Humanitarian border
Reprise. Anti-human trafficking discourses and security practices at the southern Italian border
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7153199 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacopo Anderlini (0000-0002-3872-0877, University of Parma, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 468-485 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning C Politics and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2399-6544 • E-ISSN: 2399-6552 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/23996544241259576 |
| OpenAlex | W4399644119 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 72 |
The article analyses the friction between anti-human trafficking discourse and border practices in the context of EU migration management: the narrative of protecting migrants from human traffickers, evoked by law enforcement actors, merges with a discourse criminalizing migration, discerning between the migrant as a passive victim – the asylum seeker –the “economic migrant” and the ruthless smuggler. Practices and procedures at the border aim primarily at classifying migrants within these categories, in fact identifying potentially dangerous subjects for the country of arrival. The case study is the Southern European border in Sicily, and the operations enacted by law enforcement actors and EU agencies within the hotspot facilities. Moving from the ethnographic fieldwork I conducted on this context since 2016, witnessing disembarkations and border procedures and getting access to the hotspot structures of Lampedusa and Pozzallo in 2021, the article analyses the transformation of the border apparatus and of contemporary governance of mobility. What delineates is a revival of the humanitarian border, where anti-human trafficking discourses are evoked to legitimize exclusionary border procedures and practices
Border Security · Business · Corporate governance · Criminology · Enforcement · Ethnography · Ethnology · Geography · Human rights · Human security · Human trafficking · Irregular migration · Law enforcement · Narrative · Political science · Refugee · Sociology · Anthropology · Law · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
Trafficking
Casualties of Care
Policy Implementation, Street-level Bureaucracy, and the Importance of Discretion
Humanitarian Rescue/Sovereign Capture and the Policing of Possible Responses to Violent Borders
EU border security and migration into the European Union
Discourse Studies
Ethnography in/of the World System
Frontiers of Fear
Europe's Border Crisis
Multi-Sited Ethnography
Constructing the Field
Revisiting the Law and Governance of Trafficking, Forced Labor and Modern Slavery
The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime
The Politics of Insecurity
Analysing Discourse
Ethnographic Methods
The hole , the corridor and the landings
Criminalizing solidarity
From controlling mobilities to control over women’s bodies
Under Control? Or Border (as) Conflict
De‐naturalising transit migration. Theory and methods of an ethnographic regime analysis
The EU Asylum, Immigration and Border Control Regimes
Policing Migration in the Mediterranean
Crisis, Routine, Consolidation
Dealing with Law in Migration Control
Engendering Security at the Borders of Europe
Unpacking the Schengen Visa Regime. A Study on Bureaucrats and Discretion in an Italian Consulate
For ethnography
Towards critical geographies of anti-human trafficking
The Securitization of Migration in Western Societies
State Responses and Migrant Experiences with Human Smuggling
The Humanitarian War Against Migrant Smugglers at Sea
The communication of policy meanings
Fitful circulations
International Response to Trafficking in Migrants and the Safeguarding of Migrant Rights
Beyond street‐level bureaucracy
Back to the Sicilian Landing Sites
Managing Migration
The Humanitarian Politics of European Border Policing
Refugees, migrants, neither, both
Contextualising immigration policy implementation in Europe
Europe's failed ‘fight’ against irregular migration
Off-shoring and Out-sourcing the Borders of EUrope
Street-level democracy
Securitization and Risk at the EU Border
The Perverse Politics of Four-Letter Words
Security and Immigration
The (in)securitization practices of the three universes of EU border control
Manufacturing Smugglers
The enforcement archipelago
Trafficking borders
The safety/security nexus and the humanitarianisation of border enforcement
Air Power as Police Power
Europe as Borderland
Nongovernmental Politics
The Political Uses of Expert Knowledge
Researching migration and enforcement in obscured places
Speechless Emissaries
Ethnography
Necropolitics
Tandem ethnography
Constructing truths in a culture of disbelief
Immobilizing mobility
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |