African Migrants, European Borders, and the Problem with Humanitarianism

African Migrants, European Borders, and the Problem with Humanitarianism presents a probing examination of the contemporary migrant ＂crisis＂ in the Mediterranean Basin. By centering our analysis on how racial slavery has shaped European democratic culture, its abolitionist traditions, and the global structures of capital accumulation, P. Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods reveal and confront how contemporary discourse on the migrant ＂crisis＂ displaces Black sovereign mobility. Their inquiry into the modern world’s culture of politics investigates ＂freedom of movement＂ discourse’s ostensible confrontation with border policing, the memorializing of Black migrant deaths by artists and advocates, and the visual imagery of a cosmopolitan and multicultural Europe as conceived by filmmakers in response to the migrant ＂crisis＂ as variants of a slaveholding culture instantiated in the early Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. This analysis allows the authors to formulate a new critical framework for analysis of both the problems of contemporary migration and borders and the leading prescriptions on offer from analysts, advocates, and policy makers in order to develop alternate ways of conceptualizing global society.

P. Khalil Saucier is professor of critical Black studies at Bucknell University.

Tryon P. Woods is professor of crime & justice studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and special lecturer in Black studies at Providence College.