Nations, Shadow Borders, and the Production of Gender in the Present

Abstract

How do borders, real and imagined, influence conceptions of gender? This paper answers this question by analyzing written materials produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, namely “The Secret Prison that Keeps Migrants Out of Europe.” This is achieved by making sense of how bordering tactics impact people fleeing their homes in Africa on their dangerous journey to Europe. In doing so, it engages an intersectionality lens when analyzing the processes and consequences of externalized border technologies that emerge from laws, surveillance, and ransoms. Finally, this paper adds new perspectives to migration and border scholarship by specifying how African border-making are places and processes that reproduce gender.