Borderwork in the Grey Zone: Everyday Resistance within European Border Control Initiatives in Mali

EU externalised border control has become a bone of contention in EU–Malian relations. Based on fieldwork among Malian
state officials, migrant associations and EU staff in Bamako, the article explores readmission agreements and border police collaboration. By examining the often-underestimated agency of national authorities, the article shows how EU border interventions aimed at producing control and confinement deep within the EU–African borderlands are contested and shaped by Malian state actors’ ‘borderwork’ (Rumford 2008). It argues that the contentious border politics produce ‘hidden acts’ through which moments of ‘sovereign exception’ (Agamben 1998) are produced in the ‘grey zone’ (Feldman 2019) of Europe’s externalised migration–security apparatus. Meanwhile, in the grey zone state actors’ everyday tactics of resistance are constitutive of new forms of sovereignty that is agency enabling.