Bio/Necropolitical Capture and Evasion on Africa-Europe Migrant Journeys

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2236720
AutoresÖzgün E Topak (0000-0002-1571-0940, York University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen18
Número4
Fecha de publicación2024-09-30
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Political Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ips/olae039
OpenAlexW4403478318
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas41

This paper draws on fieldwork interviews with migrants who fled their home countries (Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan) and irregularly traveled through Sudan, Sahara, Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea, eventually reaching Europe. It demonstrates how, throughout their journeys, migrants were targeted by various armed groups (particularly non-state) for purposes including recruitment, extortion, ransom, immobilization, torture, slavery, sexual violence, and how they evaded capture. Building on and contributing to literatures on bio/necropolitics, migration/borders, and surveillance, the paper advances the categories of bio/necropolitical capture and evasion. The paper emphasizes the key role of non-state actors in acts of capture, and race and racialized microbio/necropolitical practices (torture, spectacle, discipline, and surveillance) as key categories of capture. The paper also shows effects of capture for migrants and how migrants engage in acts of evasion (which include not only bodily acts of running away or hiding, but various forms of communicational, mental, spiritual, and psychological tactics) as expressions of agency. Focusing on migrants' long journeys to Europe, the paper provides a more holistic view of the migration experience and highlights persisting patterns of capture and evasion despite changing actors and locations. The paper demonstrates how Europe's borders externalize inside the African continent through delegated and opportunistic actors (such as the Libyan Coast Guard and various other militia/trafficking/mafia groups), and reproduce racism at both the macrolevel (maintaining global racist borders) and the microlevel (through racialized practices

Agency (philosophy) · Border Security · Criminology · Extortion · Guard (computer science) · Human rights · Humiliation · Political science · Politics · Pretext · Shame · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Torture · Gender Studies · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Sex work and related issues