A moving target: locating the Senegalese-Spanish border

ABSTRACT

The fall 2005 Moroccan and Spanish police attacks on unarmed African migrant men left fourteen dead and led Spain and the EU to take various actions to prevent the entrance of future migrants at the Ceuta and Melilla border fences. In 2006, nearly thirty-two thousand migrants arrived at the Canary Islands by boat from departure points in Senegal and Mauritania, almost a seven-fold increase from the year before. These years are pivotal in demonstrating how violence and subsequent bolstering of a border make migrants rethink their point of entry. Contrary to the media attention around the Spanish borderlines, border security has taken place far from them – creating borderspaces in and around the African continent. This paper points to Senegal as the start of the border with Spain/Europe, since the EU has, along with other means, exported police to retain and detain black Africans seeking an irregular method of exit. Two works that memorialized the 2005 tragedies – Me llamo Suleimán and Partir para contar: Un clandestino africano rumbo a Europa – expose the movement of borders and the existence of the Senegalese-Spanish border, leading us to understand how migrants actively negotiate border changes to achieve entry into Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Borderspace
• borderline
• Senegal
• Spain
• migrant

Acknowledgements

My sincerest gratitude to my family for their unconditional love and support, Aziz, Moussa, Astou, Mom, Dad and Sarah, and to Martin, Cristina and Julie for their advice on various drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Frontex is the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, established in 2005.

2 A cinematic and novelistic corpus on Senegalese-Spanish (im)migration includes the films Atlantics (2019), Biutiful (2010), Frontières (2002), La Pirogue (2012), Las cartas de Alou (1990) and novels and novel-testimonies 3052: Persiguiendo un sueño, A las 3:00, Africanos en Madrid, Del sueño y sus pesadillas, Gaal gui/El Cayuco, La tierra prometida: Diario de un emigrante, Me llamo Suleimán, Modou-Modou: El emigrante senegalés, Partir para contar, Ser Modou Modou and The Gurugu Pledge, among others.

3 The original title is, “Dem ak Xabaar” Partir et raconter: Récit d’un clandestin africain en route vers l’Europe (2012).

4 For example, renowned Kenyan writer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, after years of writing in English, decided to publish only in Gikuyu.

5 In keeping with the spirit of challenging a Spanish sovereignty that exists beyond its territorial limits and a goal of cultural production to educate the general Spanish public on issues of immigration, I analyze the novel-testimony’s Spanish translation here.

6 Since the book’s publication, Traoré has given public talks on his migration experience, in schools and elsewhere. He is also the protagonist and narrator of Samba, un nombre borrado (2017), in which he travels back to Senegal with producer Mariano Agudo to illuminate the lives of relatives left behind by the killing of Samba Banjai and fourteen others in the Tragedia del Tarajal on 6 February 2014.

7 Regarding pushbacks, the Spanish court ruled significantly in 2015 that “because there is no clear definition of where the border is located under Spanish law, the return of migrants did not constitute an offense”, defying the idea that Spanish sovereignty stops/starts at the borderline/fences (Soto Bermant 2017, 139).

8 This extra fence has a slanted top and a number of ropes that hang from it to make climbing more challenging.

9 This data refers to all irregular entry into Ceuta and Melilla (including swimming, hiding in automobiles at the border gates and fence crossings). As it is not broken down by nationality, it includes sub-Saharan Africans, Moroccans and people of other nationalities.

10 Publisher Anaya’s website pegs the book for audiences aged fourteen and older.

11 A complex history exists between Spain and the Maghreb, including Morocco, Mauritania and Western Sahara, which has shaped migration and border patrolling. Readers interested in this topic should reference the following works: Alexander (2019), Hernando Larramendi and Planet (2007), and Sampedro Vizcaya (2019).

12 This does not include visa overstays because this type of entry is not irregular.

13 According to Naranjo:

Sin embargo, al año siguiente la situación sí que cambió. Ya en el mes de mayo [de 2005], la presencia del ejército y la Gendarmería marroquí en la franja más al norte del Sáhara Occidental no sólo había conseguido disminuir la llegada de barquillas a Canarias en un 60 por ciento, sino que estaba obligando a los inmigrantes a ir más al sur de El Aaiún, para desde allí esperar la oportunidad de la patera. De hecho, ya desde principios de 2005 comenzaron a llegar a Canarias los primeros cayucos que partían desde Mauritania. (2006, 81)

14 As Cross states,

Repatriation is a misnomer. Senegal’s repatriation agreements with Spain and Mauritania have led to the “return” of west Africans who are not Senegalese, often at the Senegal-Mauritania border town of Rosso on the Senegal River. … Beginning in September 2006, more than 4,600 Senegalese, and people of other nationalities who embarked in Senegal, were repatriated by aeroplane to Saint-Louis by the request of state authorities. (2013, 85).

15 See Andersson (2014) and Vives (2017) for a complete list of actions.

16 Spain’s Ministerio del Interior (2016) cites 196 migrant arrivals in 2010.

17 Both these routes are overwhelmingly traversed by men. Women have not been known to make a successful crossing by climbing the fences but do travel by boat from Morocco or Senegal to Spain.

18 Frontex collectively refers to entry via Ceuta, Melilla or the southern shores of mainland Spain as the Western Mediterranean route.

19 For numbers and further detail, see Cortés Maisonave (2019).

20 This trend continued in 2021. In January, there were 2,077 migrant arrivals in the Canaries, nearly triple the number from the same month in 2020 (720) and 75 percent of the total arrivals in the islands for the year 2019 (Ministerio del Interior 2021b).

21 For an explanation of the Frente Polisario and its relationship with Spain and Morocco, see Sampedro Vizcaya (2019).

22 For example, the case of Senegalese immigrant Mame Mbaye, who died on 15 March 2018 while being chased by Spanish police, even if the government denies this as the cause of death.

23 See Soto Bermant (2017) for a thorough explanation of the safeguarding of Melilla’s border economy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda S. Ndaw

Amanda S. Ndaw is a PhD Candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. She holds a graduate certificate in African Studies. Her research is on borders and migration of West Africans to Europe. She has a special interest in how gender plays a role in migration, particularly the case of migrant women and mothers. She uses contemporary (1990–present) African and European cinema and literature to analyze migrants and borders. Email: [email protected]