Following a meeting of the National Security Council on February 21, 2023, Tunisia\u2019s President Kais Saied issued what became an infamous communiqu\u00e9. In it, he claimed sub-Saharan African migrants were building a presence in Tunisia as result of a criminal scheme aimed at modifying the \u201cdemographic composition\u201d of Tunisian society. Thereafter, life for sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia, hardly great to begin with[1]<\/a>, worsened considerably. Hundreds were evicted from their homes, hundreds others were subjected to job terminations, physical and verbal violence, and punitive deportations. Social media videos documented buses dropping migrants based in Sfax near remote areas close to the Libyan border. There, they faced extreme conditions, including temperatures soaring to 50 degrees, without assistance or anything in the way of food, water, and shelter. The National Guard and Tunisian military were also revealed to have forcibly relocated up to 1,200 individuals in multiple groups to border regions, environs equally devoid of shade, vegetation, water, electricity, and communication services. These cruel acts resulted in the disappearance and deaths of many, including a migrant named Fatie and her daughter Marie. A photograph taken of mother and child, prostrate and lifeless in under the unforgiving sun, wound up shared widely on the Tunisian internet.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n If extreme, Saied\u2019s interventions against sub-Saharan African migrants are in keeping with a policy trend evinced across the southern Mediterranean region. This trend must be understood in view of changes to the European Union\u2019s migration policies towards the Global South. Despite Europe\u2019s service sectors retaining a need for imported labor (care industries especially)\u2014and despite ageing populations imperiling Europe\u2019s growth prospects\u2014the past decade has seen aggressive attempts at curtailing immigrant flows. This policy pivot is broadly attributable to the rise of rightwing political forces, both in Brussels and across the EU\u2019s member states. Europe\u2019s rightwing has weaponized discontent over the continent\u2019s economic stagnation by redirecting popular anxiety and fear against vulnerable populations, migrants most of all. Having successfully swayed many center-right and center-left parties into adopting its agenda, Europe\u2019s rightwing has set the course for the EU\u2019s anti-immigrant turn. Amongst other things, these dynamics have led the EU and its member states to incentivize and\/or pressure North African countries into becoming agents of \u201cborder externalization policies\u201d. In effect, Europe is enlisting governments of the Maghreb as sub-contractors, tasking them with intercepting Europe-bound migrants before they can cross the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such arrangements speak to the endurance of postcolonial bargains. For the leaders that won <\/em>independence across the Maghreb last century, victory was hardly total: Sovereignty was limited not only by economic dependence, but by demands that they ensure the geo-racialized security of the Global North. Then as now, this demand has reinforced the racially-charged violence of borders. Then as now, subordination to Europe has also left societies in the Maghreb dealing with deeply corrosive social effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before turning to the specifics of present day Tunisia, it is appropriate to begin with the role attributed to postcolonial ruling elites by colonial interests during the long twentieth century. As discerned by Palestinian political scientist Tamim al-Barghouti, the establishment of formal independence often required postcolonial rulers to respect and secure the material interests of the former colonial overseer.[4]<\/a> In al-Barghouti\u2019s estimations, this vested post-colonial states with fundamental contradictions.[5]<\/a> On the one hand, the postcolonial leader\u2019s rule\u2014and the prosperity of the ruler\u2019s social coalition\u2014hinged on their acting as comprador for the departed colonial power. On the other, it hinged on the postcolonial leader convincing the native population that they were agents of national emancipation. Servicing both imperatives fomented irreconcilable tensions. In attempting to resolve them, al-Barghouti asserts that rulers frequently leaned into the following playbook:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo the native population, it offers the promise of liberation, symbolized by legal independence, formal, or sometimes only nominal, sovereignty as well as the end of military occupation; to the colonial power, it offers to secure the vital colonial interests, such as the safety of international trade routes, the safety of colonial enterprises, the safety of European residents, and all other regional geo-strategic interests of the colonial power. All of these functions require the keeping of law and order by a state apparatus<\/em>.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n While evolving over time, the partial sovereignty of the postcolonial state has endured across the Maghreb. And though not the only variable at work, this partial sovereignty animates the migration policies of Tunisian governors since the introduction of the Schengen system in 1985.