Journalist, formerly Cairo-based, now RLS North Africa. Working on Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, border regimes, migration, arms trade, genocide, urban development/destruction
Tunis/London
After "anti-communism", "the war on drugs" & "the war on terror'", "combating irregular migration" has, since 2015, turned into the new smokescreen for supplying elites in the South with policing equipment, surveillance tec & training
The most effective playbook to follow by Southern elites―from Rabat to Amman & from Dhaka to Baku―to supply their police with modern equipment & maintain their uncontested grip on power, is to tap into the ever-rising “border management” funds set up by EUrope 3/
Border management's key feature―police cooperation―not only aims at surveilling, preventing & containing migration movements, but also keeping southern regimes & elites aligned & enable them to control their populations
The collapse of Europe’s colonial empires gradually morphed into a neocolonial arrangement, in which population control, public order & resource extraction were to be maintained through the policing support for southern regimes by the former masters 2/
EU-funded border regimes: Linchpin (& Achilles’ heel) of a neocolonial order
How “border management” has turned into a dogma, providing its advocates with a powerful leitmotif to rally political & corporate support in sustaining this order
The large-scale extractivism of resources & people from Asia & Africa during the colonial era has not ended but rather transformed. To maintain this order, the notion of "border management" is being mainstreamed across the globe 1/
This publication now provides for an edited & shortened version of the original text to facilitate access to this valuable data in English for the 1st time, reconstruct the context in which the #ICMPD was established & trace its development over its 1st decade
How #ICMPD manages migration "for the benefit of European states": On the early history of the ICMPD (1993-2004) by Fabian Georgi, featuring an epilogue by Sofian Philip Naceur. Via Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung 4/
https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/54037/expanding-the-european-border-regime
One of the distinguished features of this study is that it draws on written sources that are no longer publicly accessible, as well as 7 interviews with #ICMPD employees, including the organisation’s founding director, Jonas Widgren
To gain a deeper understanding of the activities, role and importance of the ICMPD today and to comprehend why the organisation grew so much since 2016, it is crucial to look at how the organisation emerged and developed in its early years 3/ https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/54037/expanding-the-european-border-regime
Given the expected further growth of ICMPD’s impact on European, African & Asian border regimes, it is even more important to better comprehend what the organisation stands for & to which extent it has sustained the spirit of its early years
Georgi’s research & the empirical data he was able to collect in the 2000s offer a unique insight into ICMPD’s ideological foundation, the motivations in creating it & its conception of migration as a ‘phenomenon’ to be ‘managed’, filtered & harnessed 2/
#ICMPD has expanded significantly, but there is still surprisingly little literature on the organisation. To address this gap, we are now providing an English translation of an old but very insightful academic source written by Fabian Georgi
Since 2016, ICMPD has played an important role in integrating states in the Balkans into the EUropean border regime, but also Tunisia or Lebanon as Well as Asia, from Eastern Europe via Central Asia to Pakistan, India & Bangladesh 1/ https://www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/54037/expanding-the-european-border-regime
Die EU-Migrationspolitik setzt auf Außengrenzschutz und schnellere Verfahren. Umgesetzt wird sie auch vom ICMPD in Wien, das diese Woche eine Konferenz veranstaltet hat. Die Arbeit der Organisation stößt aber auch auf Kritik
