541136

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EUR0010.1177/0969776414541136European Urban and Regional StudiesCasas-Cortes et al.

European Urban
and Regional

Article Studies

European Urban and Regional Studies

‘Good neighbours make good 1­–21

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DOI: 10.1177/0969776414541136

border externalization and eur.sagepub.com

extra-territoriality

Maribel Casas-Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias and John

Pickles
University of North Carolina, USA

Abstract
In recent years border externalization has emerged as a central policy framework for European Union (EU) border
and migration management. New multi-lateral and bi-lateral agreements on border management have been forged
between the EU, its member states, and its North African neighbours and neighbours-of-neighbours. In the process,
what is meant by the ‘border’ is being transformed with implications for where the border is located, who has
jurisdiction over particular spaces, and how border and migration management is undertaken. This paper analyses
the spatial logics of EU border externalization practices as they are being applied to and in North and West Africa.
It focuses on Operation Seahorse and the transnationally coordinated border control projects and infrastructures
implemented by the Guardia Civil of Spain. Seahorse serves as an implementation case of the Migration Routes
Initiative, an approach toward migration management emphasizing interregional cooperation between designated
origin-transit-destination countries. The initiative is the organizing strategy of the Global Approach to Migration,
the EU’s overarching framework toward migration policy. The paper shows how Seahorse is changing migration
policy and re-articulating Europe’s relations with African countries, producing new bordering processes, creating
new geographies of integration and border management, and redefining the practices of territory, sovereignty, and
extra-territoriality.

Keywords
Border externalization, Euro-Med, migration, routes management, Spain

Our operations act as if the borders of Spain and the
EU were in the territorial waters of Senegal,
Mauritania, Gambia, Cabo Verde and Guinea Bissau.
In practice, the border is there. Guardia Civil
Interview, February 2012
Introduction: extra-territorial
bordering processes
Border externalization refers to a series of processes
of territorial and administrative expansion of a given

Europe closes our borders! Corresponding author:

John Pickles, Department of Geography, University of North
Headline of Le Soleil daily Dakar-based newspaper, Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
June 2006. Email: jpickles@unc.edu

