Borders, Migration Governance & the Mediterranean

Ruben Andersson, Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe — University of California Press (2014)[link]

·       Ethnography of the 'migration industry' showing how security markets profit from illegalization.

Nicholas De Genova (ed.), The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering — Duke University Press (2017)[link]

·       Anthology situating the Mediterranean as a constitutive site where Europe is made via racialized exclusion.

Nicholas De Genova, “Spectacles of Migrant ‘Illegality’: The Scene of Exclusion, the Obscene of Inclusion” — Ethnic and Racial Studies 36(7):1180–1198 (2013)[link]

·       Shows how the theater of deterrence coexists with inclusion through cheapened labor—key bridge to labor regimes.

Martina Tazzioli, The Making of Migration: The Biopolitics of Mobility at Europe’s Borders — SAGE (2019/2020)[link]

·       Analyzes how migrants are governed as moving subjects; multiplies border zones (sea, hotspots, camps).

Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor — Duke University Press (2013)[link]

·       Conceptual toolkit for studying borders as devices tied to capitalist logistics and labor extraction.

Forensic Oceanography (Heller & Pezzani), Death by Rescue: The Lethal Effects of the EU’s Policies of Non-Assistance at Sea — Report (2016)[link]

·       Forensic reconstruction of at-sea deaths during policy shifts; empirical basis for arguing state non-assistance as necropolitical technique.

Forensic Oceanography, The Left-to-Die Boat — Investigation & Report (2011)[link]

·       Evidence of deliberate non-rescue in 2011; anchors the claim that lethality can be produced by design.

Polly Pallister‑Wilkins, Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives — Verso (2022)[link]

·       Interrogates how 'saving lives' can reproduce unequal mobility and launder coercive borderwork.

Hein de Haas, “The Myth of Invasion: The inconvenient realities of African migration to Europe” — Third World Quarterly 29(7):1305–1322 (2008)[link]

·       Data-driven counterpoint to ‘flood’ narratives; situates Maghreb as a migration transition space.

Hein de Haas, Morocco: Migration Profile / Transition Country analyses — Migration Institute & Migration Policy Institute profiles (2014+)[link]

·       Empirical grounding on Morocco’s role in regional migration systems and remittances.

EU–Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding on Migration (2023) + updates — Primary policy/press & analysis[link]

·       Key instrument for EU externalization southward (funding, readmissions, interdiction) with contested human-rights impacts; track disbursements and conditionality.

Amnesty International, Libya’s Dark Web of Collusion: Abuses against Europe‑bound Refugees and Migrants — Report (2017)[link]

·       Documents EU/Italy support to Libya despite systematic abuses—anchors arguments about outsourcing and complicity.

Capitalism, Imperialism & Genocide: Tying the Big Frame

David Harvey, The New Imperialism — Oxford University Press (2003)[link]

·       Introduces 'accumulation by dispossession'—macro‑mechanism linking border regimes, war economies, and capital expansion.

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism — Monthly Review Press (2000 edition; orig. 1950)[link]

·       Seminal argument that colonial violence boomerangs into fascism; genocide as immanent to colonial‑capitalist modernity.

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition — UNC Press, 3rd ed. (2021)[link]

·       Racial capitalism thesis—migration governance and genocidal logics structured by racial orders rather than market neutrality.

Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native” — Journal of Genocide Research 8(4):387–409 (2006)[link]

·       Crystallizes the eliminatory logic of settler projects—key for genocide arguments and reading border fortification as ongoing dispossession.

Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities — Harvard/Belknap (2020)[link]

·       Reframes mass political violence as a function of modern nation‑state formation; offers a political horizon for decolonization.

Eyal Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza — Verso (2011/2012)[link]

·       Shows how 'lesser‑evil' calculations normalize violent governance—useful to interpret SAR retrenchment and outsourcing.

Jasbir K. Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability — Duke University Press (2017)[link]

·       Concept of debility clarifies how states manage populations by producing injury short of death—bridging biopolitics and necropolitics in border zones.

Sayak Valencia, Gore Capitalism — Semiotext(e)/MIT Press (English trans. 2018)[link]

·       Connects necropower, narcopower and hyper‑consumption; useful for para‑state violence markets around Maghreb routes.

Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy — Belknap/Harvard University Press (2014)[link]

·       Maps systemic 'expulsions' as a late‑capitalist logic driving displacement and precarious mobility.