Enduring crises, dynamic border work: Migration governance in Ventimiglia since COVID-19

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Roja migrant camp in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, near France, was closed on health grounds. This was a critical moment for border management at Ventimiglia, which has been a strategic area in the EU's internal border regime since 2015, when France reintroduced systematic border controls. This article takes its cue from this event to explore the interplay between institutional border work and crisis in Ventimiglia in recent years. Critically drawing on existing literature on border and crisis, this study identifies three key analytical dimensions: 1. The national authority's narrative use of the ‘pandemic crisis’ to legitimise closing the camp; 2. The subsequent institutional political crisis at the urban level that has led to a greater securitisation of migrants' presence in the city; 3. The social and material crisis faced by migrants in the city as a consequence of worsening bordering practices. Based on extensive fieldwork and document analysis, this study contends that ‘crises’, far from being solely moments of disruption, offer a particularly productive lens for examining the transformations currently reshaping border regimes. By placing the crisis and its articulations at the centre of the investigation, this work advances the theoretical debate by highlighting the violence of institutional border work, both by deconstructing the narrative surrounding crisis and its strategic use by authorities, and by addressing the socio-material crisis experienced by migrants, which is often omitted, concealed, or disregarded.