Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T00:21:18.410Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Border closures and the externalization of immigration controls in the Mediterranean: A comparative analysis of Morocco and Turkey – RETRACTED

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2018

Ayşen Üstübici  and
Ahmet İçduygu
Ayşen Üstübici
Affiliation:
Department of International Relations, Koç University, 34450, Sarıyer, İstanbul, Turkey; [email protected].
Ahmet İçduygu
Affiliation:
Ahmet İçduygu, Department of International Relations, Koç University, 34450, Sarıyer, Istanbul, Turkey; [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article traces the recent history of border closures in Turkey and Morocco and their impact on human mobility at the two ends of the Mediterranean. Border closures in the Mediterranean have produced new spaces where borders are often fenced, immigration securitized, and border crossings and those facilitating border crossings criminalized. Here, bordering practices are conceptualized as physical bordering practices, border controls, and legal measures. Turkey and Morocco constitute comparable cases for an analysis of border closures insofar as they utilize similar mechanisms of closure, despite having quite different outcomes in terms of numbers. The article’s findings are based on fieldwork conducted at both locations between 2012 and 2014, as well as on analysis of Frontex Risk Assessment Reports from 2010 to 2016. The first part of the article reflects on the concepts of border closure and securitization, together with their implications, and draws for its argument on critical security studies and critical border studies. The second part of the article is an overview of controls over mobility exercised in the Mediterranean from the 1990s onward. Then, in the third and fourth parts, we turn to the particular cases—respectively, Turkey and Morocco—in order to discuss their processes of border closure and the various implications thereof. Through analysis of the two country cases, we show that border closures are neither linear nor irreversible.

Keywords

externalization of border and migration policiesborder closuresMediterraneanTurkeyMorocco
Type
Special Dossier: Researching human smuggling in the Mediterranean
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 59 , November 2018 , pp. 7 - 31
Copyright
© New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Authors’ note: The authors gratefully thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. We also thank Judy Woods for her assistance with desktop research and language editing.

