Fortress Europe's far-flung borderlands: 'Illegality' and the 'deportation regime' in France's Caribbean and Indian Ocean territories

This article argues that the French overseas territories of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, which are also European 'outermost regions,' make up the first borders of 'Fortress Europe,' geographically, historically and legislatively. Since the 1980s, a set of laws, described as &#...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mobilities 2020-03, Vol.15 (2), p.220-240
Main Author: Benoît, Catherine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
(Im)mobilities
Borders
Caribbean
Colonialism
Colonies & territories
Criminalization
Deportation
Europe
Experimentation
Experiments
Foreign residents
France
Indian Ocean
Indigenous peoples
legal anthropology
Reinforcement
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Summary:This article argues that the French overseas territories of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, which are also European 'outermost regions,' make up the first borders of 'Fortress Europe,' geographically, historically and legislatively. Since the 1980s, a set of laws, described as 'laws of exception,' place the majority of the foreign residents in a state of 'illegality.' These overseas territories are in the vanguard of a French 'regime of deportation' that targets foreign nationals, indigenous populations and former colonial subjects. They are places of experimentation for legal exceptions, which are then implemented in metropolitan France. This paper will analyze how the reinforcement of borders contradicts the popular and scholarly representation of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean as sites of mobility.
ISSN:1745-0101
1745-011X
DOI:10.1080/17450101.2019.1678909