Identifying the Crossed Impacts of the Militarisation of the EU External(ised) Borders and Gender Relations: The Case of the Moroccan-Spanish Border

While migration policies are supposed to be gender-neutral, analyzing the management of the Morocco-Spain border and its effects shows that closed and militarized borders can affect would-be migrants differently, depending on their gender, race and economic power. The example of crossing methods – as tactics of resistance to the closed border – reveals how gendered is the whole crossing system. The“warriors” who “hit” the Ceuta and Melilla barriers are assumed to be male, since crossing this way is “too difficult for women”. Women are expected to go by sea. The lived experiences in camps hidden in the forest in the north of Morocco, where so called "Sub-Saharan" people wait to cross in the border zones close to the Spanish enclaves, are also very gendered. Talking about the women, we often hear that they are “all human trafficking victims”. This dominant point of view depoliticizes the multiple forms of violence these women are subject to and presents them as merely passive subjects of their migration. The militarization of borders and the violent repression against the black immigration candidates to Europe exacerbate specific masculinities and feminities. If male migrants put themselves into the shoes of soldiers ready to risk their lives at the borders, women are often reduced to the roles of food and sexual service providers in the camps. But their presence is also highly instrumentalized: by male migrants to improve their chances of crossing but also by the Moroccan and Spanish states to legitimate their heavy-secure policies which have also become a juicy business. This presentation aims to show that the externalization of European borders in Africa, among other deep consequences, reinforces a continuum of violence against women seeking mobility.