B/ordering turbulence beyond Europe: Expert knowledge in the management of human mobility

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the ways in which assumptions about who “migrants” and “expats” are and how long an individual or a community needs to remain “migrant” are shaped by a series of important institutions and technical practices. The chapter focuses on the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), created in 1993 to coordinate discussion and elaboration of migration categories (as irregular, trafficked, refugee and asylum seeker, and legal, both permanent and temporary) and new spatial imaginaries to guide migration and border management institutions. In addition, ICMPD’s development of its mapping tool—I-Map—has been particularly important in reshaping contemporary geographical spatial imaginaries of the European border and the resulting externalization of the border/migration/asylum apparatus. We focus on I-Map’s effect on the Euro-Mediterranean (primarily the states bordering the Mediterranean Sea and neighboring states to the South) and on the EU initiative called the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EUROMED).