Covid-19 and the Mediterranean Mobility Regime

As Covid-19 emerged globally, the pandemic was seized as an opportunity to experiment with forms of hygienic-sanitary containment and deterrence, often targeting vulnerable mobile populations. While the virus did not “respect” borders, borders multiplied, both on land and at sea. Yet, despite varied attempts, the Mediterranean Sea could not be “locked down” – struggles over human mobility continue.

In April 2020, when it had become all too clear that the world was facing a global Covid-19 outbreak, Arundhati Roy noted: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”

In a commentary Sandro Mezzadra and I wrote at that time, we wondered about the effects of a pandemic on the freedom of movement: “The pandemic shows that a global health crisis cannot be solved through nationalistic measures but only through international solidarity and cooperation – the virus does not respect borders.”

Today, more than three years later, it seems safe to say that we have not moved to a new world. And while the virus indeed failed to respect borders, we have nonetheless witnessed both their multiplication as well as “their acceptability as techniques of governing,” as Claudia Aradau and Martina Tazzioli highlighted.

Already in the first months of the pandemic, we could observe how the United Nations’ hope that the pandemic could be “an opportunity to reimagine human mobility for the benefit of all” evaporated. As succinctly captured by Nandita Sharma, we saw governments respond with paradoxical narratives based on “we are all in this together” but also: “close the borders.”

The Multiplication of Mediterranean Borders

In the Mediterranean, we could quickly see how the pandemic was used as an excuse to strengthen border “protection” efforts, seeking to limit migrant arrivals to Europe. In April 2020, Italy and Malta declared their harbors closed for migrants traveling by boat. Of course, declarations of closure did not prevent departures from northern Africa and so, in light of ongoing movements, we saw different deterrence strategies emerge, or escalate, from forms of abandonment to expulsion and offshore containment.

Besides failing to assist migrant boats in distress, we had to witness how Maltese authorities deployed a (not so) secret fleet to return people on the move to Libya – a practice that proved deadly. We also saw a multiplication of hybrid carceral spaces at the time – both Malta and Italy installed offshore ferries. Malta kept over 400 people at sea for weeks, obstructing their ability to claim asylum.

Retroactively, Malta’s prime minister justified the use of ferries in a letter to Amnesty International as an anti-Covid “quarantine area.” For Amnesty, however, this measure was nothing other than “an unlawful deprivation of liberty.” Italy operated seven ferries in the name of “health surveillance.” Not only people who arrived via the sea were held there but also those who tested positive for the virus in reception centres on land.

Needless to say, the conditions in which the incarcerated were held were appalling. The cramped floating prisons with limited sanitary facilities allowed for no “social distancing.” Often unable to notify the outside world they had survived their sea journey, the families of the incarcerated were left in a cruel state of prolonged uncertainty. Despairing, dozens of people tried to escape by jumping off the ferries – several drowned.

Confine to Protect

What was striking at the time was the little public outcry regarding these mobility measures. Two years before, we had already seen how Italy and Malta had sought to close their harbors in an effort to reduce migrant arrivals. In 2018, resistance had been vocal and social movements across Italy had called for open harbors to welcome new arrivals. This time, not so much.

We wondered with Martina Tazzioli about the reasons for this widespread popular acceptance. On the one hand, given the dire health situation in Europe, migrant boats were ‘successfully’ turned into vehicles of contagion and their passengers into bearers of disease – a well-known racialized trope. Hungary’s prime minister said in March 2020 “We are fighting a two-front war, one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus, there is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement.”

On the other hand, though, we believe that acceptance of these measures was also linked to another narrative that emerged, namely, “confine to protect.” The closures of harbors and the installation of offshore vessels were justified not only to safeguard the health of local populations but also in the name of not endangering the people on the move. Given the rampant spread of the virus, so the argument went, their safety in Europe could not be guaranteed. They needed to be kept elsewhere to be protected from Europe and its unsafe environment.

Trajectories of (Failed) Migrant Deterrence

Looking back at the first years of the pandemic, we can note that while Covid-19 was seized as an opportunity to experiment with forms of hygienic-sanitary containment and deterrence as well as with novel discursive justifications, these experimentations do not amount to a transformation of the Mediterranean mobility regime. While forms of abandonment, expulsion and containment may have escalated, they need to be situated in longer trajectories of migrant deterrence and the multiplication of borders. Pushbacks of migrant boats have become routine in recent years, culminating in shipwrecks such as the one off the Greek coast in June 2023.

Importantly, and despite their violent and even lethal effects, these measures need to be situated in a history of failed attempts to prevent migrant arrivals. Despite declarations of closed harbors and a proliferation of carceral spaces, arrivals via the central Mediterranean Sea more than doubled in 2020, the year when supposedly everything and everyone were “locked down.” In fact, crossings have risen every year from 2019 on, exposing the limits of control.

For better or worse, Arundhati Roy’s prediction has not come to be. When we consider the regulation of global mobilities, we have not shifted away from the past or imagined our world anew. The pandemic has not been a portal between one world and the next. If anything, it has thrown into even sharper relief how the world’s portals – its borders – operate to create deeply unequal possibilities of human movement.

Maurice Stierl leads the research group “The Production of Knowledge on Migration” at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, Osnabrück University. His research focuses on migration struggles in contemporary Europe and (northern) Africa and is broadly situated in the fields of International Political Sociology, Political Geography, and Migration, Citizenship, and Border Studies. His book ‘Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe’ was published by Routledge in 2019.

This blog post is part of our series “Towards a Novel Mobility Regime.”

References:

 -Amnesty International (2020) “Malta: Waves of impunity. Malta’s human rights violations and Europe’s responsibilities in the central Mediterranean.” (accessed 19/08/2023)
-Aradau, Claudia and Tazzioli, Martina (2021) “Covid-19 and rebordering the world”, Radical Philosophy 210, Summer 2021, pp. 3-10.
-France 24 (2020). “Hungary’s Orban blames foreigners, migration for coronavirus spread.” (accessed 19/08/2023).
-Mezzadra, Sandro and Stierl, Maurice (2020) “What happens to freedom of movement during a pandemic?” Open Democracy. 24 March 2020. (accessed 19/08/2023).
-Montagna, Nicola (2023) “Quarantine Ships as Spaces of Bordering: The Securitization of Migration Policy in Italy During the COVID-19 Pandemic”. International Migration Review.
-Roy, Arundhati (2020) “The pandemic is a portal.”Financial Times. 3 April 2020. (accessed 19/08/2023).
-Sharma, Nandita (2020) “The Global COVID-19 Pandemic and the Need to Change Who We Think “We” Are”. Theory & Event 23:4, 19-29.