Decentering the Study of Migration Governance in the Mediterranean

Abstract

According to an increasing number of scholars, research on migration in the Mediterranean has been very Eurocentric, pointing at how the EU has externalized its migration policies to its Southern neighbours (El Qadim 2017; Vollmer, Sert, and İçduygu 2015). Despite the growing interest in non-European actors and non-European contexts, these are primarily conceived as targets of EU´s policies rather than agents and loci of governance processes. In particular, the literature has fallen short in shifting the focus out of European conceptualizations of migration and its governance, as if migration was primarily a European problem and not a “historical defining marker of the Mediterranean” (Wolff and Hadj-Abdou 2018, 383). The last decade witnessed a proliferation of critical voices challenging traditional paradigms mainly along the lines of migration, border and security studies or political geography. Yet, these valuable contributions have not been taken up by European studies, nor have they been systematic in addressing, theorizing and implementing a “decentering agenda”. To what extent can a decentered approach improve our understanding of migration governance? In the field of public policy, it ‘highlights the diverse and contingent meanings that inform the actions of the individuals involved in all kinds of practices of rule’ (Bevir 2016, 232). This involves evolving from institutions to meanings produced, to narratives constructed as well as the practices it entails. Applied to the context of international relations, decentring pays attention to actors ́ perceptions and practices that shape the negotiation process (Isleyen 2018; El Qadim 2018). It also normatively engages with deconstructing dominant assumptions in the study of world politics (Bilgin 2017). In their call for a paradigm shift in the study of the European Union’s (EU) international relations, Fisher Onar and Nicolaïdis argue that decentering involves, first, unpacking “the social scientific categories, assumptions and paradigm that underpin Eurocentric truth claims” and then “engaging with the assumptions and worldviews that underpin others’ accounts” (Onar and Nicolaïdis 2013, 286). Drawing on these premises, this panel proposes to advance the definition of a decentering agenda on migration governance in the Mediterranean by illustrating some of the directions in which to move away from centres intended as dominant paradigms. The contributions discuss how the debates on key analytical concepts (Hufty 2011) of migration governance can be challenged and expanded: migration as the issue at stake, the actors involved (and their agency), the interactions (and their temporality), the spaces and places where interactions take place. The panel discusses how interdisciplinarity, ethnography and the practice approach can be used to embrace a methodological decentering, how women´s bodies and border transit areas serve as heterogeneous examples of spatial decentering and how deconstructing otherness, citizenship and security embody different forms of conceptual decentering.

Title	Details
Urban Geopolitics and the Decentring of Migration Diplomacy in EU-Moroccan Affairs	View Paper Details
Decentering Migration Governance Practices: Humanitarian Assistance and Border Control Strategies in the EU Peripheries	View Paper Details