Transit migration and the Tunisian borderscapes: A political-philosophical exploration

This article investigates Tunisia’s role in contemporary migration to challenge dominant narratives that portray it as a gateway toward Europe. Adopting a Southern perspective focused on intra-African mobility, it analyses the concept of transit migration as an ambiguous and Eurocentric category that shapes new ways of governing human mobility within and beyond the Mediterranean. In this fashion, the article offers a novel interpretation of current migration governance and advances a theoretical shift that frames hypermobility as an emerging governmental rationality. Drawing on a political-philosophical approach, it explores how mobility is not merely discouraged or suppressed; on the contrary, it is increasingly fostered and exploited within the framework of bio-capitalism. Through a reinterpretation of Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, the article frames mobility not as a secondary outcome of border regimes, but as a key method of investigation for analysing contemporary forms of power, control and resistance.