The term “externalisation” is used by a range of migration scholars, policy makers and the media to describe the extension of border and migration controls beyond the so-called ‘migrant receiving nations’ in the Global North and into neighbouring countries or sending states in the Global South. It refers to a wide range of practices from border controls, rescue operations, to measures addressing drivers of migration. Rather than presenting externalization as a mere policy tool to reduce the economic, political and social costs of ‘unwanted immigration’ for receiving states, the ambition of this Special Issue is to contribute to the mapping of the diverse yet comparable responses to externalization practices. The different articles in this volume are chosen to exemplify some of these processes at different levels of analysis. Authors address through various disciplinary perspectives how practices of externalization are being confronted, succumbed, modified and contested by individual (would-be) migrants, civil society actors and the host states’ institutions in different parts of the globe. In an effort to move away from a sole focus on border spaces of the Global North, the Special Issue contributes to emerging literature shifting the locus of analysis to places in the Global South, which are conventionally understood as “transit” or “sending” countries in Africa, America as well as within Europe itself.
Edited by Ayşen Üstübici, Inka Stock & Susanne Schultz