Arbitrary and Shifting Borders: How Moroccan/Spanish Relations Shape the (Im)mobility of Migrants and Soldiers

Abstract This paper explores how Moroccan-Spanish relations shape the (im)mobility of West and Central African migrants and Moroccan border soldiers within the Euro-Mediterranean migratory system. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and adopting a transversal approach that bridges international relations and anthropology, we connect state policies, diplomacy, and securitization analyses with the narratives and lived experiences of individuals navigating these structures. Focusing on the Ceuta border crisis of May 2021 and the Melilla migratory crisis of June 2022, our findings reveal how structural forces and personal trajectories are mutually constituted—showing how social actors negotiate risks, resist constraints, and carve out safety within systems beyond their control. Through a decolonial lens, we challenge conventional binaries between state and subaltern security, demonstrating how macro-level politics and everyday experiences together produce and reproduce regimes of mobility and immobility, and argue for interdisciplinary, transversal approaches to grasp the complexity of migration in highly politicized border contexts.