Rights and the Viapolitical in Mediterranean Maritime Migration

In 2016 358,156 migrants arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, while some 4,901 perished during the crossing (IOM 2016). This project explores how human rights discourse and security discourses operate together as a form of governance in the context of maritime mobility. Drawing upon critical legal theory, legal geography and political science, it examines two mobile sites integral to maritime migration in the Mediterranean: the 'clandestine' migrant-bearing
vessel (MBV); and the military-humanitarian vessel (MHV) deployed by governments and agencies such as Frontex (Tazzioli 2016). The MHV and the MBV are examined in two areas of the Mediterranean: the 'Central' and 'Eastern' Mediterranean routes. These locales have been identified as the most travelled routes by migrants coming to Europe (Frontex 2016a, Mann 2016) and are important for the purposes of the project because it is here that we see the largest flow of migrants by sea in the world today (IOM 2016), the most significant deployment of MHVs and the most frequent encounters between MHVs and MBVs. The project asks how rights discourse affects the operation of the MHV, and informs encounters between the MHV and the MBV. It further asks how rights discourse is reshaped through these encounters and through the practices of those peopling MBVs, as well as how these vessels, their routes and their practices destabilise and
reconstruct understandings of rights. Both rights discourse and securitisation are central to both contemporary politics globally and to how MHVs and MBVs operate. As such, this research is key to understanding rights in this rapidly changing context.
Research Questions
1. How do governments and agencies deploying MHVs regulate the conduct of their crew through human rights discourse and policy?
2. How do alternative rights discourses, which may challenge dominant framings, emerge from the movement of MBVs and MHVs, and the encounter between MHVs and MBVs?
3. How can a viapolitical critical legal perspective inform a critique of dominant liberal rights discourse, which takes rights to be neutral, apolitical or merely setting the boundaries for the exercise of political authority (e.g. Donnelly 2013)?
To answer - and operationalise - these RQs, my research will address the following subsidiary research questions (SRQs):
A. How do the crews of MHVs conceptualise rights discourse in practice, and how does rights discourse influence the practices, movements and responses of MHVs?
B. How do those peopling MBVs understand, negotiate and interpret these conceptualisations and practices?
C. How is the subject position of 'migrant' discursively produced through these conceptualisations and practices?
D. How do those peopling MBVs conceptualise rights, and how is this reflected in the routes, communications and practices of MBVs?
To answer both the main and subsidiary questions, this project will utilise three forms of qualitative data collection:
- Critical textual analysis of policy documents, legal texts, cases and reports (providing a response to RQ1)
- Semi-structured Skype, telephone or instant messenger interviews with crew of MHVs from Frontex and other border agencies (answering SRQ A and RQ 2)
- Semi-structured in-person interviews with migrants who have made journeys on, and otherwise interacted with, MBVs: (answering SRQs B-D and further answering RQ 2)