White Eurocentric colonialism is at the root of black African migratory displacements today

I was reminded of this, when speaking to Boubacar Barry, an asylum seeker who'd been stuck at a migration centre for three months in the Spanish city of Ceuta, a key point along the current Spanish-Moroccan border. Having asked for a story about the border between Morocco and Spain, he told me: ‘this is about the arrival of white men to Africa’. His story was inspired by Chinua Achebe’s novel ‘Things Fall Apart’, where the author chronicles pre-colonial life and the arrival of Europeans, understanding border crossings as something which occurred in the colonial era, with colonisers migrating across territories.

Encounters along the Euro-African border

The occupation of different parts of the North African coast by the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile began in the 15th century. In this first period of colonial activity, colonisers were not motivated so much by a concern for conquest as by security concerns. After the conquest of the Muslim kingdom of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs, the strategy towards North Africa sought to establish a ‘security glacis’ – to protect the Spanish kingdom, since at the time Spain’s foreign policy was primarily oriented to European and American affairs.

What triggered Spanish Africanism, and specifically the Moroccan issue, was the conquest of Algiers by France in 1830. The change in Spain’s orientation was also profoundly marked by the loss of the colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898. Along with the need to build a secure frontier for navigation and trade in the western Mediterranean, there was the need to defend of Ceuta and Melilla as a ‘vital space’ along the Spanish-Moroccan border. This area became a source of confrontation, leading to the declaration of the ‘African War’ by Spain in 1859. Following the Treaty of peace of Wad-Ras on 26 April 1860, the border perimeter was re-drawn, and fortifications re-established around the Spanish territories.

But the colonisation strategy in Morocco differed from that of other European nations involved in the partition of the African continent at the end of the 19^th century. It was much more a commercial enterprise than a political-military one. The Act of Algeciras (7 April 1906), discursively promised ‘order, peace and prosperity’, preserving sovereignty and territorial integrity. In practice, it left the administration, customs and the security forces under European control.

Morocco was plunged into chaos as the sultan lost what was left of his scant authority. As popular revolts spread, France and Spain expanded their occupied areas. In 1912 the French protectorate was established, and later that year France and Spain signed an agreement demarcating the areas under Spanish control: the mountainous north from Yebala to the Rif and the territories between the Muluya River to the east, the Uerga to the south and Lau to the west.

Rubbles of the empire as a source of conflict

When Moroccan independence was declared in France on 2 March and Spain on 7 April 1959, most territories were returned. The enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and a set of small islands and territories along the east coast towards Algeria, however, remained under Spanish sovereignty.

The ‘rubbles of the empire’ are still a source of conflict today and up until the late 20^th century, there was little academic interest in them as border territories. This changed when Spain entered the European Economic Community in 1986, and the subsequent Schengen Agreement came into force in 1991. The rise of border studies coincided, therefore, with the critical reconfiguration that Ceuta and Melilla experienced becoming Schengen frontiers in the African continent - to this day they are the only two land borders of Europe in Africa.

As a consequence, the securitisation of the EU’s outer borders turned Ceuta and Melilla into key border crossings. These legal modifications led to drastic changes in both mobility conditions and physical/functional border transformations. Until then, the perimeters were porous border areas, in which the movement of people and goods was fluid. But in 1991, Spain established visa requirements for Moroccans, effectively fencing off the border.

'Ceuta is a sweet prison’

Coming back to my encounter with Boubacar in Ceuta. He and the others were being held at the Temporary Stay Centre for Immigrants (CETI), having crossed the border irregularly. CETI is a semi-open camp, established by the Spanish government in 2000, it has with capacity for 512 people. There is only one entrance controlled by private surveillance and it is surrounded by a three meter-high fence and video surveillance cameras on top. People are only allowed out during daylight hours.

Arbitrariness and legal uncertainty underline the status of migrants stranded in the CETI. Whilst conceived of by the Spanish Government as a temporary reception centre, this ‘temporality’ is not defined. Not only is the waiting time indeterminate in Ceuta, so too is any resolution on migrants’ refugee statuses. Transfers from the centre to mainland Spain are not governed by legal frameworks either, with lawyers pointed out that they’re ‘not based on criteria of vulnerability, but on the possibilities of deportation’. Those registered in the CETI are not granted residence or work permits. They can leave the centre, but options for a life in the city are not simple. In their words, ‘Ceuta is a sweet prison’.

Arriving in Ceuta does not really mean crossing the EU border. The city functions as a limbo space of forced immobility, marked by the geographical exceptionality of the place. Ceuta performs a role as Schengen’s outer fortress, both through a terrestrial border to the south-west with Morocco, and a maritime one – before the Strait of Gibraltar to mainland Europe.

The woods surrounding the CETI have progressively become waiting areas for migrants like Boubacar. Settlements began there when the fencing of the border started, and they gradually increased in tandem with the increased fortification of the fences surrounding the centre. In the forest, the border is temporal, it is perceived through the passage of time. Settlements there are nomadic, self-managed spaces forced to change, forced to move.

Settlements are also different on each side of the border. In Morocco, they become places of refuge that are often interrupted by raids performed by the Moroccan army auxiliary forces. The forest also represents the preparation for what is supposed to be the last border crossing before Europe. Once in Ceuta, the forest is divided into different zones, some of which are called ‘the quiet’ area [el tranquilo]. These are autonomous and mobile spaces for meeting and ‘keeping calm’ outside the CETI. It was in the forest that Boubacar told us the story on reimagining the border.

Decentring Eurocentrism

The continuity of colonial power relations still arouses some controversy within Europe. It seems that the colonial term resonates as something already obsolete, surpassed, belonging to another historical stage. It even survives the discourse on the anticolonial criticism associated with a dead society or considered as an exotic remembrance. It happens, however, that from the borders of this Europe that claims to have triumphed over the colonial issue, Aimé Césaire's words resonate with full force: ‘It is not about relieving a past order, but effectively overcoming the power relations exercised through knowledge and subjectivity’ (Discours sur le colonialisme, 1955).

Unfinished decolonisation directly needs to confront the roots of colonial thinking. Independence re-articulated colonial power on a new basis, as Africa’s political map was re-designed by the powers that oversaw its subjugation under colonial rule, and remains effectively unchanged today. Decolonisation as such, has to call into question not only the physical, direct and violent intervention, but also the racial and Eurocentric foundations that sustain the colonial ways in which Europe relates to the outside world. It is here precisely where the story narrated by Boubacar enters the scene. It reveals that the voices of migrants, representing territories that were once colonised, have not yet been heard.