Humanitarianism, (De)politicization and Migration Control

The literature highlighted the role played by humanitarian organizations in perpetuating institutional categorizations that reproduce hierarchies on the grounds of protection and humanitarian logic and criteria. As the entitlement to rights is closely linked to migrants’ legal status (which is basically defined by national policies and international rules), humanitarian actors contribute to depoliticize the current border regime when they uncritically reproduce states categories and filtering processes. Other scholars emphasized humanitarian organizations’ role in contributing to counter bordering processes by supporting migrants, by claiming for their rights, by acting as watchdogs of states and by claiming for more openness. Particularly, recent literature argued that humanitarianism of grassroots groups is able to politicize the EU border and migration regime and to challenge both the mainstream humanitarianism and the neoliberal governance of migration. While the literature mainly described mainstream humanitarianism as complicit of governments and migration control, this book tries to go deeper in the understanding of the concrete forms and limits of its attempts to challenge and transform the current status quo towards a more egalitarian order.