Issue 10
—Spring 2020
Migration
Externalisation of EU Border Policies
Abstract
In this radio series, we will be focusing on the externalisation of EU border policies. We discuss implications and everyday consequences for refugees and migrants. Our aim is to bring out the voices of refugees and migrants that have been silenced, oppressed and traumatised around Europe and beyond, to provide a platform for activists who resist the oppression of migrants both inside and outside Europe’s borders, as well as scholars who carry out research in this field. The externalisation of EU border measures is happening around us—rapidly, and in such a way that EU citizens almost don’t realise the implications of the bilateral trade and aid agreements between EU states and third countries. These international relationships – bilateral, trade and aid agreements – require third countries to secure the EU’s borders outside of the EU. This has dramatically increased the dangers for refugees and the amount of migrants’ deaths in Mediterranean waters and across the deserts of Northern Africa. We ask questions such as: Who profits from these politics? How does it affect who is deportable and where? How does it affect zones of bordering? How do we resist these policies and which struggles are already taking place? How can we understand it as a continuation of colonial regimes?
In this programme series, The Bridge Radio will be focusing on the externalisation of EU border policies. We continue discussing the implications, effects and everyday consequences of these policies for refugees and migrants. Our aim is to bring out the voices of refugees and migrants that have been silenced, oppressed and traumatised around Europe and beyond, to provide a platform for activists who resist the oppression of anti-migration both inside and outside Europe’s borders, as well as scholars who carry out research in this field.
We live in a twenty-first-century Europe in which those rendered refugees and migrants—by warfare, economic warfare and climate change—are exploited, criminalised, stigmatised and living in fear of detention and forced deportation.
The externalisation of EU border measures is happening around us—rapidly, and in such a way that EU citizens almost don’t realise the implications of the bilateral trade and aid agreements between EU states and third countries. These international relationships – bilateral, trade and aid agreements – require neighbouring or third countries to secure the EU’s borders outside of the EU states. This has dramatically increased the dangers for refugees and the amount of migrants’ deaths in Mediterranean waters and across the deserts of Northern Africa. In Expanding the Fortress, Mark Akkerman explains the externalisation policy and writes,
This involves agreements with Europe’s neighbouring countries to accept deported persons and to adopt the same policies of border control, improved tracking of people and fortified borders as Europe. In other words, these agreements have turned Europe’s neighbours into Europe’s new border guards. And because they are so far from Europe’s shores and media, the impacts are almost completely invisible to EU citizens.[1]
1 Akkerman, Mark (2018) Expanding the Fortress – the Policies, the profiteers and the people shaped by EU’s border externalisation programme. ↑
He further explains how in this militarisation process the arms and security industry has helped shape European border security policies, and has subsequently reaped the rewards for ever-more border security measures and contracts. In this neo-liberal expansion of border zones, the European military and security industry is the sector that have derived most benefit through delivering equipment and services.
With this programme series, we ask questions such as: Who profits from these politics? How does it affect who is deportable and where? How does it affect zones of bordering? How do we resist these policies and which struggles are already taking place? How can we understand it as a continuation of colonisation regimes?
This radio series tries to disentangle these often hidden policies that are attached to agreements and make the voices of those affected heard. We try to decolonise and educate ourselves, as well as activist groups and civil society. We want to understand how this system works. We will try to generate alternative solutions to this border regime—for freedom of movement and the freedom to stay!
Voices Against Borders
Sound is a vibration. Sound is something intangible. For sound to come there has to be a movement—a force. The voice is a sound coming from a body. Sound moves in waves, sound-waves. Sound can cross walls, ceilings, seas and territories. Sound can cross borders; it is border-crossing. But, there are some walls that are made of strong, sound-proof material that sound cannot pass through, for example prison walls. Radio is a form of communication carried through sound. We make radio. Through radio we can collaborate on making border-crossing sounds.[2]
The Bridge Radio is an independent radio collective that consists of migrants and non-migrants, who produce radio about migration, asylum and people’s movements. While staying critical towards the dominant discourse on asylum and migration, we aim to discuss and inform about developments related to asylum and migration, striving to spread the voices of those who have embodied experiences of migration and the struggle for the freedom of movement.
