The last frontier: practises of externalization of migration control within Europe and beyond

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes everyday practices of externalization of African migration control beyond and within Europe's geopolitical limits, in sites such as detention centers in Libya, but also in Rome; in dinghies adrift at sea among herds of sophisticated military vessels, but also in machine-readable bodies adrift within European digital data fields. After exploring at length the role of Gaddafi's Libya in the last ten years as a gendarme of Europe, I deploy methodologies not only of International Relations, but also of transnationalism and translocalism to expand the concept of externalization beyond geospatial accounts of borders. Moving through spaces of in/security, and times of panic, this work redefines borders and frontiers in ways that can account for their dialectical nature, and for the dialectical nature of political life practices.