Hidden geographies of the ‘Mediterranean migration crisis’

This article explores the hidden geographies of what has been widely referred to as the ‘Mediterranean migration crisis’ of 2015 and 2016. Specifically, it draws on a large-scale analysis of migratory testimonies from across the central and eastern Mediterranean routes, in order to explore the claims or demands posed to European policy-makers by people on the move. Reflecting on the idea that migration forms a subversive political act that disrupts spatialised inequalities and longer histories of power and violence, the article sets out the argument advanced by scholars of the autonomy of migration approach that migration forms a ‘social movement’ involving subjective acts of escape. It makes the case for a move beyond an abstract account of migration as a social movement, to emphasise the importance of an analysis that unpacks the concrete ways in which multiple ‘nonmovements’ expose the hidden geographies of the so-called ‘crisis’. In so doing, it draws attention to two specific ways in which migration forms a political act. First, the article highlights anti-colonial acts that contest the spatialised inequalities of global migration along with longer-standing historical dynamics of exploitation and dispossession that these implicate. Second, it highlights anti-war acts that reject securitised responses to cross-border migration along with longer-standing spatial and historical dynamics of masculinist violence. While imperceptibility remains a critical dimension of many migratory acts, the article concludes that paying attention to the perceptible claims to justice that subversive political acts of migration involve is crucial in understanding the distinct transformations put into motion by people on the move.