Military-humanitarianism

This chapter accounts for the geographies of military-humanitarianism: the spaces through which it operates and, in turn, changes; and the spatial transformations it has undergone in the Mediterranean “of” migrants. Building on the analysis of two recent Mediterranean scenes—the criminalization of acts of solidarity through military-humanitarianism and the EU warfare against migrant smuggling networks—we study military-humanitarianism as a spatial process, where neither the “military” nor the “humanitarian” predicaments of this mode of intervention are taken at face value. The chapter develops an approach to the study military-humanitarianism as a flexible technology for migration control. We conclude by sketching a critical geography research agenda on military-humanitarianism that would take into account the different forms of capitalisation over migrants that are at stake in the humanitarian and military government of refugees.