“Frontera Sur.” The manufacture of the EU southern border in the African continent
From the city of Tangier, it is possible to see the coast of the Spanish city of Tarifa, connected by ferry with daily services, which is why Moroccans call it Bab Europa, i.e., “the gateway to Europe.” In the opposite direction, through the two promontories once known as the “Pillars of Hercules,” the Strait is the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, crossed every year by thousands of ships. The short distance between Tangier and the Spanish coastline makes it possible to organize the border crossing through sea almost without the aid of smugglers.
With Spain’s adhesion to Schengen agreements, the area around the Strait of Gibraltar is constituted as a frontier of the European Union (EU), and the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, a legacy of the Spanish colonial past, are transformed into a piece of Schengen space on the African continent. This geopolitical paradox constitutes the only terrestrial border of the European Union on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
Due to these specific peculiarities, the northern territory of Morocco has always been a crossing point, since Morocco was a main country of emigration. It still attracts many undocumented migrants from central-west Africa and has become one of the favorite partners to cooperate with in the control of EU external borders.
The context of the European southern border is a paradigmatic site to observe how regional policies produced in the frame of cross-border development contribute to the rearrangement of the borderzone into a space designed to stratify and regulate mobility. EU’s external borders increasingly influence the territorialization of strategic political and economic processes on the outskirts of Europe. The policies devised for their control are not only designed to limit access to European territory by all “undesirable” people, but also to obtain economic advantages through international cooperation. Conditional aid for development is negotiated in exchange for commitment to migration control, but also generates profit for European firms contracted for development projects, through the externalization of production, low cost workers, special zones and favorable investments. As Vacchiano observes, “International transportation, delocalization of production, transit of people and commodities are examples of the productive relation between circulation and border in the area”1.
The externalization of border control practices — from the embassies in migrants’ countries of origin, to the cooperation and readmission agreements with transit countries — has led to a concentration of migrants in the EU’s neighboring countries. Morocco has become, like other countries on the southern Mediterranean shore, a forced staging point for migrants traveling towards Europe.
This paper focuses on the movement of sub-Saharan irregular migrants and, more precisely, on the spaces through which they organize their cross-border mobility. These spaces are spread around each crossing point along the transit routes, in border areas, but also far away from them, in the cities of the transit countries and along other difficult crossing points, even within the Schengen area as control strategies follow migrant movement. The border regime is, in fact, one outcome of this movement, whose practices drive the implementation of means for its control and articulation, as well as borders itself to materialize. Migrant practices of self-organization and of the spaces that support them trigger the process of border transformation.
I draw on a fieldwork conducted between March and November 2015. The research was nourished by the interaction with different environments, from the world of activism, more compromised in aid practices and sided with the community in transit, to the academic world, particularly through meetings with Spanish and Moroccan researchers. I contacted some associations and social service workers, who provided data and analysis on the evolution of the phenomena they monitored over the long term. The research also takes into account the relationship with the institutions, which completed the picture with information that could not come from the academic world, nor from that of activism, nor from the sub-Saharan community, comparing the narrative between the different levels, with respect to different subjects, roles, positions, and powers.
I began my journey from the border city of Tangier, where, thanks to the No Border group, a network of European activists, I contacted the first sub-Saharanian migrants. The No Border group also pointed out the occupation of Boukhalef, in the outskirts of the city, as an interesting context with respect to my research interests. Some people I made friends with invited me to some of the occupied flats in the neighborhood. The verbal interaction took place mainly in the form of an informal interview, apart from some people with whom a relationship of trust about my research work and its objectives had developed, and with whom I was able to schedule structured interviews. With some others, I simply seized the opportunities to get in touch and start conversations unintentionally, which however revealed elements or points of view important for my work. The research was enriched mainly by this type of conversation, activated through the sharing of daily activities. Spending most of my time with the sub-Saharan community of Tangier, I gained the contacts that allowed me, in the second part of my fieldwork, to visit two small settlements in the woods of the border area: the so-called petit fôret of Cassiago, near Ceuta, and Bolingo, on the outskirts of Nador, at the border with Melilla.
