In his book, Maurizio Albahari argues that the Mediterranean is one of the deadliest borders in the world today and endeavors to reveal the institutional framework that contributes to this phenomenon. To illumine what he calls the “puzzles and oxymora of our times” (p. 14), Albahari takes a critical look at the European and Italian immigration regimes that lead to the confinement of refugees and undocumented migrants, as well as to the lack of procedural safeguards afforded them. After a decade of ethnographic research and documentary analysis, he argues that the deaths of over 25,500 people at the borders of the European Union are neither the result of ill-fated accidents nor acts of God or of nature. Rather, he contends, they are “crimes of peace.”
According to Albahari, crimes of peace come about from “methodical negligence,” “ill-conceived policies,” and “well-oiled criminal networks”; they spring from such things as “structural injustices of deprivation, dispossession, and environmental ‘disasters’” (p. 22). Employing “crimes of peace” as an analytical concept that refers to the administrative, political, and ideological work of maintaining a migration regime that is, among other things, unjust, violent, and unequal, he maintains that such crimes demand analytical interrogation, rather than moral certainty. Therefore, he claims that he is not seeking to place guilt since he is not proposing “a scholarship that judges, sanctions, or excuses anyone.” Instead, his aim is to reveal the “global proliferation of morally imbued borders” and to highlight “layers of complexity” by explicating events and situations that convey legal and political responsibilities (p. 24).
Given this aim, Albahari presents a number of nuanced juxtapositions in Crimes of Peace. One that is central to the book is the military-humanitarian continuum that is established along the border. As he illustrates, borders and border surveillance are both parts of the European security apparatus but also “a threshold of salvation”—places where refugees are sheltered, housed, and potentially integrated (p. 20). That is, migrants deal with both security and humanitarian agents on the border. Through interviews as well as extensive observation in migrant reception centers, the author provides a nuanced depiction, showing how reception centers are both places of confinement—with “cement courtyards, aluminum fences, automated gates, concrete walls, and omnipresent video surveillance”—as well as places of reception, refuge, and assistance (p. 55). Accordingly, it is on the border where migrants are provided with necessary assistance, but also where they are subjected to stigma (p. 56).
Further illustrating the humanitarian-policing nexus, Albahari points to rescue operations, which are presented as both military and humanitarian efforts—both rescue and pushback operations: That is, the border has both “batons and stretchers, guns and surgical masks, military trucks and ambulances, gates and hospitality, fences and food, … smugglers and victims, refugees and trespassers” (p. 111). Albahari also argues that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that assist with rescue operations or serve at reception centers on the border are similarly dichotomous in scope. They often house, feed, process, and detain arrivals. In short, NGO actors work “for” and “as” the state and serve not only humanitarian ends but also “policing” ones (p. 54).
Through his extensive ethnographic work, Albahari provides numerous accounts of the heart-wrenching tragedies—the crimes of peace—suffered by those attempting to cross the Mediterranean. He argues that because migration has been criminalized and the seas militarized, shipwrecks should not be thought of as accidents caused by unseaworthiness, bad weather, or ruthless smugglers. To view tragedies in this way allows government officials to ignore important questions regarding access to asylum, restrictive immigration laws, and international relations. Instead, such tragedies should be seen as the result of negligence and purposefulness; they are the product of governmental policies, decisions, and choices, according to Albahari.
To illustrate this point, the author shares several stories. One is of Italian fishermen who, after a 1996 Christmas shipwreck, routinely hauled shoes, clothes, and even body parts up with their nets, but simply tossed the corpses back into the sea rather than report them to authorities. Another is of Tunisian fishermen who, after discovering a deflating dinghy in distress, decided to abide by the law of the sea and rescue those on board, bringing them to the closest safe port in Italy. Instead of being hailed as heroes for the rescue, the fishermen were initially arrested and charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigration. With the fishermen facing detention, negative media coverage, the sequestration of their boats, and financial harm (among other things), Albahari argues, it is understandable why fishing boats sometimes avoid rescues, and also why fishermen return body parts to the sea. It is such “legal and mundane concerns [that] prevent bystanders from more direct involvement” (p. 105).
These and many other dramatic examples of crimes of peace abound in the book, making a strong case for the author’s analytical concept. These strengths notwithstanding, however, some political scientists will find the book’s obvious advocacy problematic. While Albahari claims that he is not seeking to place guilt in writing this work, the book’s terminology (“[b]order carnage is ongoing,” for example [p. 25]), and the emotional appeals made to the reader—such as when he states that he wishes he “could write these pages on a gigantic transparent sheet, which [he] would then hold vertically while [we] see the immediate, urgent reality through it” (p. 25)—do appear to place blame, if not guilt, on policymakers, coast guard officials, bureaucrats, members of nongovernmental organizations, Italian politicians, and ordinary citizens, among others.
Secondly, while Albahari seeks to explicate events and situations that convey legal and political responsibility, he offers no policy prescriptions—no alternatives—to the policies that have contributed to crimes of peace in the Mediterranean. What of NGOs? Should they refuse to provide services to persons at closed reception centers (as recently occurred in Greece, for example), and what effect does this have on already-suffering refugees and migrants? What about states’ and citizens’ sincere concerns for security? How should states more properly balance the security-humanitarian nexus? And, finally, what of his argument that there are no unintended consequences in national politics and international relations—only sovereign priorities and political choices? Others (see, for example, Virginie Guiraudon and Christian Joppke’s [2001] Controlling a New Migration World) would beg to differ.
Finally, for readers of the book who are not anthropologists, a clearer explanation of the author’s research design and methodology would have been welcomed. Greater attention to defining and explicating anthropological jargon—terms such as artisanal ethnography, an open-source intelligence anthropological approach, biopolitical processes, and others—would have further strengthened this thought-provoking book. Still, such limitations notwithstanding, Crimes of Peace is a must-read for all who are interested in one of the largest refugee movements since the end of World War II. It should be read both by those who advocate for greater humanitarianism and by others who call for greater security on the border.