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2 European Urban and Regional Studies 
state’s migration and border policy to third coun-
tries. Such externalization practices have become
more prevalent and systematic in the current geo-
politics of mobility (Nessel, 2009; Ryan and
Mitsilegas, 2010; Taylor Nicholson, 2011), includ-
ing the policy of the Pacific Solution by the
Australian government (Neilson, 2010) and the
growing role of the European Union (EU) as a ‘(b)
ordering actor’ (Bialasiewicz, 2011) with recent off-
shore border security measures implemented as the
external dimension of EU migration policy
(Vaughan-Williams, 2011). In the EU, the primary
focus has been on the geographies of East Europe
linking border externalization with the Enlargement
process (Lahav and Guiraudon, 2000; Lavanex and
Ucarer, 2003; Samers, 2004). More recently, this
focus has expanded to include the Mediterranean
(Aubarell et al., 2009; Gil Araujo, 2011; Van
Houtum, 2010b; Vans Munster, 2006). Initially
framing the phenomenon as a ‘shifting out’ of
European immigration policy (Lavanex, 2006),
focusing on the blurring of ‘inside/outside’ (Del
Sarto and Schumacher, 2005; Di Puppo, 2009) at the
EU institutional level, this literature has increasingly
emphasized the question of extra-territoriality
(Hyndman, 2014; Rijma and Cremona, 2007; Ryan
and Mitsilegas, 2010). For example, specific EU
external bordering processes include military sea
operations led by the EU’s external borders agency,
FRONTEX, such as Hera in West Africa (Jorry,
2007; Vaughan-Williams, 2008); policy endeavors
with neighbouring countries, such as the European
Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), that integrate agree-
ments on mobility and lead to geographies of ‘non-
accession integration’ (Casas-Cortes et al., 2013);
national cases of EU member-state relations with
non EU countries, such as the migration arrange-
ments between Italy and Libya (Bialasiewic, 2012),
between Spain and Morocco (Casas-Cortes et al.,
2011), and with West African countries (Gabrielli,
2011; Gabrielli et al., 2013; Garcia Andrade, 2010).
The paper provides a ‘thick description’ of the
Seahorse operations1 through analysis of policy doc-
uments and interviews with officials involved in
their design and implementation.2 While providing
specific accounts of the changing forms of what
Rumford (2008) has referred to as ‘borderwork’ on
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the part of the EU in its relations with Africa, the
paper also builds upon and seeks to contribute to
broader discussions on current border off-shoring
processes and extra-territoriality. In particular, we
posit that projects such as Seahorse signal the emer-
gence and consolidation of a territorially extended,
increasingly informal and itinerant bordering assem-
blage of institutions, state authorities, and policies
that react to dynamic and turbulent migratory
movements.
Seahorse illustrates how current extra-territorial
bordering processes work. On the one hand, it is
based on the direct involvement of the externalizing
state’s border authorities in other countries’ sover-
eign territories. On the other hand, it requires the
outsourcing of border control responsibilities to
another country’s security forces. These bordering
processes are transforming the meaning and prac-
tices of the border by reworking who, where, and
how those practices of bordering are being enacted.
As a result, the Seahorse project raises a series of
questions about sovereignty and territory, the blur-
ring of inside–outside distinctions, and the legality
of these externalizing practices. By rethinking bor-
ders beyond the dividing line between nation-states
and extending the idea of the border into forms of
dispersed management practices across several
states, we aim to further elaborate the notion of
externalization as an explicit effort to stretch the bor-
der. This territorial and administrative expansion of
the border involves a multiplication of institutions
involved in border management, extending and
reworking conventional performances of sover-
eignty. In this way, the definition of the border
increasingly refers not to the territorial limit of the
state but to the management practices directed at
‘where the migrant is’. One consequence is that bor-
derwork is performing sovereignty and jurisdiction
in extra-territorial ways.
These bordering processes are not only focused
on delimiting state territories but also, and perhaps
mainly, on managing mobility in territorially versa-
tile ways. Here sovereignty is not limited to the con-
trol of a closed and well-defined territory (the
Westphalian state model), but is increasingly con-
cerned and engaged with the flows occurring beyond
territorial boundaries. For Ryan (2010: 3), such
Casas-Cortes et al. 3
forms of border externalization imply following
mobility beyond state territory where:
The immigration control systems of developed states
are today frequently characterised by strategies of
‘extraterritorialisation’. This has involved the rejection
of the model whereby admission decisions are taken at
ports and border crossing points, while the policing of
irregular migration takes place either at the borders or
within the territory. Developed states now increasingly
treat that model as anachronistic, and seek instead to
take immigration control action – both decision-
making and enforcement – prior to an individual’s
arrival on their territory. In some cases, indeed, the
objective appears to be that as much immigration
control activity as possible should take place elsewhere,
either on the territory of other states, or in international
waters, where the presumption is that states lack
jurisdiction.
In this way, what Bialasiewicz (2012) has referred
to as the off-shoring and out-sourcing of border work
reformulates the spaces, jurisdictions, and authori-
ties traditionally associated with migration control
and border management, creating distinct extra-ter-
ritorial institutions, policies, and practices. For
Hyndman (2012: 246), this border work ‘at a dis-
tance’ creates sites for reworking the geopolitical
meaning of territory and the biopolitical government
of populations and mobility:
These grids of intelligibility come to bear on one
another at borders, in detention, during deportation,
and at ports of entry where asylum claims are made.
These examples of embodied statecraft trace geopolitics
‘trickling up’, and capture the intersection of biopolitics
and geopolitics well. The state is once again unsettled
as territory, and as the assumed unit of analysis.
It is at the intersection of biopolitics and geopoli-
tics that these debates on extra-territoriality are pro-
viding a rich understanding of border transformations,
signaling how ‘the state is once again unsettled as