The Bridge Radio started in 2015 as a protest against the repressive migration regimes across the EU. Today, border and migration issues are visible in public debates, but they are rarely presented from the perspective of those taking the journey or experiencing the asylum process themselves. The Bridge Radio finds it essential to never stay silent about what is happening along the EU’s borders and in places of detention. By raising our voices, change can happen.
https://soundcloud.com/bridgeradio
https://www.facebook.com/TheBridgeRadioDK/?fref=ts
2 Text from collective writing exercise by the Bridge Radio ↑
Externalisation of EU Borders #1 — struggles against deportation
In the first programme we talk about the deportation and detention of migrants and discuss how this is linked to the externalisation of EU borders. You hear an interview with Isaiah, one of the people from the Elbwangen camp (Germany) who has been protesting deportations and the conditions in the camp. We also bring an interview with Ung i Sverige, a group of young Afghans who have been demonstrating against deportation to Afghanistan in Stockholm, Sweden. In the studio we have Susi Merete, who is a lecturer on migration from Aalborg University.
Externalisation of EU borders #2 — interviews with Ibrahim Diallo and Martin Lemberg-Pedersen
This programme features an interview with Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, Assistant Professor at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, about the politics of externalisation of EU borders, its postcolonial connections and who profits from the externalisation. An interview with activist and critical journalist Ibrahim Diallo from Air Info and Saraha FM in Agadez (Niger) explores how he sees the impacts of the EU’s externalisation policies in Agedez and his activism to counteract these policies. We are lucky to have Ali from Lampedusa in Hamburg to translate English/French and add his own comments based on his activist experience.
Externalisation of EU borders #3 — interviews with Reduan and Mark Akkerman
In this third programme, we broadcast an interview with Mark Akkerman, researcher at Stop Wapenhandel. We talk about the companies that profit from the policy of externalisation, how some achieve double gains of the so-called refugee crises and come to establish themselves as experts in the field in the EU.
In the second part of the programme, we talk with Reduan, an activist in Ceuta, one of the Spanish enclaves on the African mainland, bordering Morocco. As part of the externalisation policies of the EU, Morocco has had what is called ‘advanced status partnership’ with Europe since 2001, which provides political advantages in trade and political affairs. The European Union accounts for more than half of Morocco’s trade and the EU provides Morocco with billions of Euros in aid for security and development. The border between Morocco and Spain is one of the most fortified borders of the EU, which has served as a laboratory for the EU’s policies of externalisation, providing inspiration for the EU-Turkey agreement, for example.
Reduan is part of watchthemed—an online mapping platform that monitors the deaths and violations of migrants’ rights at the maritime borders of the EU—and Alarm phone—a hotline for boats in distress, pushing authorities to carry out rescue missions. He also does media work around the situation in the Spanish colonies. We ask him about his work in Ceuta and how he sees the situation there.
Thanks to Daniel Cariola for the translation.
For research by Mark Akkerman, see the report “Expanding the Fortress”, 11 May 2018, available online at https://www.tni.org/en/publication/expanding-the-fortress (Accessed 2019-12-02); and “How the security industry reaps the rewards of E.U. migration control”, 5 June 2018, available online at https://www.tni.org/en/article/how-the-security-industry-reaps-the-rewards-of-eu-migration-control (Accessed 2019-12-02).
Externalisation of EU borders #4 — Stop Killing Us Slowly and the right to have rights
In this last programme of the series, we talk about deportation and detention, specifically focusing on the two deportation camps in Denmark called Kæsrhovedgård and Sjælsmark. We are very happy to be able to interview Professor Dr. Nikita Dhawan, and talk about the postcolonial critique of human rights, selective memory politics, the right to have rights and deportation camps. First you hear an interview with one of the researchers of the report “Stop Killing Us Slowly” Annika Lindberg and Shakira, one of the residents in Sjælsmark, one of the two deportation camps in Denmark.
The occasion for this programme is the launch of a report called “Stop Killing Us Slowly—a research report on the motivational enhancement measures and the criminalization of rejected asylum seekers in Denmark” (2018)—written by researchers and activist who are part of the Copenhagen-based group Freedom of Movements.
Dr. Nikita Dhawan is an Indian academic and Professor of Political Science (Political Theory and Gender Studies) at the University of Innsbruck. From 2009 until 2016 she was Director of the Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies at the University of Frankfurt. Her research areas are Transnational Feminism, Global Justice, Human Rights, Democracy and Decolonisation.