Political-Humanitarian Borderwork on the Southern European Border

The role played by non-state actors, and in particular by humanitarian ones, within the governance of international migration is an object of debate in the literature. By investigating the role played by mainstream humanitarian organizations on the southern European border, this research aims to (a) further investigate the political forms taken by humanitarianism on the ground, and (b) explore if and how mainstream humanitarian organizations are able to challenge the current border management system. Recently, the literature highlighted that grassroots humanitarian actors counter both mainstream humanitarianism—mainly seen as complicit of the state—and governments. In this respect, this research also explores (a) if and how mainstream humanitarian organizations’ discourses and practices are different from/similar to those of grassroots groups, and (b) what are the implications of these differences/similarities in terms of contributing to the (de)politicization of the current system. The research is based on ten months of fieldwork carried out in Sicily between 2017 and 2018, and it uses three main methods: document analysis, semi-structured interviews and direct observation. The book contributes to refining the discussion on the (de)politicizing role of humanitarianism by arguing that the view of humanitarian action as exclusively complicit with state-driven goals seems to be too narrow. The book argues that the issue at stake—on which further research would be needed—is more about the forms and the limits of the politicization to which humanitarian actors contribute.

Since the 1990s, the Italian migration and border management strategy has revolved around two main poles: (a) the attempt to prevent, deter and contain migration in collaboration with neighboring countries; (b) the routinized management (and filtering) of migrants reaching Italian shores based on the “turning a blind-eye” approach. Procedures adopted to manage migrants reaching Sicily included: the first aid and transfer of migrants in reception centres; their successive registration and identification; the sorting between forced (in need of protection) and voluntary (to be repatriated) migrants and the attribution of different legal statuses on the basis of this dichotomy. This overall strategy was consolidated over time. Since at least 2005–2006, mainstream humanitarian organizations started to be increasingly and systematically involved in the management of migration on the southern Italian border. Since the so-called refugee crisis of 2015, and at least until 2018, Italian governments adopted further restrictive policies in the attempt to contain migratory flows and to exclude migrants (i.e. the hotspot system of 2015 and the security decree of 2018).

The literature highlighted the role played by humanitarian organizations in perpetuating institutional categorizations that reproduce hierarchies on the grounds of protection and humanitarian logic and criteria. As the entitlement to rights is closely linked to migrants’ legal status (which is basically defined by national policies and international rules), humanitarian actors contribute to depoliticize the current border regime when they uncritically reproduce states categories and filtering processes. Other scholars emphasized humanitarian organizations’ role in contributing to counter bordering processes by supporting migrants, by claiming for their rights, by acting as watchdogs of states and by claiming for more openness. Particularly, recent literature argued that humanitarianism of grassroots groups is able to politicize the EU border and migration regime and to challenge both the mainstream humanitarianism and the neoliberal governance of migration. While the literature mainly described mainstream humanitarianism as complicit of governments and migration control, this book tries to go deeper in the understanding of the concrete forms and limits of its attempts to challenge and transform the current status quo towards a more egalitarian order.

Humanitarian third sector organizations (TSOs), regardless of their involvement in the institutional migration control system, were able to cooperate and intervene to defend migrant rights and to counterbalance the restrictive turns identified in this study. These organizations used their position on the ground to (a) concretely supporting migrants, (b) finding solutions for those excluded from reception centers and (c) collecting information useful for different types of advocacy strategies (e.g. outsider, insider, sector coordination). By ensuring potential asylum seekers’ rights and by providing support precisely to those migrants irregularized and excluded from the Italian reception system, TSOs challenged the status quo based on the deterioration and violation of migrant rights. While these rights-based strategies did not promote a radical change and remained within the preexisting legal framework, they did nonetheless contribute to contest the increasingly restrictive climate. Thus, the political dimension of the TSOs’ interventions described below is mainly related to their role of bulwark against the violation of migrants’ rights and the increasingly restrictive policies. During the two restrictive turns identified in this study, the humanitarian TSOs’ political borderwork contributed to an incremental rather than radical change of the status quo in the current border management.

Seeking to move beyond the view of humanitarianism as exclusively complicit with states and migration control, this book argues that the issue at stake, on which further research would be needed, is more concerned with the kind of politics to which humanitarian actors contribute and the forms and the limits of the politicization to which they contribute. The borderwork of the mainstream humanitarian organizations analyzed in this study can be considered as a political-humanitarian borderwork: the line between the two was blurred and the humanitarian intervention was also used to accomplish, and to make possible, the political one. Furthermore, the kind of (de)politicization processes to which these actors contributed can be specified. This book highlights that (a) the mainstream humanitarian organizations, not unlike grassroots groups, have been able to politicize their positioning and actions vis-à-vis the authorities precisely when the latter have further tightened migration policies, and (b) the political borderwork of the mainstream humanitarian organizations has helped to promote an incremental change in the status quo rather than a radical change of the border management system.