During the months of my stay in Melilla, I visited Bolingo several times and supported the inhabitants on behalf of the No Border network, bringing them food, clothes collected in Melilla, medications and construction materials for the bunkers after the eviction raids. My research, thus, compares urban informal settlements with camps in the forests close to the fences surrounding the two Spanish enclaves. This comparison between the different types of settlement conveys the different strategies of border crossing, from the sea crossings with small rubber boats called “pateras,” made possible by the short extension of the strait that connects Tangier with the yearned European shore, to the “assault” of the fences surrounding the enclaves by people living in camps in the mountains.
Informal settlements of transit migrants in Morocco
According to unofficial surveys of migrant support organizations, approximately 30,000 sub-Saharan migrants passed through Morocco on their way to Europe in 2015. The majority of these undocumented migrants, who cannot access the country through a border checkpoint or an airport, entered Moroccan territory “illegally,” crossing the border with Algeria or Mauritania. Those who cross the Algerian border know that, near the border city of Oujda, there are other migrants who can offer information and advices on how to continue the journey to Tanger or the Spanish enclaves. After crossing the border, migrants proceed to “la Fac,” an informal settlement close to the Mohamed First University in Oujda, which hosts a fluctuating population of about 200 sub-Saharan migrants. Those who come from south, crossing the border with Mauritania, pass through the country along the Atlantic coast, from Laâyoune to Agadir, towards Casablanca and Rabat, in the direction of the EU border area.
Usually, those who want to jump the fence surrounding the enclaves hide in the settlements in the forest, while those who cannot approach the fence or are afraid of failing, or those who can no longer put up with conditions in the forest, head towards Tangier to try to cross the Strait of Gibraltar with a patera. Thus, the migrant population along the Mediterranean coast of Morocco is constantly changing and in continuous circulation among those places: Some leave to cross the border, new people arrive, others move elsewhere in the hope of increasing their possibility of success. Tarrius defines these spaces as “circulatory territories,” constructed through a common history of migration, through social ties that support mobility.2
In Tangier, everyone builds their own life environment into the urban space according to their possibilities. Those who can afford to pay rents live in crumbling apartments in the Medina, abandoned when the middle class moved to modern suburbs. Alternatively, they share rooms with compatriots or apartments in the neighborhoods of Hama Chouck or Mesnana. Those who cannot afford rent dwell in informal settlements, such as the camps in the forest close to Cap Spartel, where boats to Europe are organized, or in the squat of Boukhalef. This suburb of Tangier hosts a huge housing complex that was originally built for industrial workers but remained empty. Here, sub-Saharan migrants initially stayed unnoticed and then negotiated their presence, some eventually paying regular rents for their apartments. For some years, Boukhalef was one of the Tangier neighborhoods with the highest number of sub-Saharan migrant residents (approximately between 800 and 2000), originally from countries of central and west Africa.
The living conditions of the sub-Saharan community within the neighborhood, despite the seriality of the flats, are quite variable, according to different settlement strategy and needs. Younger males usually opt for group cohabitation: From ten to twenty people share an apartment of 60 square meters, prepare common meals in the small kitchen and eat together in the living room, which at night turns into a collective dormitory. If, on the one hand, they live in conditions of overcrowding and very little privacy, on the other, large groups prevent eviction and allow its members to leave and return periodically.
Some others occupy an apartment in groups of two or three and have greater intimacy but, due to the impossibility of defending their common spaces at night, they are forced to concentrate the space for cooking, eating and sleeping, as well as all their belongings in one room. However, such small-scale occupations negotiate their presence and to obtain peaceful relations with the Moroccan neighbors. Some owners, usually investors who live abroad, allow the occupants to stay, as long as there are only a few, to ensure that their property is preserved from damage.
