Maurice Stierl: A Sea of Struggle

In the Mediterranean Sea, we currently witness struggles over migration on an unprecedented scale: about one million people succeeded to cross maritime borders in 2015 and entered the territories of EUrope, while more than 3.700 people drowned. With already more than 3000 counted deaths in the first half of 2016, this year’s maritime death toll is likely to be the highest on record. In dominant discourses generated by EUrope’s political elites and the mainstream media, human smugglers are portrayed as the root of the problem, even as ‘slave traders of the 21st century’ (Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi), giving rise to novel EUropean deterrence measures framed as both humanitarian and militaristic. In my talk I will provide counter-narratives to this dominant discourse by re-counting some of the experiences made by the so-called WatchTheMed Alarm Phone, of which I am a member. Following the launch of a phone-line for people in distress at sea in October 2014, we have dealt with more than 1.600 emergency situations in maritime borderzones and have facilitated ‘unauthorised’ human mobility while holding border authorities accountable. Besides practical intervention, the Alarm Phone offers alternative imaginaries of what Europe’s sea spaces could become – spaces not of violent (biopolitical) abandonment and mass deaths but those of solidarity and connectivity ‘beyond borders’. 

Maurice Stierl is Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies, Comparative Border Studies, and the African American & African Studies at at University of California Davis. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Warwick and served as an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study at the same university. His research focuses on dissent, migration struggles, and border governance in the context of the European Union. His doctoral work engaged with conceptions of power, resistance, and governance through a multi-site ethnography in different European countries (including Germany, Italy and Greece). He also engages in political networks that support the freedom of movement and struggle against violence in borderlands. He is a member of the activist project WatchTheMed Alarm Phone and the research collectives Kritnet, MobLab, Authority & Political Technologies and a co-editor of Movements and Citizenship Studies.   

[Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum]