The Political-Humanitarian Borderwork of Ngos in Sicily: Between Migration Management and Repoliticisation

The literature highlighted the depoliticising role of humanitarianism and its contribution to the perpetuation of migration control. Recent studies questioned the interpretation of humanitarianism as merely legitimising migration control, and reported on the capacity of grassroots actors to challenge the current European border regime. This paper focuses on the mainstream NGOs’ role in the making and unmaking of the southern European border. It further explores the relationship between NGOs’ humanitarian and political borderwork and investigates if and how NGOs’ humanitarianism opens up or closes down opportunity for their political interventions. This article analyses the interventions of Terre des Hommes, Medu and Oxfam within the southern Italian border management system during two recent re-bordering phases: the introduction of the hotspot approach in 2015 and the adoption of the restrictive migration policies of 2018. The fieldwork in Sicily covers a ten-months period between 2017 and 2018. The research methodology includes multi-sited ethnography, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The paper concludes by arguing that the line between NGOs’ humanitarian and political borderwork is blurred. The borderwork of these actors can be considered as a political-humanitarian borderwork: NGOs’ humanitarian interventions were intertwined with political interventions and the former also contributed to accomplishing the latter.