unequal access to mobility: while moving to North Africa is relatively easy for European citizens, obtaining a visa remains a difficult undertaking for African citizens, forcing many of them to take informal and dangerous routes to circumvent border control at the Euro-African and Euro-Asian borders.

One effect of the militarization and externalisation of the European border has been the production of convoluted, turbulent and anti-geographical routes to reach the northern shore of the Mediterranean, with itineraries and destinations constantly adapted to the constraints imposed by visa regimes and border control. Examples include routes through Turkey and the Balkans used by North and Sub-Saharan African citizens, as well as the route through Belarus used by many Asian citizens.

Less explored is the role of Europe’s outermost regions within the border regime, particularly those located in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, South America, and the Indian Ocean. These territories are fully part of the EU and occupy a peculiar position in the architecture of the European external border. Some of them—such as some French overseas departments and the Canary Islands—are increasingly imagined and practised as potential entry points to Europe by many citizens of the Global South. However, similar processes of route-making at the margins of Europe can be observed not only in what are officially classified as outermost regions but also in EU territories that are geographically outside the European continent yet politically included, such as Cyprus, Lampedusa and the so-called Spanish plaza de soberanía (especially the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla).

All these borderlands share the same kind of insularity: even if not all of them are proper islands, they constitute European enclaves managed and governed through containment measures—such as pushbacks at the border, deportations, internal dispersal, and different forms of imposed waiting—which are intended to keep undesirable subjects out of mainland Europe while publicly staging the spectacle of the border. They highlight how migration governance is practised not only through the outsourcing of the European border to third countries but also through different uses of political sovereignty and citizenship. However, all these processes overlap and contrast with stratified histories of past mobilities, as well as colonial and postcolonial memories.

The objective of this Special Issue is to foreground the (de)bordering and (de)colonial processes unfolding in these regions at the margins of Europe by engaging in a multifaceted discussion on the ambivalences and stratified meanings, discourses, memories, and practices of solidarity along some of the most convoluted and turbulent migration routes. We are particularly interested in empirical articles that, through ethnographic material, document examples of route-making and solidarity practices as ambivalent and impure sets of material actions circulating across overlapping fields of religious duties, moral economies, political aspirations, and local meanings. Such practices sustain the irregularised mobility of migrants while countering processes of internal and external externalisation of the European border.

This call invites papers that examine the issues discussed above, including but are not limited to, the following:

• Migration routes and route-making practices across Europe’s outermost regions, islands, and enclaves;
• Insularity, containment, waiting, and deportability in migration governance;
• Islands and enclaves as laboratories of migration governance and bordering practices;
• Externalisation and internalisation of European outermost borders;
• Everyday solidarity, care and informal support networks along these specific migration routes;
• Moral economies, religious networks and infrastructures of irregular mobility;
• Debordering practices and alternative geographies of mobility.

Contributions have to follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper or review) of the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Best wishes,

Dr. Luca Queirolo Palmas
Dr. Filippo Torre
Dr. Rassa Ghaffari
Guest Editors