The “Covid excuse”: EUropean border violence in the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

This article examines developments along the central Mediterranean border, following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in EUrope. In response to the pandemic, EU member states enacted emergency legislation, further curtailing movements across borders. Italy and Malta declared their harbours "unsafe" for migrant arrivals, withdrew rescue operations, and installed offshore detention facilities. Though ostensibly enacted in the name of "saving lives", these measures had the opposite effect. The article assesses how border violence has become justified by reference to the pandemic, what we call the "Covid excuse". We highlight how people on the move were subjected to both biopolitical and necropolitical modalities of control through pushbacks, offshore containment and abandonment. Instead of being exceptional, we argue, these measures must be situated in longer continuities of EUropean border violence. We also discuss how people on the move are not only shaped by racialized border violence but enact fugitive practices of resistance.

The Two Emergencies of Migrant-Related Policies in Italy During the First Wave of COVID-19: the Spread of the Virus and the Workforce Shortages

“…While these latter measures are not explicit refoulements, they prevent potential asylum seekers from registering at borders (Meer et al, 2020 ). The pandemic has provided an “excuse” (Stierl and Dadusc, 2022 ) for sharpening repressive logic and practices that disrespect human rights (Spada, 2021 ), for downsizing the action of care within humanitarian spaces and favouring traditional securitarian solutions (Sanò and Firouzi Tabar, 2021 ). In Italy, the focus of our article, this has implied a double emergency for reception, where the practices and procedures of “care,” “cure,” and “control” intertwined and alternated in the context of the pandemic; while, with regard to the EU as a politically and economically integrated unit, the outcome has been a transition from a hostile to an unsafe environment: “Where the former openly declared the manufacture of conditions so adverse as to prompt unwanted individuals to leave, or not even come in the first place, the latter has justified ‘keeping them out’ or ‘containing them elsewhere’ in the name of protecting migrants from the rampant pandemic that has made Europe itself unsafe” (Tazzioli and Stierl, 2021 , 78).…”

From the migration crisis to the COVID‐19 pandemic, (im)possible regularization of migrants in Italy and Spain

“…Exiles who were in the process of applying for asylum or subject to forms of administrative detention were crammed into places where the human right to health could not be guaranteed, such as the ‘quarantine ships’ in Italy 3 (Farahat & Markard, 2020 ; Stierl & Dadusc, 2021 ) or ‘Arguineguín's dock’ (also called ‘camp of shame’) in Spain. 4 One key case was the former camps and the new detention and first reception centres of the Canary Islands (Barbero, 2021 ).…”

A community psychology for migrant justice: Critically examining border violence and resistance during the COVID‐19 syndemic

“…Looking at this syndemic period as a case study it is evident, for instance, how governments have used COVID‐19 as an “excuse” (Stierl & Dadusc, 2021) to further disenfranchise people at the margins of our societies, including people on the move, and curtail their already limited access to resources, opportunities and protections (e.g., Parolin & Lee, 2022).…”