Deserts, Seas, Islands: Geographies of Disappearance in the Context of Migration
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Published
01-03-2020
Estela Schindel
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3226-2406
Abstract
In this essay disappearance is understood as the production of modes of existence that take place beyond the frames of social and civil inscription. It is thus a disjointment between the qualified life of a rights-holder and the sphere of mere survival, that means an exposed, vulnerable, bare life. This definition of disappearance bears an intimate connection with the border, which is an instance where the protection of a nation-state is being suspended more or less temporarily. The expansion of the border spatialities in the context of the policies of securitization of migration —which include the externalization of border control as well as dissuasive practices that push travelers to more dangerous routes— implies therefore an extension of the spaces where disappearance is possible. The production of such spaces is analyzed here in the case of the borders of the European Union. The analysis draws on concepts like mobility, drifting, and exposure, and focuses on the spatialities of islands, seas, and deserts. These emergent forms of disappearance are interpreted as the effect of strategies of un-protection and abandonment and in relation to emerging spatial configurations.
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Keywords
borders, disappearance, space, migration, European Union
References
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Torpey, J. (2000). The invention of the passport. Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Vaughan-Williams, N. (2012). Border Politics. The Limits of Sovereign Power. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Virilio, P. (2006). Velocidad y política. Buenos Aires: La Marca.
Walters, W. (2015). Migration, vehicles, and politics: Three theses on viapolitics. European Journal of Social Theory, 18(4), 469-488.
Weber, L., y Pickering, S. (2011). Globalization and Borders. Death at the Global Frontier. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Weber, M. (1980). La política como vocación. En El político y el científico (pp. 7-60). México DF: Premia.
WGEID. (2017). Report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on enforced disappearances in the context of migration, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneve, 28 July 2017 (A/HRC/36/39/Add.2).
Albahari, M. (2015). Crimes of Peace. Mediterranean Migrations at the World's Deadliest Border. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Andersson, R. (2014). Illegality, Inc. Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe. Oakland: University of California Press.
Arendt, H. (1998). Los orígenes del totalitarismo. Madrid: Taurus.
Citroni, G. (2018). The first attempts in Mexico and Central America to address the phenomenon of missing and disappeared migrants. International Review of the Red Cross, 99(905), 1-23.
Colombo, P. (2017). Espacios de desaparición. Vivir e imaginar los lugares de la violencia estatal. Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila.
Das, V., y Poole, D. (2008). El estado y sus márgenes. Etnografías comparadas. Cuadernos de Antropología Social, 27, 19-52.
De Genova, N., Hess, S., y Kasparek, B. (2015). Border Spectacle. Cultural Studies, 29(1), 12-14.
De León, J. (2015). The Land of Open Graves. Living and Dying on the migrant Trail. Oakland: University of California Press.
Deleuze, G. (1995). Postdata sobre las sociedades de control. En Conversaciones (pp. 277-286). Valencia: Pre-Textos.
Doty, R. (2011). Bare Life: Border-Crossing Deaths and Spaces of Moral Alibi. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(4), 599-612.
Duhaime, B., y Thibault, A. (2018). Protection of migrants from enforced disappearance. A human rights perspective. International Review of the Red Cross, 99(905), 1-19.
Foucault, M. (1976). Vigilar y castigar. Nacimiento de la prisión. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Gatti, G. (Ed.). (2017). Desapariciones. Usos locales, circulaciones globales. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores & Universidad de los Andes.
Gatti, G. (2020). The Social Disappeared. Genealogy, Global Circulations, and (Possible) Uses of a Category for the Bad Life. Public Culture, 32(1), (en prensa).
Heller Ch. et al. (2014). Forensic Oceanography: The Deadly Drift of a Migrants' Boat in the Central Mediterranean. En Forensic Architecture (Ed.). Forensis. The Architecture of Public Truth (pp. 637-655). Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Heller, Ch., y Pécoud, A. (2018). Counting migrants' deaths at the border: From civil society counter-statistics to (inter)governmental recuperation. International Migration Institute Network Working Paper Series, 143.
Hyndman, J., y Mountz, A. (2008). Another Brick in the Wall? Neo-refoulement & the Externalisation of Asylum in Europe & Australia. Government & Opposition, 43(2), 249-269.
Kobelinsky, C. (2017). Exister au risque de disparaître. Récits sur la mort pendant la traversée vers l'Europe. Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 33(2-3), 115-131.
Mountz, A. (2011). The Enforcement Archipelago. Detention, Haunting, and Asylum on Islands. Political Geography, 30, 118-128.
Mountz, A. (2013). Shrinking spaces of asylum: vanishing points where geography is used to inhibit and undermine access to asylum. Australian Journal of Human Rights, 19(3), 29-50.
Nevins, J. (2002). Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the 'Illegal Alien' and the Making of the U.S. Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.
Nixon, R. (2013). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Nyers, P. (2006). Rethinking Refugees. Beyond States of Emergency. New York: Routledge.
Razac, O. (2015). Historia política del alambre de espino. S.C. de Tenerife: Melusina.
Salter, M. (2008). When the exception becomes the rule: borders, sovereignty, and Citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 12(4), 365-380.
Salter, M. (2012). Theory of the / : The Suture and Critical Border Studies. Geopolitics, 17(4), 734-755.
Salter, M. (2013). To Make Move and Let Stop: Mobility and the Assemblage of Circulation. Mobilities, 8(1), 7-19.
Schindel, E. (2015). Blowing off the boat'. The sea border crossing to Europe, a navigation on the nature/culture divide. Mobile Culture Studies, The Journal, I/2015, 199-216.
Schindel, E. (2018a). Violent Borders. The Melilla fence and the injuries of the Schengen regime. En J. Tyner (Ed.). The Idea of Violence (pp. 117-132). Roma: Viella/Kent State University European Studies.
Schindel, E. (2018b). The role of 'nature' at the EU maritime borders: Agency, ethics and accountability. En A. Paasi et al. (Eds.). Borderless worlds for whom? Ethics, moralities and (in)justice in mobilities (pp. 212-223). New York: Routledge.
Schindel, E. (2019a). Deaths and Disappearances in Migration to Europe: Exploring the Uses of a Transnationalized Category. American Behavioral Scientist, first published online, October 21, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219883003
Schindel, E. (2019b). Death by 'nature'. The European border regime and the spatial production of slow violence. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, first published online, November 10, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654419884948
Sundberg, J. (2011). Diabolic caminos in the desert and cat fights on the río: A posthumanist political ecology of boundary enforcement in the United States-Mexico Borderlands. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101(2), 318-336.
Torpey, J. (2000). The invention of the passport. Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vaughan-Williams, N. (2009). The generalized bio-political border? Re-conceptualising the limits of sovereign power. Review of International Studies, 35, 729-749.
Vaughan-Williams, N. (2012). Border Politics. The Limits of Sovereign Power. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Virilio, P. (2006). Velocidad y política. Buenos Aires: La Marca.
Walters, W. (2015). Migration, vehicles, and politics: Three theses on viapolitics. European Journal of Social Theory, 18(4), 469-488.
Weber, L., y Pickering, S. (2011). Globalization and Borders. Death at the Global Frontier. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Weber, M. (1980). La política como vocación. En El político y el científico (pp. 7-60). México DF: Premia.
WGEID. (2017). Report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on enforced disappearances in the context of migration, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneve, 28 July 2017 (A/HRC/36/39/Add.2).
Section
Single Topic Issue. New Disappearances, new Spaces
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