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Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea

Author

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  • ÄŠetta Mainwaring

    (University of Glasgow, UK)

  • Daniela DeBono

Abstract

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rescued over 110,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2015 and 2017. From 2017, EU member states and agencies increasingly criminalized these organizations, accusing them of ‘colluding with smugglers’ and acting as a pull factor. In this climate, as Italy, Malta and the EU increased cooperation with Libya to stop people from taking to the seas, many suspended their operations. This article explores the search and rescue efforts of NGOs in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2014 and 2018. We examine the criminalization of this NGO activity and argue that it is made possible through an oscillating neo-colonial imagination of the sea as mare nostrum and mare nullius , our sea and nobody’s sea, respectively. We build on the work of other scholars who have pointed to the activation of the Mediterranean as ‘empty’ in response to migration flows, erasing the historical connections of colonialism, empire, trade, and exchange in the Mediterranean as well as the contemporary legal geographies that govern the space. Here, we go further to develop the idea of a neo-colonial sea, which is alternately imagined as empty and ‘European’. We explore how NGOs disrupt these depictions, as well as the disappearing figures of the migrant and refugee amidst the contestations between NGOs and states.

Suggested Citation

  • ÄŠetta Mainwaring & Daniela DeBono, 2021. "Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(5), pages 1030-1048, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:39:y:2021:i:5:p:1030-1048
    DOI: 10.1177/2399654420979314
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Christiane Fröhlich & Polly Pallister-Wilkins, 2017. "Humanitarian Rescue/Sovereign Capture and the Policing of Possible Responses to Violent Borders," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 8, pages 19-24, February.
    2. repec:bla:glopol:v:8:y:2017:i:s1:p:19-24 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Violeta Moreno†Lax, 2018. "The EU Humanitarian Border and the Securitization of Human Rights: The ‘Rescue†Through†Interdiction/Rescue†Without†Protection’ Paradigm," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 119-140, January.
    4. Ida Danewid, 2017. "White innocence in the Black Mediterranean: hospitality and the erasure of history," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(7), pages 1674-1689, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. Giacomo Manetti & Carmela Nitti & Marco Bellucci, 2022. "The accountability of Search and Rescue NGOs," Working Papers - Business wp2022_02.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.

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