The Borders of Responsibility

Migration Control in the Mediterranean Sea

By: Kiri Olivia Santer

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Hardcover | 19 May 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover
288 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2

Hardcover

$310.75

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While migrants face many dangers in attempting to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Seaâ"from drowning to dying of dehydrationâ"they also confront an elaborate legal system that is designed to return them to their countries of origin. In The Borders of Responsibility, Kiri Olivia Santer outlines the architecture of these legal systems and how they help Europe evade legal responsibility for rescuing migrants. Focusing on legal agreements between Italy and Libya that have resulted in the systematic interception of migrants, Santer shows how Europeâs liberal identity is belied by legal agreements that let migrants die at sea or that send them back to dangerous, exploitative situations in post-Gaddafi Libya or their home countries. Law, she argues, is the tool that enables states to affect control beyond territory, whilst disappearing their responsibility for violence across border assemblages. Through ethnographic fieldwork with migrants, lawyers, policy makers, and humanitarian workers, Santer shows how the law is too often used as an instrument of violence against migrants, who fall outside of conventional structures of legal rights.

Industry Reviews

"A sophisticated and nuanced understanding of how migrants' movements across the Central Mediterranean are conditioned and contained through the EU's strategy of border externalization."-Gregory Feldman, author of, The Subject of Sovereignty: Relationality and the Pivot past Liberalism "A fascinating and original discussion of pushbacks, pullbacks, coastguards, maritime rescue zones, legal gaps, political games, and humanitarian logistics. Santer's experience on NGO rescue boats adds powerful insight, nuance, and affect to the account."-William Walters, editor of, Viapolitics: Borders, Migration, and the Power of Locomotion

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