Anyway, not all sub-Saharan living in Boukhalef are occupants; some rent apartments regularly, because they have decided to settle in Tangier. They choose the neighborhood for reasons of proximity to their community of origin, but also because it is easier to find owners willing to rent to black people at a reasonable price. Even the apartments for rent accommodate more people than expected: In each room often live a couple or a family, separated by curtains. Compared to the occupants, they are in a less precarious condition, as they are not subject to eviction and have water and electricity, but they still live in a marginal situation. The rhetoric of transit relegates the sub-Saharans to the impossibility of integration into Moroccan society. There are no housing policies — or any other kind — for sub-Saharan people in Morocco, because their stay in the country is considered and managed as a temporary side effect of border control policies.
In the border areas with the Spanish enclaves, sub-Saharan migrants settle in ephemeral camps hidden in the woods close to the border and merely functional to the attempt of crossing the fences. There are mainly two types of camps: the petit fôret and the grand fôret. The so-called grand fôret is a type of camp hidden in the high-altitude forests, with an average population of 700–800 people that, in some periods, hosted up to 2000 people. The camp close to the enclave of Ceuta is located in the Jbel Moussa forest, while the camp near Melilla is situated on the slopes of Mount Gourougou, after which the camp is named. Both settlements are far from the nearest Moroccan town, which is a one-hour walk away. This makes it extremely difficult to get food and water and to access basic services. The petit fôret settlements were created when some of the people living in the grand fôret decided to escape the difficult living conditions and rigid system of rules and hierarchies needed for survival. They moved to a lower altitude, in smaller woods, next to Moroccan villages and closer to the border area. These camps benefit from easier and faster access to the market and communications, but also to the border, and usually host between 50 and 200 people.
The settlements in the forests are formed by groups of shelters called “bunkers,” built by migrants themselves, upon arrival in the camp. Shelters are usually built with a reed structure, covered with some blankets against the cold and a layer of plastic sheets to protect from the rain. Although this technique is common, bunkers differ according to the materials available, the number of people and the location. Each bunker assumes a specific character as a result of both practical constraints and also aesthetic criteria. In addition to the bunkers that provide private spaces to migrants, in each camp there are also common services and other spaces that have different functions, such as communal meeting places. In these collective spaces the migrants organize “joint attacks” on the fences, choosing the most appropriate timing and elaborating strategies to confront control authorities.
In the most numerous settlements, groups are organized to prepare meals, making common money and using what they can find. In general, food is obtained from vegetable scraps at the market, where, asking for charity money, they also buy some flour, rice, milk, tea, biscuits, or second-rate meat. The water is collected once a day with bins, heading in a column to the public fountains of the nearest Moroccan villages. The tasks are divided according to the skills of each person, trying to share their resources as much as possible. The community is not without internal conflicts, but a sense of mutual solidarity always prevails, allowing those in difficulty to survive with the help of others.
Couples and people with children generally set up a separate cooking spot near their bunker but, while not sharing food, they join others to pass the time, especially in the evening. In many cases, the stay in the forest extends beyond the expected time, causing frustration and uncertainty, so spending time with other members of your community is essential for mutual encouragement, to get distracted and fill the void of waiting. Evenings are spent chatting, drinking, listening to music, singing and dancing together.
Living in camps in the forest is very tiring and sometimes risky, but it is cheaper than living in the city, where it is difficult to afford rent, especially without a job. For this reason, some people, especially young males, settle in the forests, while others prefer to live in the city and reach the forest only when they decide to try to cross.
Dwelling in informal settlements is a strategic choice for migrants, as migration plans often change according to the circumstances. The journey is shaped by contingencies, continuous adaptations to new opportunities or obstacles and rapid changes in the program. Migrants have difficult choices to make as they proceed with their journey, and they are often forced to stop, even for long periods, to gather the necessary resources to continue. Sometimes they go back to previous stages of the journey, far from the border, where they can work to save some money, or rest and seek treatment after a violent police raid. Self-organized spaces are an essential reference point for newcomers, but they are also fundamental for those who, due to different contingencies, found themselves stuck in a transit country for a long time. Alessandra Sciurba describes those spaces as “informal zones of concentration,” without physical barriers, official recognition and control, but generated as a direct effect of the interaction between border control policies and strategies of mobility.3 Here, migrants rest after a stage of the journey, develop a strategy to cross the border, and gather resources to put it into action, before setting off again.
