‘Busting the Business Model of Trafficking:’ Eritrean Refugees, EU Migration Policy in Libya and the Politics of Transit

The Department of African & African American Studies welcomes Dr. Fiori Berhane of Brown University, Department of Anthropology

Abstract

Eritreans are the second largest population after Syrians to make
asylum claims in the European Union, yet Eritrean refugees are
invisible in larger narratives around the European Migration
Crisis. Moreover, recent European Union border externalization
deals with Libya and Sudan work to block Eritrean refugees
from reaching European shores. EU officials rationalize these
border externalization schemes as a means to ‘bust the business
model of human smuggling’ and reduce the number of migrants
who die in the Central Mediterranean crossing. In particular, this
talk interrogates how disparate political generations of Eritrean
refugees and exiles engage with the “European Migration
Crisis,” through debates around migrant rescue and detainment
in the Central Mediterranean within larger Italian and EU
discourses. I argue that transit-- as represented by the Libyan
‘humanitarian’ detention complex-- as an analytic and a
particular socio-political space is key for understanding the neocolonial
and racialized violence that undergirds global migration
regimes in this current historical juncture.

THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC