Drone and Border Surveillance: Necro-Racial Effects in the Mediterranean
Publisher website
Author: Ozgun E. Topak
The European Union (EU) authorities use drones and other border surveillance systems to track migrant boats departing from the Libyan coasts heading towards European territories. They share this data with Libyan authorities who then return migrants back to Libya. There, various armed groups subject migrants to extortion, torture, (sexual) abuse, enslavement and death in confinement spaces. This paper argues that EU border drones have become an integral part of the EU's border surveillance apparatus, enabling vertical and remote surveillance at vast Mediterranean borderzones. The paper demonstrates that drone and border surveillance contribute to denying human rights and subjectivity for migrants, producing necro-racial effects. Furthermore, the paper discusses the agency of targeted migrants, demonstrating how they fight to reclaim their subjectivity and human rights and oppose fixed negative identifications imposed by Europe's digital racial borders. Empirically, it draws on a critical examination of secondary material and first-hand fieldwork interviews with black African migrants (Greater Horn of Africa) targeted by European drone and border surveillance in the Mediterranean. The paper focuses on the underexamined topic of border drone surveillance as part of an expanding border surveillance apparatus, advances the category of necro-racial effects and emphasizes the persistence of migrant agency and subjectivity.