References

Andersson, Ruben. “Europe’s Failed ‘Fight’ against Irregular Migration: Ethnographic Notes on a Counterproductive Industry.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42, no. 7 (2016): 1055–1075.Google Scholar
Andersson, Ruben. “Time and the Migrant Other: European Border Controls and the Temporal Economics of Illegality.” American Anthropologist 116, no. 4 (2014): 795–809.Google Scholar
Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA). “Derechos Humanos en la Frontera Sur 2009.” Seville: APDHA, 2010.Google Scholar
Bigo, Didier. “Death in the Mediterranean Sea: The Results of the Three Fields of Action of European Union Border Controls.” In The Irregularization of Migration in Contemporary Europe: Detention, Deportation, Drowning. Edited by Yolande Jansen, Robin Celikates, and Joost de Bloois. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. 55–70.Google Scholar
Carling, Jørgen and Hernández‐Carretero, María. “Protecting Europe and Protecting Migrants? Strategies for Managing Unauthorised Migration from Africa.” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 13, no. 1 (2011): 42–58.Google Scholar
Cassarino, Jean-Pierre. “Informalising Readmission Agreements in the EU Neighbourhood.” The International Spectator 42, no. 2 (2007): 179–196.Google Scholar
Collyer, Michael. “In-Between Places: Trans-Saharan Transit Migrants in Morocco and the Fragmented Journey to Europe.” Antipode 39, no. 4 (2007): 668–690.Google Scholar
Conseil national des droits de l’Homme, (CNDH). “Conclusions et Recommandations du Rapport: ‘Etrangers et Droits de l’Homme au Maroc: Pour une Politique d’Asile et d’Immigration Radicalement Nouvelle’.” Rabat: CNDH, 2013.Google Scholar
De Genova, Nicholas. “Extremities and Regularities: Regulatory Regimes and the Spectacle of Immigration Enforcement.” In The Irregularization of Migration in Contemporary Europe: Detention, Deportation, Drowning. Edited by Yolande Jansen, Robin Celikates, and Joost de Bloois. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. 3–14.Google Scholar
Delanty, Gerard. “Borders in a Changing Europe: Dynamics of Openness and Closure.” Comparative European Politics 4, no. 2-3 (2006): 183–202.Google Scholar
, Frontex. “Annual Risk Analysis 2015.” Warsaw: Frontex European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union, 2015.Google Scholar
, Frontex. “Annual Risk Analysis 2016.” Warsaw: Frontex European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union, 2016.Google Scholar
GADEM (Le Groupe antiraciste de défense et d’accompagnement des étrangers et migrants). “La Chasse aux Migrants aux Frontières Sud de l’UE Conséquence des Politiques Migratoires Européennes: L’exemple des Refoulements de Décembre 2006 au Maroc.” Rabat: GADEM, 2007.Google Scholar
GADEM, Migreurop, La Cimade, and APHDA. “Ceuta et Melilla: Centres de tri à ciel ouvert aux portes de l’Afrique.” GADEM 2015. http://www.migreurop.org/IMG/pdf/fr_rapportconjoint_ceutamelilla_decembre2015.pdf.Google Scholar
Geddes, Andrew. Immigration and European Integration: Towards Fortress Europe? European Policy Research Unit Series. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Grassiani, Erella and Swinkels, Michiel. “Introduction: Engaging with Borders.” Etnofoor 26, no. 1 (2014): 7–12.Google Scholar
Huysmans, Jef. The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.Google Scholar
İçduygu, Ahmet. “EU-ization Matters: Changes in Immigration and Asylum Practices in Turkey.” In The Europeanization of National Policies and Polities of Immigration. Edited by Thomas Faist and Andreas Ette. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 201–222.Google Scholar
İçduygu, Ahmet. “The Politics of Irregular Migratory Flows in the Mediterranean Basin: Economy, Mobility and ‘Illegality’.” Mediterranean Politics 12, no. 2 (2007): 141–161.Google Scholar
İçduygu, Ahmet. “Turkey’s Evolving Migration Policies: A Mediterranean Transit Stop at the Doors of the EU.” In IAI Working Papers 15/31. September 2015. http://www.iai.it/sites/default/files/iaiwp1531.pdf.Google Scholar
İçduygu, Ahmet and Aksel, Damla B.. “Two-to-Tango in Migration Diplomacy: Negotiating Readmission Agreement between the EU and Turkey.” European Journal of Migration and Law 16, no. 3 (2014): 337–363.Google Scholar
İçduygu, Ahmet and Üstübici, Ayşen. “Negotiating Mobility, Debating Borders: Migration Diplomacy in Turkey-EU Relations.” In New Border and Citizenship Politics. Edited by Helen Schwenken and Sabine Ruß-Sattar. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 44–59.Google Scholar
İçduygu, Ahmet and Yükseker, Deniz. “Rethinking Transit Migration in Turkey: Reality and Re‐Presentation in the Creation of a Migratory Phenomenon.” Population, Space and Place 18, no. 4 (2012): 441–456.Google Scholar
Johnson, Corey and Jones, Reece. “The Biopolitics and Geopolitics of Border Enforcement in Melilla.” Territory, Politics, Governance 6, no. 1 (2018): 61–80.Google Scholar
Karaçay, Ayşem Biriz. “Shifting Human Smuggling Routes along Turkey’s Borders.” Turkish Policy Quarterly 15, no. 4 (2017): 97–108.Google Scholar
Kausch, Kristina and Youngs, Richard. “The End of the ‘Euro-Mediterranean Vision’.” International Affairs 85, no. 5 (2009): 964–975.Google Scholar
Lavenex, Sandra. “Shifting Up and Out: The Foreign Policy of European Immigration Control.” West European Politics 29, no. 2 (2006): 329–350.Google Scholar
Mountz, Alison and Loyd, Jenna M.. “Constructing the Mediterranean Region: Obscuring Violence in the Bordering of Europe’s Migration ‘Crises’.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 13, no. 2 (2014): 173–195.Google Scholar
Pallister-Wilkins, Polly. “The Tensions of the Ceuta and Melilla Border Fences.” In EurAfrican Borders and Migration Management. Edited by P. Gaibazzi, S. Dünnwald, and A. Bellagamba. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 63–81.Google Scholar
Pollak, Johannes and Slominski, Peter. “Experimentalist but Not Accountable Governance? The Role of Frontex in Managing the EU’s External Borders,” West European Politics 32, no. 5 (2009): 904–924.Google Scholar
Rumelili, Bahar and Karadağ, Sibel. “Göç ve Güvenlik: Eleştirel Yaklaşımlar.” Toplum ve Bilim 140 (2017): 69–92.Google Scholar
Saddiki, Said. “Fortifying the Morocco-Algeria Border: Security Concerns and Regional Competition.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Borders, Walls and Violence: Costs and Alternatives to Border Fencing. Raoul Dandurand Chair at the University of Québec at Montreal, June 2–3, 2016.Google Scholar
Spijkerboer, Thomas. “Fact Check: Did the EU-Turkey Deal Bring down the Number of Migrants and of Border Deaths?” Border Criminologies, September 28, 2016. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2016/09/fact-check-did-eu.Google Scholar
Sterkx, Steven. “The External Dimension of EU Asylum and Migration Policy: Expanding Fortress Europe.” In Europe’s Global Role: External Policies of the European Union . Edited by Jan Orbie. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 117–138.Google Scholar
Üstübici, Ayşen. The Governance of International Migration: Irregular Migrants’ Access to Right to Stay in Turkey and Morocco. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Üstübici, Ayşen. “Political Activism between Journey and Settlement: Irregular Migrant Mobilisation in Morocco.” Geopolitics 21, no. 2 (2016): 303–324.Google Scholar
Üstübici, Ayşen. “Türkiye’de Göç Politikaların Dönüşümü: Yasadışılığın Uluslararası Üretiminden Makbul Yabancıya?” Toplum ve Bilim 140 (2017): 106–122.Google Scholar
Valluy, Jérôme. “Le HCR au Maroc: Acteur de la Politique Européenne d’externalisation de l’Asile.” L’Année du Maghreb 3 (2007): 547–575.Google Scholar
Walters, William. “Live Governance, Borders, and the Time–Space of the Situation: EUROSUR and the Genealogy of Bordering in Europe.” Comparative European Politics 15, no. 5 (2017): 794–817.Google Scholar
Wissink, Marieke and Ulusoy, Orçun. “Navigating the Eastern Mediterranean: The Diversification of Sub-Saharan African Migration Patterns in Turkey and Greece.” In Understanding Migrant Decisions: From Sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean Region. Edited by Belachew Gebrewold and Tendayi Bloom. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2016. 120–139.Google Scholar
Zapata-Barrero, Ricard and De Witte, Nynke. “The Spanish Governance of EU Borders: Normative Questions.” Mediterranean Politics 12, no. 1 (2007): 85–90.Google Scholar