Resumen de Nador-Melilla Border: Theory and Ethnography
This paper combines personal observations of life in the region of the Nador-Melilla border with the theoretical insights of Wendy Brownʼs work1 on borders and barriers to argue that the Moroccan and Spanish border guards perform sovereign state control as a way of disguising the extent to which the border really functions as a divider of the richer global north from the poorer global south. The tens of millions of dollars poured into bolstering the Nador-Melilla border protects by deflecting or intercepting the perceived causes of economic desperation and violence targeted at EU nation states. In the process, the ever-increasing militarization of the border intensifies its own kind of violence towards the people and the region it crosses over.
