Rings in the water: Felt externalisation in the extended EU borderlands

Ripple effects of European border externalisation have transformed everyday life in the Tunisian coastal town of Zarzis. Building on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among artisanal fishermen, and actors involved in two migrant cemeteries in Zarzis, the article provides an understanding of entangled processes and of how violence and death co-exist in the externalised borderlands of the EU.  And like rings in the water, these rippling effects impact not only people (fishermen) but also the environment (marine life) and space (migrant cemeteries).

DIIS researcher Ahlam Chemlali develops and proposes the concept of ‘felt externalisation’. ‘Felt externalisation’ is when policies become intimate, and beyond the physical, become lived and experienced on a granular level. Felt externalisation transcends the physical and visible and inhabits the mind and emotional life of its objects. The fishermen’s experiences of trauma, fear and anxiousness are a felt externalisation. While studies on externalisation usually study the policies and processes – macrostructures from above, the concept ‘felt externalisation’ is an attempt to turn it around and instead study it from below, the microlevel encounters and experiences.

The research paper further reveals how Tunisian fishermen at sea are attacked, kidnapped, extorted and killed by the Libyan coast guard. A coast guard enabled, supported, trained, and equipped by the EU. Chemlali further reveals how the Tunisian fishermen are de facto cut off from their productive fishing zones, and how the SAR zone and rebordering of maritime borders are impacting marine life and causing environmental degradation, pushing young fishermen in the hands of smugglers. Chemlali concludes by showing how all these forces have come together and transformed this small fishing community in the southern sphere of the Mediterranean Sea into a ‘death-world’.