Mobility control in ungovernable spaces: Cultivating the Mediterranean’s fatal materiality

Programmes of migration regulation in the Mediterranean Sea constantly evolve and adapt, changing in accordance to shifting migration patterns and EU policies. Despite the commitment to governing mobility in this sea, migrant death continues to be a significant and indeed growing problem in the Mediterranean. While scholars have examined how the geography of the US-Mexico border is incorporated into an architecture of exclusion (Doty, 2011), this article considers how the sea conceals the violent political workings of a maritime geography that grows increasingly risky for migrants. By bringing the sea to the fore, the article interrogates how the space of the maritime has come to be understood as ungovernable and perilous and what the implications of such framings are in contemporary migration management. The article specifically examines how the maritime geography was framed in early maritime law as unruly and untameable, as well as the way the sea was used to justify the deaths of African captives in insurance law during the Middle Passage. These contexts demonstrate the longer standing logics in contemporary maritime migration management, whereby the assumed fatal materiality of the maritime is used to obscure political violence.