Paolo Gaibazzi – författare

This volume traces the African ramifications of Europe’s southern border. While the Mediterranean Sea has become the main stage for the current play and tragedy between European borders and African migrants, Europe’s southern border has also been “offshored” to Africa, mainly through cooperation agreements with countries of transit and origin. By bringing into conversation case studies from different countries and disciplines, this volume seeks to open a window on the backstage of this externalization of borders. It casts light on the sites – from consulates to open seas and deserts – in which Europe’s southern border is made and unmade as an African reality, yielding what the editors call "EurAfrican borders." It further describes the multiple actors – state agents, migrants, smugglers, activists, etc. – that variously imagine, construct, cross or contest these borders, and situates their encounters within the history of uneven exchanges between Africa and Europe.

This volume traces the African ramifications of Europe’s southern border. While the Mediterranean Sea has become the main stage for the current play and tragedy between European borders and African migrants, Europe’s southern border has also been “offshored” to Africa, mainly through cooperation agreements with countries of transit and origin. By bringing into conversation case studies from different countries and disciplines, this volume seeks to open a window on the backstage of this externalization of borders. It casts light on the sites – from consulates to open seas and deserts – in which Europe’s southern border is made and unmade as an African reality, yielding what the editors call "EurAfrican borders." It further describes the multiple actors – state agents, migrants, smugglers, activists, etc. – that variously imagine, construct, cross or contest these borders, and situates their encounters within the history of uneven exchanges between Africa and Europe.  

This volume traces the African ramifications of Europe’s southern border. While the Mediterranean Sea has become the main stage for the current play and tragedy between European borders and African migrants, Europe’s southern border has also been “offshored” to Africa, mainly through cooperation agreements with countries of transit and origin. By bringing into conversation case studies from different countries and disciplines, this volume seeks to open a window on the backstage of this externalization of borders. It casts light on the sites – from consulates to open seas and deserts – in which Europe’s southern border is made and unmade as an African reality, yielding what the editors call "EurAfrican borders." It further describes the multiple actors – state agents, migrants, smugglers, activists, etc. – that variously imagine, construct, cross or contest these borders, and situates their encounters within the history of uneven exchanges between Africa and Europe.

Whereas most studies of migration focus on movement, this book examines the experience of staying put. It looks at young men living in a Soninke-speaking village in Gambia who, although eager to travel abroad for money and experience, settle as farmers, heads of families, businessmen, civic activists, or, alternatively, as unemployed, demoted youth. Those who stay do so not only because of financial and legal limitations, but also because of pressures to maintain family and social bases in the Gambia valley. ‘Stayers’ thus enable migrants to migrate, while ensuring the activities and values attached to rural life are passed on to the future generations.