territory’.
Elsewhere we have described the process of bor-
der externalization as the spatial and legal stretching
of the domains of migration control beyond sover-
eign territories, showing how this fluctuating geog-
raphy of borders is redefining our understanding of
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territoriality and changing long-standing practices of
sovereignty (Casas et al., 2011). From Spanish
migration policy, we scaled up our analysis to the
spaces of the ENP, examining how border externali-
zation policies were part of a new and controversial
logic of non-accession integration toward neigh-
bouring non-EU countries (Casas et al., 2013). The
goal of the ENP, in this sense, was the delegation of
border work to neighbouring countries such as
Morocco in exchange for economic and political
integration opportunities.
This paper analyses the spatial logics of EU bor-
der externalization practices in North and West
Africa by focusing on one specific policy – Operation
Seahorse – and its transnationally coordinated bor-
der control projects and infrastructures. Currently
being implemented by the Spanish Guardia Civil,
this operation serves as an implementation case of
the Migration Routes Initiative, an approach toward
migration management emphasizing interregional
cooperation between designated origin-transit-desti-
nation countries. The initiative is touted as the organ-
izing strategy of the Global Approach to Migration
(GAM), the EU’s overarching framework toward
migration policy.
Itinerant geopolitics for governing
mobility
The GAM is a policy framework signed by the EU in
2005 intended to expand the functioning of borders
and migration management far beyond the edge or
the immediate neighbourhood of the EU. In the EU
Commission’s own words:
The Global Approach to Migration (GAM) brings
together migration, external relations and development
policy to address migration in an integrated,
comprehensive and balanced way in partnership with
third countries. It comprises the whole migration
agenda, […] and uses the concept of ‘migratory routes’
to develop and implement policy. (European
Commission, 2007a: 18)
The resulting program of cooperation between EU
member states and third countries to operationalize
‘the Migration Routes Initiative’ involves spreading
4 European Urban and Regional Studies 
checkpoints, migration control experts, development
specialists, labour recruitment policies, and other dis-
positifs of migration management along shifting
migrant itineraries passing through countries denom-
inated as ‘origin, transit and destination’ (European
Commission, 2006: 15, 2007b: 19).
For the European Commission the routes
approach was something distinctly new and while
‘[I]t may seem obvious now to pursue migration
management in this way … the routes strategy was
not evident, it took the EU some time to develop this
approach’ (DG Home Affairs Interview February
2011). In the process, the tracing of migrant itinerar-
ies that emerged from the routes initiative and the
transformation of these itineraries into objects of
policy have resulted in the designation of route seg-
ments into manageable or governable categories,
such as ‘origin, transit and destination countries’
–objects that can be assigned specific goals for gov-
ernmental and state action.
The Seahorse operations emerged in this broader
supra-national context. Spain took the lead within
the EU to institutionalize border externalization ini-
tially in conjunction with Morocco and later also
with Mauritania and other West African states. The
programs are led by Spain and funded by the
European Commission, and they are seen in Madrid
and Brussels as exemplars of transnational border
coordination among ‘origin-transit-destination’
countries to ‘promote regional and interregional
cooperation on the management of migration flows
in the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa’ (AENEAS
and Thematic Programs on cooperation with Third
Countries in the areas of Migration and Asylum
2008 & 2010; EuropeAid, 2010: 12).
Over the past 10 years, the Spanish Guardia Civil
has been working to reconfigure border control and
policing projects on Europe’s southern borders.3
The resulting externalization programs – Project
Seahorse, Seahorse Network, Seahorse Cooperation
Centres, and the even more recent West Sahel project
– are transnational police coordination operations
focused on detecting and stopping irregular migra-
tion from West African countries. Coordinated by
Spain and including the participation of numerous
African and European states as well as EU institu-
tions such as FRONTEX (especially through the
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better known HERA operations), these operations
highlight a shifting spatial approach toward the
management of borders and a distinct spatial strat-
egy in the attempts to channel and manage human
mobility.
These multinational police operations act in states
designated by the EU and member states as ‘origin’
and ‘transit’ countries where migration flows are
either initiating or crossing on their way to ‘destina-
tion’ countries. Seahorse and West Sahel constitute
an advanced implementation case for a border con-
trol strategy called Migration Routes Management.
In the process, novel institutional arrangements and
distinct configurations of border management are
shifting the traditional relationship between state
power and territory (Agnew, 2010; Balibar, 2004;
Cuttita, 2009; Van Houtum, 2010a), leading to an
institutional and legal impasse in the realm of exter-
nal relations giving rise to a series of yet to be
resolved controversies.
SEAHORSE: a prototype of
extra-territorial bordering by a
transnational assemblage?
The set of border externalization projects under the
rubric of Seahorse are part of a broader recent his-
tory of Spanish migration policy. For our current
purposes it is important to note that Spain shifted
from being a net emigration country up to and
throughout the 1980s to start implementing restric-
tive policies to upcoming migration flows when
Spain became a European Community (EC) mem-
ber. Although Spain started as primarily a transit
country for other destinations, immigration
increased as it recovered from the economic and
employment crisis of the early 1990s. From a rela-
tively simple border regime in which the borders
with Morocco roughly mirrored those with Portugal
and France, conditions changed in the 1990s as bor-
der fences were built in the North African enclaves
of Ceuta and Melilla, visa requirements and re-
admission agreements signed in 1991 and 1992
were increasingly enforced, a series of labour and
re-admission agreements were signed with Latin
America and Eastern Europe, and the first drafts of
the SIVE system were developed.4 Since then, the
Casas-Cortes et al. 5