Informal zones of concentration as gray spaces
Informal zones of concentration can be conceived as the result of different strategic reasons: on the one hand, migrants’ autonomous tactics and, on the other, national authorities’ techniques of border control. As the latter try to hinder, select and channel migratory flows, according to multiple aims and interests, migrants developed strategies to negotiate with these border control practices.
Despite their lack of visibility and official recognition, authorities are aware of the existence of these settlements and sometimes tolerate their presence while other times they exploit them. Informality indeed allows the institutions not to be responsible for the migrants in transit, but to identify and pursue a control over them. Those zones can be considered “gray spaces,” which are neither integrated, nor eliminated, but that exist partially out of the sight of the authorities.4 As argued by Yiftachel, “In the urban policy sphere, these spaces are usually tolerated quietly, often even encouraged, while being encaged within discourses of ‘contamination’, ‘criminality’ and ‘public danger’ to the desired ‘order of things’”.5 The discourse that frames these places fluctuates between the rhetoric of transit, that justifies the absence of public policies aimed at sub-Saharan present on Moroccan territory, and the one of irregularity, fully embraced by Morocco with the cooperation agreements, which criminalizes the migrants.
The Moroccan authorities put on displays of force for their EU partners through direct action on migrants’ space. In the Northern Morocco borderzone, camps are violently evacuated and demolished, and the areas where they were located are constantly patrolled to prevent people from coming back. When not completely cleared, informal zones are “besieged” through restrictions on access to resources and entry/exit points, making it harder to survive there. The inhabitants of the camps undergo continuous raids by Moroccan authorities, called boumbla, with the purpose of keeping them under pressure. The same happens in the zones of border cities with a high presence of migrants, which are periodically subject to searches for illegal immigrants to be sent back, far from the border areas with the EU. Some testimonies report an increase in police raids and clearance of informal settlements during visits and summits of political authorities in border areas when, through the increased media coverage of the issue, Morocco can show its commitment to border security and management of migratory flows, thus strengthening its position in the partnership.6 In some moments of instability between governments, there were many successful attempts at border crossing, due to lack of police coordination between the two sides. This shows how Moroccan police control is fundamental to prevent the entry of migrants into the Spanish territory, and to the process of EU border securitization. The Moroccan authorities monitor the migrant population on their territory, not only to block crossings, but to wear down the people in the forests and to make them give up. Mass clearance of all informal settlements periodically happens in the border area, with the subsequent deportation of migrants to the border with Algeria and to the cities of southern Morocco. The emergence of persistent informalities is handled “not through correcting and equalizing policy, but through by a range of delegitimizing and criminalizing discourses”.7
After being searched or cleared, camps arise again, fragmenting into smaller settlements that can be less visible. Settlement in hidden places is the spatial component of a more general strategy of “imperceptibility” and dis-identification.8 Migrants also take on different personal identities as a condition of control change. These strategies of self-invisibilisation are part of a vicious circle whereby the more border control intensifies, the more migrants (and smugglers) find new strategies to bypass them.9 Migrants, being in constant fear of being detained, arrested and deported, act mainly in the informal sphere. This is especially true for some categories with uncertain legal status, as undocumented transit migrants who try to leave as quickly as possible, those who came with the intention of passing but ended up stranded, and those who have voluntarily chosen a place as their final destination but are not yet able to formalize their presence.
Migrants develop strategies to deal with the constraints imposed by the toughening of control devices, which slow down their movements or force them to choose more dangerous directions. The impossibility of assaulting the enclaves’ fences, and the continuous violence suffered in the camps, push some migrants to the city of Tangiers and to trying to cross the strait in patera, while others simply disperse. Those who remain in the forest organize collectively to cross the border by sea. Some try to enter the enclaves by circumventing the fence by boat, and others organize so-called “grand convoi,” i.e., bigger motorboats provided by smugglers, to reach the Spanish coasts.
