Conceptualising European Privatisation Processes After the Great Recession

A wave of privatisation is unfolding in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis, but it has yet to receive serious scholarly attention. This paper examines the case of Ireland, where an austerity strategy and European Union International Monetary Fund bailout conditionality have given impetus to the transfer of public assets to the private sector. Theoretically, the paper explains the roots of the phenomenon with reference to a reformulated concept of “accumulation by dispossession” whose usefulness lies in emphasising the politico‐economic drivers of privatisation, which have been neglected in the mainstream literature. A typology is presented that argues that accumulation by dispossession manifests itself, in practice, through four main processes: (1) private repossession of assets nationalised during the financial crisis; (2) restructuring of state‐owned enterprises; (3) commodification of assets and services hitherto located outside the market; and (4) privatised stimulus through public–private partnerships. The paper's framework should be useful to conceptualise ongoing privatisation processes in other European countries.     

Policing the Desert: The IOM in Libya Beyond War and Peace

The war that took place in Libya in 2011 forced 1.5 million people to leave the country. Many of them, from sub‐Saharan Africa, were helped to return to their countries of origin by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This paper questions the purely humanitarian nature of the IOM intervention with references to its activities before and after the conflict. It shows that this organization has long participated in the implementation of European migration policies in Libya, and more widely in the Sahara, without being accountable to any people. Through the replacement of local politics by international crisis management, the Sahara is gradually integrated into a zone of international bureaucratic expedience. War and humanitarian intervention appear as contingencies in the progressive implementation of a global system of surveillance, spatial control and management of mobility in Africa.     

Building G at Makaynūn: a late pre‐Islamic settlement above the ruins of a South Arabian town

This article presents the results of the excavation of a residence dated between the second and fourth centuries AD, constructed over the ruins of the South Arabian town of Makaynūn, in central Hadramawt (Yemen). The building yielded a large quantity of material including objects proving contacts between the central Hadramawt and regions located to the north‐east, such as central Oman, the Gulf area and India.