The cycle of migrants’ containment between Libya and Africa: navigating their life among dreams, resilience, and defeats

Antonio M. Morone

Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2024, vol. 18, issue 1, 18-35

Abstract: During the last two decades, cooperation between Italy, the EU and Libya on migration management has been intended to establish a “cycle of containment” aimed at the externalisation and securitisation of the southern European border on Libyan soil. The escalation of the civil war in Libya since 2014 was one of the main reasons for the European attempt to replicate the international policies of containment southwards in Africa and to address them towards countries that were reputed as major producers of migrants, as in the case of the Horn of Africa. By comparing and discussing migrants’ life-stories collected in Tripolitania and Southern Tunisia, this study deconstructs some recurrent representations of migratory dynamics that are usually taken for granted in order to legitimate international policies of containment, and reveals the not-pre-made character of migrants’ journeys, their solidarity strategies, and the networks of (im)mobility mobilised to deal with the traps of containment. The international policies of containment and human mobility are two sides of the same reality that must be (re)connected to the wider regional or country context where this nexus is taking shape. This represents an analytical imperative and a methodological intersection between migration studies and African studies.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17531055.2024.2332828 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjeaxx:v:18:y:2024:i:1:p:18-35

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjea20

DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2024.2332828

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Eastern African Studies is currently edited by Jim Robert Brennan

More articles in Journal of Eastern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().