The Mediterranean Expulsion Machine

Abstract

The European Union operates a deadly ‘expulsion machine’;¹ an international system of controls, operations and agreements that push back the borders of surveillance to the South and the East. Regular updates from the Fortress Europe blog² report border deaths which currently amount to 19,144 people since 1988 (data up to 25 February 2014), with most losing their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe. About 7,000 people have died in crossings from North Africa to Italy, and more people have died on the routes to Spain. At least 1,462 people have died on the crossings between Turkey and Greece, between Egypt and Greece, and between Greece and Italy. Deaths regularly occur in detention centres, in state-organized collective deportations to the Sahara desert ordered by the Libyan, Algerian and Moroccan governments; people have died in the trans-Sahara passage, in makeshift boats, ferries and cargo vessels, in crossing rivers, in border minefields, on mountain routes, in shootings by border police, in aeroplanes and under trains (Fortress Europe 2012). The well-documented inequities and murderous consequences of Europe’s security-obsessed migration control are riven with racialized processes of demarcation, discrimination and differential treatment. This is also true for those Mediterranean states that have been caught up in the race-making web of Europe’s ‘expulsion machine’ through international agreements and operations to externalize border control, which are interconnected with histories of racial exclusion and hierarchical segregation.