Mare nero? Undoing the decolonial redux, multiplying (post)colonial legacies and struggles

Abstract

Critique concerning Migration Studies’ Eurocentrism and its oblivion of race and colonialism has gained traction, prompting considerable soul-searching in the field as well as calls to decolonise Migration Studies specifically and conceptions of migration more generally. In this article, we emphasise that it is indeed of central importance to overcome the disjuncture between the study of contemporary migration and postcolonial formations, histories, and legacies by taking seriously the latter for understanding the former. Clearly, colonial histories shape our understanding of contemporary migrations and colonial legacies are inscribed in the unequal and racialised governing of populations today. Still, we caution against what we call a decolonial redux in analyses of (Mediterranean) migration and (EUropean) border enforcement, thus the production of linear and straightforward narratives that over-emphasize colonial continuities without sufficiently acknowledging the divergences and shifting rationales underlying contemporary processes of subjection and subjectivation around migration. We argue that overshadowing ambiguities and tensions in the making and governing of migration curtails possibilities to articulate a critique of, and resistance to, border regimes and the violence they enact.