Harga and the visa nexus: The securitization of youth mobility in Tunisia

By studying the Schengen visa regime from the perspective of applicants – ‘youth on the move’ in Tunisia – and their subjective experiences of (im)mobility and ‘stuckedness’, this article sheds light on the bordering practices of the EU border regime in post-2011 Tunisia and its entanglement with the multiple axes of power between the two shores of the Mediterranean. In this local political context, the process of externalizing the European Union’s borders is reflected upon by unpacking the labels of ‘cooperation’ and ‘Euro–Mediterranean partnership’. Indeed, the emphasis on the ‘border spectacle’ images of the undocumented sea crossing from the Maghreb to Europe, known as harga , has contributed to the prominence of the crisis discourse and the securitization of mobilities in the Mediterranean Maghreb. As a result, this setting obscured mobility inequalities and the broader extractive political economy of EU–Maghreb relations. Alternatively, this article embraces the crucial role of anthropology in challenging the inherent nature of border regimes. It adopts an ethnographic approach of ‘looking at the border from the other side’ to shift the gaze and examine the ‘regular mobilities’, governed by the Schengen visa regime. This shift in perspective enables us to examine the regime’s various invisible borders – material, symbolic and affective – and reveal the subjects they produce and their struggles.