Through the border : Senegalese gendered migration to Spain (2005-2010)

This dissertation provides a geopolitical and gender analysis of the border that was built between 2005 and 2010 to stop unwanted migration from Senegal to Spain. I combine an investigation of institutional practices and of the experiences of migrants who crossed (or tried to cross) that border. This work constructs a genealogy of the Spanish - Senegalese border, including the obstacles placed to stop unwanted migration and the strategies adopted by migrants to enter EU space. To do so I draw from three bodies of literature: scholarship on migrant transnationalism, critical geopolitics, and feminist political geography. This analysis is built on extensive primary research complemented by secondary data, including life histories, participant observation, and interviews with migrants, members of their transnational social networks, former smugglers, service providers, supra-state organizations, state bureaucrats, and state security forces, as well as official statistics, legislation, and media accounts. I contend that gender is an articulating factor of international migrations. In the case of contemporary Senegalese migration to Spain, I argue that the re-enforcement and militarization of the border was disproportional to the number of migrants using land and sea routes. These efforts were partly responsible for a decrease in illegal migration by land and sea after 2007, but migration by air and secondary migration from other countries of the EU (which represent the majority of the migrant flow) was unaffected. Despite the obstacles placed to stop it, the migration of Senegalese continued and even increased during this period, mainly thanks to the support that transnational social networks provided to migrants. The main consequence of the preventive and defensive anti-immigration measures adopted was a re-territorialization of the EU border. The findings suggest the importance of integrating a variety of scales in the study of the processes, actors, and mechanisms involved in the territorial re-definition of ...