Gendering the care/control nexus of the humanitarian border: Women’s bodies and gendered control of mobility in a EUropean borderland

Abstract

Building upon and contributing to a feminist geography of borders, the chosen methodological approach examines women’s bodily experiences at a Southern EUropean border, the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Drawing on three months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article scrutinises the care interactions unfolding in a Centre for Immigrants between medical humanitarians and women residing there in their position as both migrants and patients. The analysis foregrounds the gendered forms of domination that the care function of the humanitarian border entails. I argue that medical humanitarians are vested with the power to decide over women’s mobility in the name of care on the basis of an entanglement of administrative and medical procedures in this border context. While women are subject to greater humanitarian intervention due to the association of their embodied states with vulnerability, the biopolitical migration management of the border grants medical humanitarians a decision-making authority. The article uncovers how medical humanitarianism, enmeshed in the border regime, yields gendered constraints from practices of immobilisation to imposed practices of mothering. It traces the rationale for these practices to racialised and gendered processes of othering that usher in perceptions of undeservingness and sustain a humanitarian claim for biopolitical responsibility over these women’s mobility.

Tracing Colonial Maternalism Within the Gendered Morals of Humanitarianism: Experiences of Migrant Women at the Moroccan-Spanish Border

“…These workers were women in their overwhelming majority. Elsewhere Sahraoui refers to the healthcare professionals working in this setting as medical humanitarians (Sahraoui, 2020b). Here, we are particularly attentive to humanitarians' own gender and their gendered roles, given that the role of "humanitarian actresses" at the border has been little researched so far through the lens of gender.…”

“…The central role humanitarianism plays at the border results however from the functional interdependence of the care and control nexus: "care functions as a technology of border enforcement as it is contingently provisioned in ways that pull the sick and injured into the enforcement regimes in new ways" (Williams, 2015, 17). As analyzed by Sahraoui (2020b) and Tyszler (2020), the logic of care and control at the border brings about gendered constraints for racialized migrant women. Here, we further unpack the genealogies of the moral ideas that sustain these practices of discipline and control of migrant women's lives.…”

“…As briefly reviewed above, a growing literature explores the many dimensions of humanitarianism and a critical strand of the literature has engaged with its colonial genealogies. While the study of the gendered implications of humanitarian intervention toward migrants and refugees remains limited (Phillips, 2009;Sahraoui, 2020a;Sahraoui, 2020b;Tyszler, 2019b;Tyszler, 2020), building on these previous studies we seek to further trace the moral ideas that shape humanitarian care toward racialized migrant women. In this regard we see maternalism as a cornerstone of women's humanitarian engagement across time and we identify continuities between colonial maternalism and contemporary forms of humanitarian care.…”

“…In the accommodation Center in Melilla, while medical humanitarians ensured access to primary healthcare and organized perinatal and maternal care for pregnant women, they were also involved in managing women's mobility (Sahraoui, 2020b). With mobility framed as a risk for pregnant women, medical personnel at the Center could delay a transfer to the peninsula by several months.…”

“…The experiences of migrant women at the Moroccan-Spanish borderland have been relatively little researched (Laacher, 2010;Freedman, 2012;Tyszler, 2018;Tyszler, 2019a;Tyszler, 2019b;Tyszler, 2020;Sahraoui, 2020a;Sahraoui, 2020b), the dominant figure of the migrant at these increasingly militarized borders being mostly depicted under the traits of the single Black man. However, a plurality of people try to pass through, other than those from Central and West Africa, including Moroccans, Algerians, Syrians or even Indians, Bangladeshis or Yemenis depending on the period.…”