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To appreciate partial sovereignty\u2019s salience, it is worth recalling that absent external compensation, Tunisia itself derives little benefit in preventing either nationals or non-nationals from departing from its shores for Europe. After all, in doing so, the country loses out on remittance flows while the state, rendered complicit in the deaths of thousands in the sea, sheds legitimacy. In view of the consequence, that successive Tunisian governments would take on the role of Europe\u2019s gatekeeper suggests policy choice is not wholly volitional. The example of Kais Saied\u2019s government indicates that financial needs heavily mediate the policymaking process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The weight that liquidity problems exert on Tunisia\u2019s contemporary migration policies are observable in the terms of the country\u2019s most recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the European Union, signed on July 16, 2023. De jure and de facto, the MoU offered Tunisia a pay-off for policing the border more intensively: For a relatively small amount of money (\u20ac900 million in macroeconomic support and \u20ac150 million in direct budgetary support), the EU purchased a proxy force for its distal southern frontier.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The efficacy of this proxy force is apparent in the data. In July 2023, prior to the MoU going into effect, Tunisia\u2019s Coast Guard intercepted 848 migrants. In August, after the MoU, the figure surged to 4,427. In September, the number in question hit 8,781. As the calendar turned to 2024, moreover, Tunisia\u2019s patrolmen stayed just as active. Between January and April 2024, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) reported approximately 21,200 migrants being intercepted along the country\u2019s shores. By the end of May 2024, statistics from the National Guard indicated that around 30,300 individuals had been intercepted through both land and sea operations, nearly 9,000 more than 2023\u2019s corresponding total. Meanwhile, Italy reported a 60.8% year-on-year decrease in irregular arrivals on its shores from January to May 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For its part, the Tunisian government has also introduced legal measures to formalize and expand its activist posture when it comes to controlling people movement. On April 5, 2024, the President issued Order No. 181. Framed as a regulation for maritime search and rescue operations, human rights advocates have expressed concern the Order creates conditions which may lead to humanitarian violations in the Mediterranean, including heightened confrontations between fragile migrant vessels and the National Guard. Making matters worse, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) recently revised Tunisia\u2019s Search and Rescue Area map. Specifically, the IMO extended Tunisian authorities\u2019 jurisdiction in the Mediterranean thereby facilitating more frequent interceptions and returns. Critics have voiced significant concerns about the lack of safeguards in the IMO\u2019s decisions. SOS Humanity and Alarm-Phone, for instance, have denounced the absence of any human rights conditions, consequent monitoring tools, or mechanisms of suspension in case of violations.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The small sums allocated to a main migration hub like Tunisia by the EU can be understood as a partial function of neoliberalism. At a basic level, Brussels\u2019 MoU with Tunis, like past and current IMF lending arrangements, represents an attempt to buy stability on the cheap. Rather than seek to address root causes of migration\u2014or, in the case of the IMF, root causes of macroinstability\u2014Europe and the global North deploys tools for short-term crisis management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The strategy of the EU pushes its southern partners into a political bind. This is clearly observed in Tunisia. Since issuing his communique in February 2023, Kais Saied has waffled incoherently. Attempting to preserve his postcolonial bona fides while servicing Europe\u2019s needs (and thereby securing the cash he sorely needs), the President is forced to hedge and conditionalize all his claims: In his analysis of President Saied\u2019s media statements post-February 2023, Tabbabi records Saied saying \u201cyes\u2026but\u201d at least thirteen times: the fruit of the clash between sovereigntist pretensions and (European) security needs.[9]<\/a> A clearer example of al-Barghouti\u2019s could nowhere be found. On the one hand, Saied has no choice but to protect the European \u201cgarden\u201d, as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell called it.[10]<\/a> On the other, he must try position himself as independent and no one\u2019s lackey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intensity, institutional framing, and straightforwardness of the racism today displayed against sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia are unprecedented. However, the roots of anti-black racism in the country run deep. They can be traced back to disjunctions inherited from slavery and shaped by colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much has been said about Tunisia\u2019s position and role within trans-Saharan, or Islamic, slavery and its racialized legacy. In broad terms, black slaves in Ottoman Tunisia were primarily employed in domestic roles, serving wealthier households in urban areas, as Mrad Dali has documented. Some were involved in both domestic and agricultural labor in rural regions.