The Humanitarian Border – A Paradox? : A Conceptual Analysis of Ambiguities and Contradictions in the Border Regime of the European Union

Abstract: People have been migrating across the Mediterranean Sea between Africa and Europe for thousands of years. Since the 1990s, the Mediterranean has often been the only route for people to reach the EU due to the tightening of the EU border regime. As a result of more restrictive EU migration policies and conflicts in African regions and parts of the Middle East, dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean have increased. The violence occurring every day at Europe's external borders against migrants stands in stark contrast to the self-image of democracy, human rights, and liberty that the EU presents to the rest of the world. To unpack this paradox, this thesis seeks to analyse the concept of the humanitarian border by examining the humanitarian entanglements in discourse and practise with the violent border government of the European Union in the Mediterranean Sea. To do so, the socio-political and material dimensions of the humanitarian border are examined with the help of conceptual analysis based on secondary scholarly sources in addition to key EU policy documents. Across the socio-political dimension, the EU and related actors, such as Frontex, use the humanitarian narrative of saving lives to pave the way for military-security operations in the Mediterranean. On the material level, the humanitarian border manifests itself in practices related to Search and Rescue Operations, cooperation between NGOs and police forces in AVRR, and the humanitarian border of NGOs in reception centres. This thesis documents the ambivalent humanitarian engagement with the border regime, which is characterised by forms of resistance at the micro- and meso-levels, but without structural change. Subsequently, this thesis then discusses the inequality of mobility perpetuated by the EU border regime and seeks to show pathways to change the humanitarian border.