No abstract

The gradual empowerment of the Libyan Coast Guard through EU training and funding has introduced them as a new actor in the Central Mediterranean amongst other civil and military actors intervening to prevent loss of life at sea. This article examines the contested recognition of the authority of the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Tripoli over the newly formalized Libyan Search and Rescue Region. It argues that the recognition of the Libyan coordination authority made by the International Maritime Organisation, has changed the way the international waters separating Libya and Europe are governed. Through the close analysis of three ethnographic vignettes depicting instances of rescue of migrants by an NGO vessel, this article illustrates how the Italian authorities are able to exercise control over this vast area indirectly via the formalization of the Libyan authority and concomitantly imped the operations of civil rescue NGO boats in the zone. This formalization enables Italian authorities (and their EU counterparts) to establish a form of indirect governance in this liminal border zone that clashes with other preceding legal orders which regulate distress cases at sea, i.e. international maritime law.

Accountability has become elusive in the context of migration control, especially at the external borders of the EU. In the Central Mediterranean, a regime of cooperative interdiction has developed since 2017 whereby migrants fleeing the North African shores by boat are intercepted and forcibly returned to Libya, without ever entering European jurisdiction. This article scrutinises practices of strategic litigation by Italian lawyers who have sought to destabilise this regime of externalised control, which emerged after the 2017 Libya–Italy Memorandum of Understanding. It outlines the difficulties of litigation seeking to challenge deterrence measures and shows the variety of actions lawyers have had to come up with to address Europe and Italy's role in this system. The analysis of this litigation sheds light on the dynamic shape that both sovereignty and migration control take on in transnational contexts of governance, and how legal scales become blurred across local, national, and international jurisdictions. I argue that accountability for migration control is rendered elusive by the fact that Europe's external maritime border is governed via scalar elasticity. In practice, this is a form of governance that takes place across a multiplicity of legal scales, whilst authoritatively referring to statist scalar visions

No abstract

A bord de sa chaloupe, un pêcheur installé en Libye assistemédusé aux refoulements d’exilé.e.s par les garde-côteslibyens. Une pratique devenue monnaie courante aux larges descôtes libyennes, qui découle de l’externalisation du contrôlemigratoire par l’Europe, au mépris du droit d’asile.