Abstract
The contested Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco are compact microcosms of deep tensions stemming from processes of re-bordering and migration, as well as concomitant debates about ‘integration’ and ‘multicultur- alism’ within the EU.1 They have thus far attracted surprisingly little scholarly interest.2 Their qualities as urbanised frontier territories, constituting the EU’s only land-border with Africa, present opportunities for the study of concrete, lived expressions of a remarkable compound of diverse, border phenomena. Ceuta in particular, with its physical proximity to Europe and strategic economic location on the Straits of Gibraltar, has rightly been represented as a unique geographic border embodying classic binaries such as Europe/Africa, Christianity/Islam, West/East and North/South. This chapter will therefore focus principally on Ceuta, the situation in Melilla being comparable on many accounts.
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Notes
For notable exceptions see: X. Ferrer-Gallardo (2011) ‘Territorial (Dis)continuity Dynamics between Ceuta and Morocco: Conflictual Fortification vis-à-vis Co-operative Interaction at the EU Border in Africa’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 102(1), 24–38;C. González Enríquez (2007) ‘Ceuta and Melilla: Clouds over the African Spanish Towns. Muslim Minorities, Spaniards’ Fears and Morocco-Spain Mutual Dependence’, Journal of North African Studies 12, 219–234; F. Meyer (2004) ‘“Wer ist Fremd an diesen Orten?” Zur Bedeutung von Identität, Kultur, Raum und Zeit in den Spanisch-Nordafrikanischen Städten Ceuta und Melilla’, Erdkunde 58(3), 235–251;P. Gold (2000) Europe or Africa?: A Contemporary Study of the Spanish North African Enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press).
See in particular: L. O’Dowd (2010) ‘From a “Borderless World” to a “World of Borders”: “Bringing History Back in”’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28(6), 1031–1050;J. Anderson and L. O’Dowd (1999) ‘Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance’, Regional Studies 33(7), 593–604.
W. Pullan (2011), ‘Frontier Urbanism: The Periphery at the Centre of Contested Cities’, Journal of Architecture 16, 15–35.
S. A. Sibai (2010) ‘“Sometimes I am Spanish and Sometimes Not”: A Study of the Identity and Integration of Spanish Muslim Women’, Research in Comparative and International Education 5(2), p. 185.
H. van Houtum and V. Mamadouh (2008) ‘The Geopolitical Fabric of the Border Regime in the EU-African Borderlands’, Nederlandse Geografische Studies 376, 93–99. According to Clochard and Rekacewicz between 1997 and 2001 alone, 3286 corpses of clandestine migrants were recovered on the coasts of the Straits of Gibraltar (see O. Clochard and P. Rekacewicz (2006) ‘Des Morts par Milliers aux Portes de l’Europe’, Le Monde Diplomatique. Accessed 9 May 2011: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/mortsauxfrontieres).
Gold (2000), pp. 120–150;H. de Haas (2008) ‘The Myth of Invasion: The Inconvenient Realities of African Migration to Europe’, Third World Quarterly 29(7), p. 1308.
Amnesty International (2006) ‘Spain and Morocco Failure to Protect the Rights of Migrants — Ceuta and Melilla One Year’, Amnesty International, (25 October 2006); Accessed 10 May 2011: www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR41/009/2006.
For witness accounts see: E. Blanchard and A. S. Wender (eds.) (2007) Guerre aux Migrants: Le Livre Noir de Ceuta et Melilla (Paris: Syllepse).
De Haas (2008), p. 1319;On the externalisation of EU borders more broadly, see: E. Balibar (2009) ‘Europe as Borderland’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27(2), 190–215;H. van Houtum and R. Pijpers (2007) ‘The European Union as a Gated Community: The Two-faced Border and Immigration Regime of the EU’, Antipode 39(2), 291–309;L. Leontidou, et al. (2005) ‘Exclusion and Difference along the EU Border: Social and Cultural Markers, Spatialities and Mappings’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29(2), 389–407.
H. van Houtum and F. Boedeltje (2009) ‘Europe’s Shame: Death at the Borders of the EU’, Antipode 41(2), 226–230.
O. Yiftachel and H. Yacobi (2003). ‘Urban Ethnocracy: Ethnicization and the Production of Space in an Israeli “Mixed City”’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21, 673–693.
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© 2013 Felipe Hernández and Maximilian Sternberg
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Hernández, F., Sternberg, M. (2013). Borderlands of the EU: The Spanish Enclave of Ceuta in Morocco. In: Pullan, W., Baillie, B. (eds) Locating Urban Conflicts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316882_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316882_4
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