[11]<\/a> The in-home servitude of many should not imply that Tunisian slavery was especially gentle, however. Indeed, Montana highlights the harsh treatment of black slaves in the Regency of Tunis. Detailing their suffering during transportation, he reveals how long marches and exposure to diseases left many slaves frail and unfit by the time they reached Tunis. Once in the market, slaves were displayed in degrading ways, and the separation of families drew attention to their plight.[12]<\/a> Despite the argument that domestic labor was less brutal than its plantation counterpart, the harsh treatment of domestic slaves played a significant role in Ahmad bey\u2019s successful abolition of slavery.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Contrary to the cases of Europe and the Americas, racial categories in North African slavery were fluid and relational. Beyond phenotype and skin color, they were shaped by factors such as religion, social rank, and kinship, as scholars like Elouafi[14]<\/a> and Davis[15]<\/a> establish. With Islam often the variable mediating an individual\u2019s standing as a free person or slave, binaries between blackness and whiteness never fully calcified. Mazrui argues the Arab patrilineal society also allowed for significant racial integration, as mixed-race children with an Arab father were fully accepted into higher social echelons.[16]<\/a> All this being the case, racial divisions were comparatively porous and dynamic in Tunisia prior to the incursion of French colonialism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Alas, Europe\u2019s arrival in the region did change things. As anthropologist Abdelmajid Hannoum contends, the Maghreb as we understand it today is fundamentally a cartographic construct, with the divisions between North, West, and East Africa reflecting not so much the region’s anthropological realities as the competing interests of colonial powers. Eighteenth-century European cartographers drew a region called Barbary, sometimes divided into separate units from which Egypt and \u201cBlack Africa\u201d (formerly called Nigritie<\/em>) were excluded. Although the Maghreb had been mapped prior to this, European efforts vastly shifted the social and political consequence of cartography. France\u2019s colonization of Algeria represented a turning point in these regards. As the conquest progressed, France used it stronghold in Algeria to expand into Tunisia at the expense of Italy, and to Morocco at the expense of Spain.[17]<\/a> Thereafter, new denominations appeared to attach northern Africa to Europe, and by extension whiteness, and detach it from the rest of the continent.[18]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The colonial-nurtured disjunction between north and sub-Saharan Africa, between \u201cblack\u201d and \u201cwhite\u201d, is what Hassan Mohamed terms \u201ca racialist cartography\u201d.[19]<\/a> The consequence of this cartography persists to this day. It is present in a Hegelian imaginary of Africa[20]<\/a>\u2014one that Kais Saied himself subscribes to\u2014which positions racial whiteness as native to North Africa, racial Arabness as reinforcing that whiteness, and racial blackness as foreign.[21]<\/sup><\/a> The last of these tenets weighs heavily on contemporary Tunisia. It has perpetuated the fiction that the country\u2019s black communities are of servile and external lineage\u2014an \u201cAfrican diaspora in Africa\u201d. In other words, it erases the historicity[22]<\/a> and indigeneity of black Tunisia, rendering the latter into an alterity.[23]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Observing a massacre of Sudanese migrants at the Moroccan border with Mellila, Samia Moucharik has posited that a new form of antiblack state violence is emerging today. Hinging upon the figure of the black migrant, this one links the logics of border control to a reconfiguration of internal enemies.[24]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The logic Moucharik discerns clearly abides in Tunisia. While long constructed as foreign and inconvenient, since February 2023, sub-Saharan migrants have been reimagined as internal enemies by both public authorities and the Tunisian population. They have been redefined by the state apparatus as an independent category, portrayed not just as a socioeconomic inconvenience but as a civilizational threat to the state and its people. Via the question of the border, however, this same category of persons also furnishes the state with a key material resource: Framed as threat and burden though they may be, it is these migrants which grant Carthage leverage over a desperate Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is in the nexus of Europe\u2019s racialized fears and Tunisian (post)coloniality, then, that one finds the animating force behind the antiblack violence of the present. It is here we find a tragic reenactment of the programmed disunity of the African continent. And