Despite the tightening of control and increased risks, migrants do no give up their struggle to continue the journey. Their strategies evolve continuously to overcome every single new obstacle and led not only control policies but also physical devices to change. After watching their tactics several times, the Spanish Government has decided to strategically transform the enclaves’ border fences. At first, for example, migrants used to climb the fence with their bare hands but, to prevent this possibility, the fences were coated with a thinner metal mesh with holes too small for human fingers to hang on to. Sub-Saharans then created metal hooks, to be inserted between the fingers and put nails in the soles of their shoes, to hold on to the fence more firmly. Migrants reveal a stunning creativity into their struggles to overcome obstacles, which, in turn, leads border infrastructure to evolve to hinder their movements.
Migrants’ networks and the territory of transit
Migrants are not mere victims subjected to border control, but, through trans-local networks, they create channels of mobility that defy such control and allow for mutual support along the way. These networks are both formal and informal and unfold in the territory of so-called “transit countries,” inside and outside Europe. “They overlap, intersect and become stratified, offering extremely favorable conditions to those [migrants] who arrive, leave, pass or stay” .10 Besides structuring migratory flows, this variable and stratified network orients the path of the single migrant according to the obstacles and opportunities presented on the way, hence shaping a plan that has a clear intentionality (in this case, getting to Europe) but that remains indeterminate in time, modality and outcomes. Migratory routes are not the direct paths that bring a migrant straight from a starting point to a destination, but are rather structured as broken lines connecting spaces where migrants stop along their journey, usually close to a crossing point, being it a geographical border or not.
These spaces work as hubs of self-organized networks that sustain transit migrants during their movement. Migrants’ networks facilitate contacts, orientation to the urban space, and create a living environment that supports the practice of border crossing. However, they also work as communities that provide vital support and encouragement, and give comfort when an attempt to cross fails, when experiencing discriminatory treatments, or when someone needs advice. They develop a real feeling of belonging, based on mutual support and solidarity.
Sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco live grouped into national communities, facilitating the inclusion of newcomers. The presence of compatriots is often an important aspect that pushes new persons to leave their country, to join a group and try to cross the border. In cities, every community has a reference person, usually someone who has been there for a long time, who knows the place and who has contacts with the local community. These deeply respected people are consulted for resolving conflicts and for contacting a “chairman” who helps migrants to buy a boat.
A similar organization structures life in the camps in the forest close to the Spanish enclaves. Each community has its own representatives that interface with those of other communities in order to manage life in the forest and organize joint attacks on the border fences. Migrant networks are imperceptible or barely visible, but structure a sizable collective practice, extremely disruptive to global bordering dynamics. At a trans-local level, they create a new form of territoriality, which is transversal to the borders of the nation state and which extend beyond and across its territory. Moreover, at a micro level, these spaces create local life environments where the practices and strategies of border crossing are moulded. “The geography of routes towards Europe […] is shaped by these nodes that determine them, being their cause and effect at the same time”.11
Petti, discussing his experience of the border between Israel and Palestine, shows how it serves to differentiate and stratify the right to move of different categories of individuals.12
The border machine is an interactive architecture. It changes according to the nationality of the person who crosses. […] It is constructed and deconstructed depending on the relationship that the individual has with the state […] So many times I have heard that the real problem is not knowing what the rules are […] then I discovered that this void is a form of government.13
However, he also emphasises how crossing the voids of the forms of government and the “cracks and loopholes of the system” opens up a space for new alternative imaginaries. 14
The autonomous space plays a key role in the struggles of transit migrants, emancipating them both from the criminalization narrative endorsed by authorities and from the victimization logic of the humanitarian discourse that relegates them in a limbo of exceptionality, allowing dynamics of self-determination. It produces alternative spaces to the territorialized state-centric space to which the understanding of citizenship is usually bounded. As Sassen argues, strategic movements of forced migrants across borders and in and out of displacement camps signal an emergent, informal re-bordering along lines of complex support and livelihood networks rather than traditional lines of national territorial sovereignty.15 Thus, we can see in this movement the territory of transit, a new form of territorial arrangement, “an emergent, informal bordering of a space that cuts across national territories and elides sovereign authority”.16