Interrogating the Mediterranean ‘Migration Crisis’

Abstract

This Forum aims to uncover the socio-politics of the ‘migration crisis’ in the Mediterranean. The contributions explore the idea of the ‘migration crisis’ or ‘refugee crisis’ in the Mediterranean from the starting point that as scholars of the Mediterranean we can do two things: one, we can look at the way crisis introduces processes of bordering to our analysis, limiting our gaze and analytical curiosity to a specific space and a specific time; or two, we can take these limits as an opportunity to explore the wider socio-politics, geographies and economies that contribute to producing this so-called ‘crisis’ and in turn what socio-politics, geographies and economies are produced and their implications.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks must go to Ilias Papagiannopoulos-Miaoulis for his expert assistance and members of the European Crisis Observatory, Athens for their support.

Notes

1. I use the term ‘life-seeker’ to move beyond the dichotomy and politics of the distinctions between migrant and refugee.

2. I am thankful to the contributors to the November 2015 event co-hosted by Médecins Sans Frontières’ Operational Centre Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam on ‘People on the Move’ for the thoughtful and critical discussions around such issues.

3. This Forum itself in some ways reproduces the Mediterranean as a European space as all the contributors come from European academic institutions.