it is here that the contest for a better tomorrow must be waged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * Image Credit: Department for International Development\/Kate Joseph<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> Racialized violence, administered either institutionally or socially, is not new to Tunisia. Historically, it often targeted black people more generally rather than black migrants in particular. Cognizant of this, the 2011 Revolution birthed a prolific anti-racism movement that questioned the country\u2019s trans-Saharan slavery legacy, entrenched antiblack stereotypes and practices, and antiblack racism\u2019s intersections, most notably that between blackness and womanhood and blackness and migration. Although initiated by and for black Tunisians, post-2011 episodes of racial violence against black migrants sparked wide outrage and bolstered the movement around sub-Saharan Africans\u2019 lived experiences of racism as well. Advocacy and mobilization efforts culminated into the promulgation of the 2018 law against all forms of racial discrimination, which notably framed antiblack racism as an individual, not structural problem, that the State ought to mediate and sanction, excluding the role of the latter as the main racializing agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> Tunisia lacks an asylum law. After the coup d\u2019etat in 2021, which was enabled by popular disillusionment and which brought to power a conspiracy-minded President, the establishment of one has become an impossibility. Saied has borrowed extensively from European far-right ideology, the Great Replacement Theory in particular, in discussing the migration of sub-Saharan Africans into Tunisia. He also adds his own personal flourishes, all of which draw on postcolonial trauma. With vague references to Western interventionism, imperialism and settler-colonialism, the President has suggested that a conspiracy to make Tunisia an \u201cAfrican\u201d rather than Arab Muslim country began at the start of this century. The Tunisian Nationalist Party, one of the President\u2019s ideological allies, has likened this to Zionist plots in Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> On the notion of security, Al-Barghouti contends: \u201cSecurity is an extremely valuable commodity for a colonial power: security of international trade routes, security of foreign enterprises and businesses, security of European residents, including the military occupation forces and so on. The local elite then also becomes involved in the provision of such a commodity either by direct participation in security apparatuses or, due to their claim of representation, by creating a mirage of native participation and legitimizing the colonial structure of power. [\u2026] to provide security efficiently, the native elites have to have some legitimacy among their own population. By their efficiency I mean that the native elite\u2019s provision of security should be less costly to the colonial power than direct occupation and policing by the colonial power\u2019s own forces.\u201d <\/em>(p.93)<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> Al-Barghouti, T. (2008). The Umma and the Dawla: the Nation State and the Arab Middle East. <\/em>Pluto Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/a> Al-Barghouti, T. (2008). The Umma and the Dawla: the Nation State and the Arab Middle East. <\/em>Pluto Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/a> Al-Barghouti, T. (2008). p. 95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7]<\/a> There is little ambiguity on what Brussels bought with its money. \u20ac67 million of the \u20ac150 million earmarked for budgetary support were designated to enhance the capacity of the Coast Guard, covering costs for fuel, spare maritime equipment, vehicles, and training for operational teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8]<\/a> The creation of the Search and Rescue Region (SRR) is above all a commitment to the international community. According to the IMO, in being member, Tunisia must now \u201censure that help is provided to any person in distress, regardless of that person’s nationality or status<\/em>\u201d. This latest development is in line with Italy’s strategy of outsourcing border control. By assigning responsibility for rescue and repatriation to Tunisia, Italy is seeking to relieve pressure on its own migrants\u2019 reception and management system. \u201cIt could only be a matter of time before violent behavior also targets sea rescue NGOs or the crews of their ships<\/em>\u201d, worries Marie Michel of SOS Humanity, who explains that the NGO \u2018fears a potential increase in cases of human rights violations and the use of physical violence against migrants\u2019. An increase in interceptions by the Tunisian coastguard is likely to lead to more forced returns to Tunisia. See: https:\/\/inkyfada.com\/fr\/2024\/10\/24\/nouvelle-region-maritime-recherche-sauvetage-opaque\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [9]<\/a> Amongst the President\u2019s statements: \u201cThe solution can only be humanitarian and collective, based on humanitarian standards, \u2018but\u2019 in accordance with the legislation of the state\u201d\/ \u201cWe are Africans, they are our brothers and we respect them, \u2018but\u2019 this