{"id":23200,"date":"2020-10-07T23:35:29","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T23:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/?p=23200"},"modified":"2020-11-27T13:43:07","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T13:43:07","slug":"the-mediterranean-an-open-continuum-of-encounters-and-fault-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/the-mediterranean-an-open-continuum-of-encounters-and-fault-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mediterranean: an open continuum of encounters and fault lines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Twenty-five years after the Barcelona process, has the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership delivered on its promises? Scholarly consensus prevails that the EU\u2019s attempt to create a Euro-Mediterranean partnership has had mixed results [1]<\/a>1 \u2014 Luiza, Bialasiewicz, Paolo Giaccaria, Alun Jones, Claudio Minca (2013). \u201cRe-Scaling \u2018EU\u2019 Rope: EU Macro-Regional Fantasies in the Mediterranean.\u201d European Urban and Regional Studies 20 (1): 59\u201276.\n<\/span><\/span>. In the light of complex geopolitical, historical and cultural dimensions, states and societies have diverged rather than converged around the EU\u2019s proposed norms and policies in areas such as governance, security and migration management [2]<\/a>2 \u2014 \nMichael Collyer (2016). \u201cGeopolitics as a Migration Governance Strategy: European Union Bilateral Relations with Southern Mediterranean Countries.\u201d Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (4): 606\u2012624.\nDimitris Bouris & Dimitris Papadimitriou (2020) The EU and Contested Statehood in its Near Abroad: Europeanisation, Actorness and State-building, Geopolitics, 25:2, 273-293, DOI: 10.1080\/14650045.2019.1643162.\nChristina Boswell (2003). The external dimension of EU immigration and asylum policy. International Affairs, 79 (3), 619\u2013638.\nLarbi Sadiki (2004). The search for Arab democracy. Discourses and Counter-Discourses. New York: Columbia University Press.\n\n<\/span><\/span>. The EU\u2019s attempt to diffuse scripts and narratives of democracy and democratization has been criticized for branding a \u201cone size fits all approach\u201d [3]<\/a>3 \u2014 \nFederica Bicchi, (2006). \u201cOur Size Fits All\u2019: Normative Power Europe and the Mediterranean\u201d. Journal of European Public Policy 13 (2): 286\u2012303.\nAndrea Teti (2012), \u201cThe EU’s First Response to the \u2018Arab Spring\u2019: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity\u201d, Mediterranean Politics 17\/3.\n\n<\/span><\/span>. Turning points such as the 9\/11 watershed, the so-called Arab Spring and the 2015 \u201crefugee challenge\u201d have moreover contributed to the proliferation of policies and partnerships that have securitized conceptions and imaginings of the \u201cMediterranean\u201d [4]<\/a>4 \u2014 \nBialasiewicz\u00a0et al. (2013). \u201cRe-Scaling \u2018EU\u2019 Rope: EU Macro Regional Fantasies in the Mediterranean\u201d. European Urban and Regional Studies 20 (1): 59\u201276.\nTamirace Fakhoury, (2016). \u201cSecuritising Migration: The European Union in the Context of the Post-2011 Arab Upheavals\u201d. The International Spectator 51 (4): 67\u201379.\n\n<\/span><\/span>. With the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring, the EU adopted an initially enthusiastic rhetoric in 2011\/2012, hinting that governance could evolve into a shared and deliberative project across both shores of the Mediterranean. Yet this rhetoric would soon fade away. As the Middle East has been grappling with collapsing social contracts and ill-defined trajectories of state-building, the EU has reverted to its longstanding focus on security and stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Migration management has evolved into a polarizing matter at the heart of Mediterranean spaces. Securitized borderzones, erected razor-wire fences, suspended sea rescue operations and remote control measures have shattered the Mediterranean vision of \u201cthe two shores\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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In this setting, the issue of migration management has evolved into a particularly polarizing and divisive matter at the heart of Mediterranean spaces. Securitized borderzones, erected razor-wire fences, suspended sea rescue operations and remote control measures have shattered the Mediterranean vision of \u201cthe two shores\u201d that authors such as Jacques Berque have once imagined. Scholars have increasingly used phrases and expressions such as \u201crefuge beyond reach\u201d [5]<\/a>5 \u2014 David Scott Fitgerald (2019).\u00a0Refugee Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, Oxford University Press.\n<\/span><\/span>, \u201cgoverning migration through death\u201d[6]<\/a>6 \u2014 Vicky Squire (2017) \u201cGoverning migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial, and the crisis of modern humanism\u201d, European Journal of International Relations, published online. September 2016. Available online.\n<\/span><\/span> and \u201copen arms behind barred doors\u201d [7]<\/a>7 \u2014 Kelly M Greenhill. (2016). \u201cOpen Arms Behind Barred Doors: Fear, Hypocrisy and Policy Schizophrenia in the European Migration Crisis.\u201d European Law Journal 22 (3): 317\u2013332\n<\/span><\/span> to describe the various ways mobility and refugee displacement have been regulated in Mediterranean land- and seascapes. Within this climate, as Judith Tucker writes, the Mediterranean has emerged as \u201c a problematic space [\u2026] \u2014a political, economic, cultural, and psychological barrier, a place of danger, inhumanity, and death\u201d [8]<\/a>8 \u2014 Interview with Judith Tucker, Al Jadiliyya. Available online.\n<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against this backdrop, scholars, policymakers and practitioners have long debated what approaches could reconfigure entrenched asymmetries of power, \u201cdesecuritize\u201d migration deals and partnerships, and bridge understandings and conceptions of governance and democracy [9]<\/a>9 \u2014 \nDaniela Huber and Maria Cristina Paciello. (2020). \u201cContesting \u2018EU as Empire\u2019 from Within? Analyzing European Perceptions on EU Presence and Practices in the Mediterranean,\u201d\u00a0European Foreign Affairs Review 25:109 \u2013 130.\n\n \n\nJudith E. Tucker (ed.) (2019). The Making of the Modern Mediterranean: Views from the South (University of California Press, 2019). Available online.\n\n<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Barcelona Process: twenty-five years later<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

A quarter century after the adoption of the 1995 Barcelona process (also called the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership), this special issue of IDEES takes both an alternative and alternate view of the Mediterranean from both the southern and northern shores as a dynamic space in which socio-political power, norms, and borders are constantly questioned, reconfigured and readapted along an open continuum of entanglements, encounters and fractures. In so doing, it attempts to answer the following questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n