Shorouk Express
The power to say “who shall live and who shall die”. This is how Cameroonian historian and political scientist Achille Mbembe defines “necropolitics”. The term, which Mbembe was the first to explore in depth, is now used to describe, among other things, the actions of governments at war, or migration policies, particularly in Europe. For the Cameroonian thinker, this “right to kill” with which states endow themselves represents “the ultimate expression of sovereignty”.
Since the concept rarely reaches the mainstream media, I was surprised to see it used by the Spanish magazine El Salto to describe Spain’s migration policy.
“The [Spanish] state’s migration necropolitics have cost the lives of 1,538 girls and boys and 421 women”, says the magazine, drawing on the figures and terminology of the migrant rights group Caminando Fronteras. Spain is at the heart of an ongoing migratory drama which, to relative indifference, has seen the deaths of thousands trying to reach its borders.
“The 10,457 people killed [in 2024] on the route to Spain represents a 58 percent increase in deaths on the same route in 2023”, explains El Salto, again using figures from Caminando Fronteras. “Most of these victims are once again concentrated on the Canary Route, where 9,757 people have died”. According to the migrant rights group, this makes it the deadliest migration route in the world.
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They come from Mauritania, Morocco, Gambia or Senegal. Depending on their point of departure, they embark on a journey that can take from one to several weeks, sometimes crossing thousands of kilometres of high seas to reach the Canary Islands. According to Caminando Fronteras, in 2024 one person died on this route every 45 minutes, as the Canary Islands daily La Provincia reports.
Once they arrive, the migrants find overwhelmed reception centres and personnel. While Spain’s Socialist government is breaking new ground by adopting measures to regularise hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants and proposing the distribution of migrant minors among Spain’s autonomous communities, the fact remains that, for the time being, the situation appears to be getting out of hand.
In 2024, 63,970 people arrived in Spain illegally, including 46,843 via the Canary Islands. With a view to curbing arrivals from West Africa, Spain signed cooperation agreements with Gambia and Mauritania in August 2024 that aimed at combating people smugglers, encouraging regular arrivals and curbing departures. The agreements are reminiscent of the partnership signed between the EU and Mauritania at the beginning of last year.
The tragedy is such that it has found its way into the pages of non-European media. For the left-wing American magazine Jacobin, journalist Eoghan Gilmartin provides a harrowing account of the situation. Supported by the testimonies of migrants, he recounts the journey from the African coast, deaths at sea, and the impossible task of counting the missing. As Gilmartin explains: “The phenomenon of mass death at Spain’s borders cannot simply be understood as a series of isolated tragedies. Those who have lost their lives are victims of Fortress Europe’s brutal border regime, which, in the name of disincentivizing travel by migrants and refugees from the Global South, forces them to expose themselves to ever greater mortal dangers.”
For Gilmartin, the increase in departures towards the Canaries proves “the limited effectiveness of such containment policies — which, while condemning so many to suffering and death, only fraudulently claim to address the deeper reasons why people would risk such a journey”. Necropolitics.
In an article published in the Spanish daily El País, socialist Anna Terrón i Cusí argues for a better understanding of the phenomenon of migration, in particular the underlying mechanisms and its real consequences. “Within the EU, we can look at how employment-related visas have continued to increase. In 2022, EU member states issued 1.6 million new employment-related residence permits.”
“Opening up to the outside world would make it possible to go beyond purely transactional agreements with countries of origin and transit”, she continues, proposing an understanding of migration as a springboard for European foreign policy. “Understanding and taking into account the reality of different local, regional and international migratory dynamics would make it possible to include them as another element of European development strategy. It is only by recognising the structural nature of migration and its role as an element in the geo-economy that we will be able to make progress in its governance.”
Sertan Sanderson in Deutsche Welle also recommends a change in perspective. Sanderson argues that few of the mainstream narratives dominating politics today “examine the nature of migration where it begins, rarely taking the perspectives of people wishing to leave their homes into account, and how much they truly leave behind”. Interviewed by Sanderson, activist Hardi Yakubu of Africans Rising discusses this blind spot, which “has made migrants one of the most disenfranchised and misunderstood groups in the world”.
At the risk of repeating myself over the course of these press reviews, it should be remembered that such a change of perspective is certainly not the route taken by a large number of European Member States, nor by the EU itself. The preferred path is that of “radical migration ideas”, a euphemism coined by Giovanni Legorano in Foreign Policy. Here, the journalist provides an essential account of European externalisation and repatriation policies, as well as the obstacles they currently encounter and will likely encounter in the future.
There is an urgent need, however, to move beyond the usual debates on the (necro)politics of Fortress Europe and the repressive approach. The fallback solutions calling for improved reception infrastructure are themselves imperfect and require a measured discussion of their feasibility and coherence. Even the most charitable mainstream discourse on migration, which sees it as a solution to problems associated with an aging population and labour shortages, is not immune to criticism. For while the intentions may seem honourable – and often they are – they nevertheless reflect a certain transactional vision of migration, with the place of migrants in Europe, and their freedom of movement, dependent on their ability to meet the needs of potential host countries. Treating migrants as a mere resource is hardly reflective of a “humane” migration policy.
