The biopolitical warfare on migrants: EU Naval Force and NATO operations of migration government in the Mediterranean

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with the recent transformations of the military-humanitarian technology for managing migration in the Mediterranean Sea, focusing on two naval operations, i.e. the European Union Operation Sophia deployed in the central Mediterranean and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) operation in the Aegean Sea, both deployed between 2015 and 2016 and still underway. Building on archival research on both missions and interviews with officials of Operation Sophia, we propose the notion of ‘biopolitical warfare’ to discuss these military-humanitarian interventions in the field of migration. These operations, we argue, stage a move to the offensive in the military-humanitarian government of migration by enlisting warfare against the logistics of migrant journeys. We then situate this argument within both the activist and the International Relations (IR) discourses on migration in the Mediterranean context: we differentiate the framework of ‘warfare’ from the ‘war on migrants’ argument deployed since the 1990s as part of activist discourse; we discuss the migration and warfare nexus in relation to the deployment of ‘migrants as a human bomb’ which has characterized the international relations discourse in Mediterranean countries since the early 2000s, including the recent Turkish–Greek context that led to the NATO intervention. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the targets and operations of the EU and NATO interventions and mobilizes the concept of ‘hybrid war’ to discuss how military and humanitarian techniques and rationales work when deployed as instruments of migration containment.

KEYWORDS:

• migration crisis
• refugee crisis
• military humanitarianism
• EUNAVFOR MED
• Operation Sophia
• NATO
• biopolitics
• warfare
• Mediterranean Sea

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Killian McCormack and Emily Gilbert for the invitation to be included in this special issue, for helping us strengthen our argument, and for their editorial wisdom. We also thank them, the anonymous reviewers, and Special Issue editor Harriet Gray for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It is important to underline that ‘rescue’ is mandated by international and maritime regulations to any seafarer finding itself in the presence of a boat in distress.

2. We interviewed the Italian Coast Guard in July 2015 at their headquarters in Rome, and the Greek Coast Guard on the island of Lesvos in April 2016.

3. We interviewed activists working at Pozzallo, Augusta, and Catania (Sicily) in the winter of 2016, and in Lesvos and Athens (Greece) at different moments in the summer of 2016.

4. On Mare Nostrum, see: Carrera and Den Hertog (2015); Garelli et al. (forthcoming); Tazzioli (2015); Cuttitta (2014).

5. Source: http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2016/03/11/fabrice-leggeri-directeur-de-frontex-la-turquie-ne-doit-plus-etre-l-autoroute-pour-l-europe_4881160_3214.html

6. Source: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/docs/2_hotspots_en.pdf

7. Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-nato-idUSKCN0VY0M7

8. For example, from the policy of the Schengen visa, to the policies of border externalization, to the EU border patrol missions.

9. For example, from eviction from migrant transient spaces to abuses in government-run facilities for processing and detaining migrants.

10. It is important to underline that the use of human shields is a war crime.

11. See, for instance, the Italy–Libya Friendship Agreement signed in 2008.

12. http://www.faustobiloslavo.eu/scrivono/182.pdf

13. http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/e-ora-tripoli-minaccia-litalia-tsunami-migranti-1190603.html

14. Source: http://pamelageller.com/2015/09/the-islamic-state-had-warned-europe-they-would-send-500000-migrants-as-weapon.html/

15. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/12151701/Turkey-threatens-to-open-the-gates-and-send-refugees-to-Europe.html;http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2016/02/11/Erdogan-threatens-to-send-refugees-outside-Turkey.html

16. Interview with EUNAVFOR MED officer at EUNAVOFR Headquarters in Centocelle (Rome), December 2015.

17. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2015/564355/EPRS_ATA(2015)564355_EN.pdf

18. http://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-interview-terrorists-migrants-eu-russia-putin-borders-schengen/

19. According to Credendino, the operation has been successful in ‘providing a deterrence effect in international waters, preventing smugglers from operating in international waters (Credendino 2016).<Q10/>

20. This is what emerges from the interviews we conducted with EUNAVFOR officers at EUNAVFOR Headquarters at the airport of Centocelle in Rome (January 2016 and July 2016) who stressed smugglers’ change in strategy due to the presence of EUNAVFOR vessels in front of Libyan coasts. The argument has been highlighted also by Rear Admiral Enrico Credendino, as stated in the leaked report on Operation Sophia: ‘Wooden boats are more valuable than rubber dinghies because they can carry more people … However, following operation Sophia entering into Phase 2A (high seas) smugglers can no longer recover smuggling vessels on the high seas, effectively rendering them a less economic option for the smuggling business and thereby hampering it’ (Credendino 2016, 9).

21. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_128746.htm?selectedLocale=en