Genealogies of contention in concentric circles Remote migration control and its Eurocentric geographical imaginaries

Casas, M. and Cobarrubias, S. (2020) “Genealogies of contention in concentric circles Remote migration control and its Eurocentric geographical imaginaries” in Socioscapes 1(1): 125-136.

This article, reprinted from a chapter originally published for Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration, 2019 Katharyne Mitchel, Reece Jones and Jennifer Fluri (eds.), reflects on the origins of the spatial displacement of borders further away from apparent destination countries. Concretely, how the European Union developed the geographic imaginary of ‘concentric circles’ that underpins practices of contention thousands of kilometres away from its borderlines. Such a process unfolds thanks to the conditional collaboration from third countries to manage suspected migratory movements. Based on archival research of EU documents initially proposing this form of remote migration ‘management’, we unfold a genealogy of border externalization that uncovers a rather Eurocentric cartographic imaginary at work beneath expert-driven and neutral sounding policies.