Where the route ends and the new border begins
Necropolitical governance and migrant resistance in the Canary Islands
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24226269 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mashudu Salifu (0000-0001-9493-4389, Aalborg University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-22 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Community (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369183x.2026.2646983 |
| OpenAlex | W7140030511 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
This article examines the Western Atlantic migration corridor to the Canary Islands, one of Europe’s most perilous yet persistently traversed routes, through the conceptual lens of infrastructures of endurance. Drawing on fieldwork in El Hierro and Tenerife, it employs patchwork ethnography and semi-structured interviews with migrants from West Africa and the Horn of Africa. A distinctive feature is my engagement as a Red Cross volunteer in El Hierro, which provides rare access to humanitarian infrastructures and their moral economies. The study integrates Mbembe's notion of necropolitics with migration-infrastructure theory to theorise infrastructures of endurance as fragile, moral, and material assemblages through which migrants collectively sustain life amid systemic restrictions. Four interconnected dynamics structure the analysis: fragmented journeys, necropolitical exposure at sea, reception as humanitarian deterrence, and solidarities that make endurance possible. Findings show how migrants convert abandonment into provisional architectures of life. The Canary Islands emerge as experimental sites of European border governance where deterrence, hospitality, and resistance collide. Conceptually, the article advances infrastructures of endurance to rethink corridors, survival, solidarity, and mobility justice within Europe’s expanding necropolitical migration regime.
border governance · Canary Islands · El Hierro · Horn of Africa migrants · humanitarian infrastructure · Mbembe · migrant reception · migrant resistance · mobility justice · Moral economy · necropolitics · Red Cross volunteers · Solidarity · Tenerife · West African migrants · Gender and Women's Rights · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
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Contemporary Mobility Decisions of International and Danish Students in Denmark Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic
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After citizenship
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Containment through mobility
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| Highly cited | No |
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