Transnational abductions and transnational responsibilities? The politics of ‘protecting’ female Muslim refugees abducted from Spain

This article examines evolving gendered protection narratives surrounding four ‘abduction’ cases in which Sahrawi refugee girls and young women living in Spain were ‘abducted’ by their birth-families and forcibly returned to the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee camps between 2002 and 2009. By exploring Spanish state and civil society responses to these girls' ‘abductions’, I argue that there has been a major shift in the ways in which legitimate responsibility and authority over Sahrawi refugee women as Muslim female forced migrants have been conceptualised and invoked by Spanish actors. I therefore assess the gendered nature of competing claims of responsibility to ‘protect’ Sahrawi refugee women both within and outside of the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee camps, exploring the motivations and implications of different actors' in/actions towards these girls and women. With Polisario claiming to represent and act as a liberal ‘state’ committed to protecting the rights of its ‘refugee-citizens’ in some instances, while denying politico-legal responsibility in others, the question of ‘who’ or ‘what’ claims the legitimate authority to ‘protect’ Sahrawi refugee women and girls is thus accentuated by such cases. By exploring shifts in Spanish public and political discourses of responsibility over the past decade on the one hand, and the accentuation of competing discourses as presented by Spanish, Polisario and Algerian actors on the other, this article highlights the complex nature and implications of the ‘intimate’ Spanish civil society networks that ensure the physical and political survival of the Sahrawi refugee camps. Ultimately, I argue that Sahrawi girls and women have become hypervisible in Spain, being conceptualised as women who ‘belong’ to the Spanish nation that in turn has a responsibility to ‘protect’ ‘our’ Sahrawi women from ‘their’ culture.     

Bordering through othering: On strategic ambiguity in the making of the EU-Turkey refugee deal

This article scrutinises the identity-constitutive role of bordering practices by taking EU-Turkey cooperation on border control and refugee governance as a case. Using Foucault's notion of dispositif, this empirically oriented contribution critically reflects on the link between bordering, othering, and the reification of identities. More specifically, it undertakes a Critical Discourse Analysis of the EU border dispositif to elucidate how material structures and socio-spatial practices and discourses are mobilised in the processes of bordering. Throughout this article, special attention is paid to the strategic uses of ambiguity in refugee governance. Examining strategic ambiguity operative at the level of discourse, in institutional and legal structures, and routine daily practices, the multifaceted approach adopted in this study extends the analysis beyond the impact of strategic ambiguity on refugee's living experiences. The analysis demonstrates that strategic ambiguity relates to multiple domains of refugee governance and becomes a practical ideological tool, a normalising procedure for norm-breaking practices. Providing multiple layers of distinct but mutually reinforcing critical exploration, this study demonstrates how accumulated layers of knowledge, imageries, and historical narratives support institutional, legal and administrative practices in the ambiguous time/space of the EU-Turkey refugee deal. The analysis also exposes how the EU border dispositif translates difference into otherness, and contributes to the construction of European identity through the othering of refugees.