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 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. The felt and lived embeddedness and simultaneity of
otherwise separately viewed policy issues is revealed through
a focus on intersecting processes coming together in one place.
The article analyses the ripple effects of these policies on third
actors (the fishermen), the environment (marine life), and space
(two migrant cemeteries) in Zarzis. The article unpacks how
externalisation translates into human rights abuses, environmental
crisis, and death, and how these are distinctly intertwined.
I propose the concept ‘felt externalisation’ as
a theoretical contribution which ties together the three core
themes: the actors, the environment, and the space. In doing so,
the article brings together three different, yet interrelated
dimensions of border externalisation that are still largely understudied
in the literature. By looking at externalisation from
a spatial and geographically situated angle the paper makes
not only an empirical but also a conceptual and theoretical
contribution, by seeking to expand the empirical basis but
also the very meaning of externalisation and its effects, in the
extended EU borderland.