Bio/Necropolitical Capture and Evasion on Africa–Europe Migrant Journeys

Abstract This paper draws on fieldwork interviews with migrants who fled their home countries (Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan) and irregularly traveled through Sudan, Sahara, Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea, eventually reaching Europe. It demonstrates how, throughout their journeys, migrants were targeted by various armed groups (particularly non-state) for purposes including recruitment, extortion, ransom, immobilization, torture, slavery, sexual violence, and how they evaded capture. Building on and contributing to literatures on bio/necropolitics, migration/borders, and surveillance, the paper advances the categories of bio/necropolitical capture and evasion. The paper emphasizes the key role of non-state actors in acts of capture, and race and racialized microbio/necropolitical practices (torture, spectacle, discipline, and surveillance) as key categories of capture. The paper also shows effects of capture for migrants and how migrants engage in acts of evasion (which include not only bodily acts of running away or hiding, but various forms of communicational, mental, spiritual, and psychological tactics) as expressions of agency. Focusing on migrants’ long journeys to Europe, the paper provides a more holistic view of the migration experience and highlights persisting patterns of capture and evasion despite changing actors and locations. The paper demonstrates how Europe’s borders externalize inside the African continent through delegated and opportunistic actors (such as the Libyan Coast Guard and various other militia/trafficking/mafia groups), and reproduce racism at both the macrolevel (maintaining global racist borders) and the microlevel (through racialized practices).