Migration in the Western Mediterranean: Space, Mobility and Borders

Description

The upheavals of the Arab Spring grabbed the world’s immediate attention, and concern quickly grew over their potential aftermath, with the fear that a ‘tidal wave’ of immigrants and refugees would ‘flood’ European territory. The Arab Spring has highlighted the Mediterranean as a migration region, and new research is now required to bring to light too often neglected mobility patterns and border practices that predate and outlast the tumultuous spring of 2011. The edited volume Space, Mobility and Borders in the Western Mediterranean tackles these contemporary issues related to migration in the Mediterranean region. It brings together high-quality, original academic contributions from both empirical and theoretical points of view by scholars from diverse disciplines, who draw upon Anglophone, Francophone, Spanish and Italian research. It reexamines borders in the light of a now full-blown body of literature that seeks to capture the complexity of their contemporary features beyond their most direct visual enactments, in particular the sweeping deployment of policing devices and operations along the North/South fault line. Another distinctive binding thread in this book is that it emphasizes migrants as active subjects interacting with local events, national policies and the bordering process. Offering an examination of the intricate interplay among the events of the Arab Spring, migration’s multiple types and actors, and the evolving relationship between migration control and borders in the region, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars of migration studies, European Union Studies and Mediterranean Studies. Laure-Anne Bernes holds a Phd in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Liège. She is currently an external scientific collaborator at the Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies at the University of Liège. Hassan Bousetta is currently a Research Associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), member of the Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Liège Caroline Zickgraf is Research Fellow at the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and at the Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies, University of Liège Introduction Laure-Anne Bernes, Hassan Bousetta & Caroline Zickgraf Part I: Understanding Mobility and Borders in the Western Mediterranean 1. The Conceptual Dynamics of Borders in a World in Motion, Ricard Zapata Barrero 2. The Border Network. The Articulation of Mobility and Immobilization, Andrea Rea 3. State-bound Visa Policies and Europeanized Practices, Federica Infantino Part II: Migration Control and the Advent of the Arab Spring 4. Migration in the Euro-Mediterranean Area, Elif Cetin 5. Tunisian Migrants' Journey through the Mediterranean, Aide Esu and Simone Maddanu 6. Freedom of Movement and Dignity at Work, Federico Oliveri Part III: Transit Migration and New Mobilities in Question 7. Transitional Migration is always a Migration in Stages, Mehdi Alioua 8. Constructing Mobile Lifestyles between Europe and Africa, Marko Juntunen and Spela Kalcic