• The Way to the Italian Hotspots. The Space of the Sea Between Reception and Containment

    Hotspots are punctiform manifestations of the EU border that can be better understood as components of the broader Mediterranean migration and border regime. Most of the people landing in an EU hotspot have long journeys behind them, during which they have met other, delocalized manifestations of the EU border, embodied by a variety of state and non-state actors. Here I will focus on the last leg of these journeys, the sea crossing, and, more specifically, on the sea crossing to Italy. Indeed, the sea and the hotspots have something in common which marks a difference between them and the other spaces of the delocalized EU border regime.

    http://societyandspace.org/2016/11/15/the-way-to-the-italian-hotspots-the-space-of-the-sea-between-recept
    #hotspots #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Italie #frontières #Cuttitta

    • Governing Mobility Through the European Union’s ‘Hotspot’ Centres, a Forum

      In May 2015, the European Commission issued its “Agenda on Migration” in response to what was already an urgent humanitarian situation in the Mediterranean. The Agenda was primarily concerned with the full implementation of the Dublin III Agreement in Italy and Greece, who were accused of letting migrants move on to central Europe without fingerprinting or receiving asylum claims. Italy and Greece, suffering from austerity budgets enforced by the EU, asked for “burden sharing” between southern Europe and its fellow members to the north. The solution was a relocation program prioritising relocation of Syrian, Eritrean and Somali asylum-seekers from Italy and Greece to other EU countries, but providing relocation places has been voluntary and meeting the target has been painfully slow. To shore up Italy and Greece’s enforcement of Dublin, the Agenda on Migration proposed a “hotspot approach” to registering people, processing asylum claims, and performing deportations. The hotspot approach was eerily reminiscient to past practices of detention, forced fingerprinting, and slow asylum processing times. While the idea of streamlined, expedited asylum processing has haunted European Union migration policy documents for some time, ‘hotspots’ were ill-defined FRONTEX-coordinated processing centres for arriving asylum-seekers until 2015. Approaching one year into hotspots’ implementation, researchers and journalists have provided important insights into what, where, and why the EU hotspot experiment seeks to manage migration.

      http://i0.wp.com/societyandspace.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Hotspot-Moria-July-2016.jpg?w=1125
      http://societyandspace.org/2016/11/08/governing-mobility-through-the-european-unions-hotspot-centres-a-fo

      Plein de contributions intéressantes sur #hotspot dans ce forum/blog:
      Forum Contributions

      Flags Flying up a Trial Mast: Reflections on the Hotspot Mechanism in Mytilene
      Joe Painter, Anna Papoutsi, Evie Papada and Antonis Vradis

      Beyond Detention: Spatial Strategies of Dispersal and Channels of Forced Transfer
      Glenda Garelli and Martina Tazzioli

      The Way to the Italian Hotspots: The Space of the Sea Between Reception and Containment
      Paolo Cuttitta

      “Giving Form to Chaos”: The Futility of EU Border Management at Moria Hotspot in Lesvos
      Barak Kalir and Katerina Rozakou

      Identify, Label and Divide: The Accelerated Temporality of Control and Temporal Borders in the Hotspots
      Martina Tazzioli

      Counting Heads and Channelling Bodies: The Hotspot Centre Vial in Chios, Greece
      Melina Antonakaki, Bernd Kasparek, and Georgios Maniatis

      Migrants at the Uneasy Borderland of Greece: Routes, Transit Points, and Troubling Categories at and from the Uneven Geographies of the “Hotspot” Regime Governing Greece (forthcoming)
      Aila Spathopoulou

      Hotspots and the Politics of Humanitarian Control and Care (forthcoming)
      Polly Pallister-Wilkins
      cc @reka