situation that Tunisia is experiencing and has never experienced is an abnormal situation and we must put an end to these inhuman conditions\u201d\/ \u201cThey are victims of poverty, civil wars and the absence of the state, and they turn to Tunisia as a refuge. \u2018But\u2019 we are also a state that has its own laws and respects the law and human beings. \u2018But\u2019 everyone must respect the laws and sovereignty of the Tunisian state\u201d\/ \u201cThe solution must not be at the expense of the Tunisian state. We naturally preserve and protect these people and don\u2019t let those who attack them walk away, \u2018but\u2019 they must also respect Tunisian laws\u201d\/ \u201cWe will not accept any attack against them, and we will protect them, \u2018but\u2019 they must be under legal conditions\u201d\/ \u201cThe humane treatment these migrants receive stems from our values and character, contrary to what is promoted by colonial circles and their agents whose only concern is to serve these circles, and nothing is more obvious than that their positions are the same as those of the frenzied trumpeters abroad who are paving the way for a new type of colonisation, falsifying facts and spreading lies.\u201d See: Tabbabi, K. (2024, December). From African jungles and deserts to the forbidden land, Tunisia<\/em>. migration.info. https:\/\/migration-control.info\/en\/blog\/from-african-jungles-and-deserts\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [10]<\/a> Speaking of Europe and the dangers posed to it by migration in 2022, Borrell said the following: ” Europe is a garden. (…) It is the best<\/em> combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build (…) The rest of the world (…) is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [11]<\/a> Mrad Dali, I. (2005). De l\u2019esclavage \u00e0 la servitude: le cas des noirs de Tunisie (From slavery to servitude: \u2018Blacks\u2019 in Tunisia). Cahiers D\u2019\u00c9tudes Africaines<\/em>, 45<\/em>(179\/180).<\/p>\n\n\n\n [12]<\/a> Montana, I. M. (2013). The abolition of slavery in Ottoman Tunisia<\/em>. University Press of Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [13]<\/a> Marcel, J. J., & Frank, L. (1851). Histoire de Tunis: pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9e d\u2019une description de cette r\u00e9gence<\/em>. Firmin Didot Fr\u00e8res.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [14]<\/a> Elouafi, A. A. (2009). The colour of Orientalism: race and narratives of discovery in Tunisia. Ethnic and Racial Studies<\/em>, 33<\/em>(2), 253\u2013271.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [15]<\/a> Haleh Davis, M. (2021). Incommensurate Ontologies\u2019? Antiblack racism and the question of Islam. Journal of the Cultural Studies Association<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [16]<\/a> Mazrui, A. A. (2001). Africa and other civilizations: Conquest and Counter-Conquest<\/em>. Africa World Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [17]<\/a> The maps soon represented a North Africa from which Libya \u2013 under Italian rule \u2013 and Egypt \u2013 under British rule \u2013 were excluded. In other words, a Maghreb patterned on French possessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [18]<\/a> Hannoum, A. (2021). The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East<\/em>. Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [19]<\/a> Mohamed, M. H. (2010). Africanists and Africans of the Maghrib: casualties of Analogy. The Journal of North African Studies<\/em>, 15<\/em>(3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n [20]<\/a> In Hegel\u2019s words: \u201cAfrica consists of three continents which are entirely separate from one another [\u2026] The first of these is Africa proper, the land to the south of the Sahara desert [\u2026] The second is the land to the north of the desert, [\u2026] which might be described as European Africa. And the third is the region of the Nile [\u2026] which is closely connected with Asia [\u2026]. What we understand as Africa proper is that unhistorical and undeveloped land which is still enmeshed in the natural spirit<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hegel, G. W. F. (1975). Lectures on the philosophy of world history<\/em>. Cambridge University Press. pp. 173-183.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [21]<\/a> Tayeb, L. (2021). What is Whiteness in North Africa? Lateral<\/em>, 10<\/em>(1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n [22]<\/a> Mohamed, M. H. (2010). Africanists and Africans of the Maghrib: casualties of Analogy. The Journal of North African Studies<\/em>, 15<\/em>(3).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPostcolonial and Geo-Racialized Security<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Migration and Postcolonial States as Security Providers for the Global North[3]<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
The Problems with Security at a Lower Cost<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Providing Security, (Re)Activating Historical Antiblackness: Provenance of the Internal Enemy Trope in Tunisia<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusions: History Weighs Heavily on the Present<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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