Figure 1.  International Centre for Migration Policy Development i-Map of irregular migration routes.
Source: International Centre for Migration Policy Development.

news media report increasing numbers of incidents
of irregular boat crossings and police patrols, and
developed a frontline mentality in which the border
was reflected as a zone of insecurity and challenge
(Aierbe, 2007; Driessen, 1998; more broadly, see
Jones, 2012).
In the early 2000s, border strengthening measures
and restrictive logics of migration control were
deployed further south to include neighbouring
states. Since 2004, joint patrols between Moroccan
and Spanish gendarmes have been carried out and
forums of coordination on migration policy between
Spanish and Moroccan authorities increased year
after year (Gabrielli, 2011; Spanish Interior Ministry
Interview March 2012). At the same time, Spanish
and EU authorities became convinced of the need for
an even more far-reaching migration and border pol-
icy. The conviction developed that the only effective
policy would be that which follows migration to its
origins (Guardia Civil interview February 2012).
This thinking led to the first drafts of the GAM
strategy at the EU Council meeting at Hampton
Court in 2005 (Council of the European Union,
2005; European Commission, 2005). A spatial ren-
dering of this strategy was visualized by the
International Centre for Migration Policy
Development’s (ICMPD’s) cartographic project of
I-Map as part of its Mediterranean Transit Migration
(MTM) Dialogue initiative (see Casas-Cortes et al.,
2013) (Figure 1).
The 2005 Ceuta and Melilla fence jumps of about
500 migrants and the violence used against them fur-
ther consolidated the conviction that following
migration flows through transit and origin countries
was essential for effective border management pol-
icy (DG Home Affairs interview February 2011;
ICMPD interview September 2011).
After the fence jumps Moroccan police coopera-
tion and repression led to a displacement of migra-
tory flows toward the Atlantic. Potential migrants to
the EU contracted with small fishing vessels (‘cayu-
cos’ in Spanish) from Mauritania and Senegal to

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6 European Urban and Regional Studies 

Table 1.  Chronology of Seahorse operations.

Years Operations Funding & activities Participants

2006–2008 Seahorse Project AENEAS: EURO 2.5 million Spain, Morocco, Mauritania,
Annual Euro-African Police Conferences Cape Verde, Senegal, Italy,
Joint patrols with Moroccan Services Germany, Portugal, France
Training Trainers in Irregular Migration and Belgium.
Develop network of Liaison Officers
2008–2009 Seahorse ANEAS: EURO 2.5 million Spain, Mauritania, Cape
Network Establish stable and secure satellite Verde, Senegal and Portugal.
communication among national contact [Morocco]
points. Coordinated by Centro Palmas.
2009–2010 seahorse THEMATIC PROGRAM, Phase I. Spain, Portugal, Morocco,
Coordination EURO 2.5 million Mauritania, Senegal, Cape
Centers Extension of the network to more Verde, Guinea Bissau,
countries. Physical/informatic node in Gambia.
each area along the maritime routes.
2010– West Sahel THEMATIC PROGRAM, Phase II. Mauritania, Senegal, Malí and
EURO 2 million Níger, Cape Verde, Gambia,
Further develop the coordination Guinea-Bissau, Guinea
initiated in the previous phases, this time Conakry and Burkina Faso.
focusing on Land Routes.
2014– West Sahel II  

Source: Adapted from AENEAS Report 2008, pp.12, 20 and Thematic Program Report 2010, pp.12.

cross to the Canary Islands, a much longer and more
dangerous route than that from Northern Morocco
(European Migration Network (EMN), 2011;
Lutterbeck, 2008). Spanish and EU internal affairs
officials responded with joint operations on the West
African coast to interdict and interrupt these flows
(EMN, 2011), while certain governments in Europe
and West Africa held negotiations to work out broad
strategies for cooperation in migration management
(Guardia Civil interview February 2012, Spanish
Interior Ministry interview March 2012). In 2006
Spain launched ‘Plan Africa’, during which a dozen
new agreements were written with different West
African countries, some of which established the
first official diplomatic relations with individual
countries for many years.5
The unfolding of extra-territorial
and itinerant borders
‘Seahorse Operations’ is the umbrella name to des-
ignate a series of interventions financed by the
European Commission, specifically by Europe Aid,
under its funding programs ‘AENEAS’ (2004–2006)
and the ‘Thematic Programme on Cooperation with
Third Countries in the Areas of Migration and
Asylum’ (first phase 2007–2010 and second phase
2011–2013).6 The operational management of
Seahorse is carried out by the section Jefatura Fiscal
y de Fronteras of the Spanish Guardia Civil.
Table 1 outlines the chronology of the elements
under Seahorse, including their follow up in the
West Sahel project. In their different phases, these
projects have included Níger, Malí, Burkina Fasso,
Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea Conakry,
Mauritania, Cabo Verde, Morocco, Spain and
Portugal. It has also included the longest running
series of operations by the EU border agency
FRONTEX (the HERA operations). Seahorse pro-
grams continue from 2006 to the present, and include
patrol vessels, helicopters, and personnel from par-
ticipant countries, including Italy, France, Iceland,
Luxembourg, and others on a rotating basis. The
expenditures reflected in the table refer only to the
portions dedicated directly to coordination activities
funded by the EU. Other funds for the projects, such

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Casas-Cortes et al. 7

Figure 2.  Border surveillance in the Canary Islands.

Source: Guardia Civil, Jefatura Fiscal y de Fronteras (2008) SIVE: Five Years Monitoring the Border p. 96.

as those for vessels, police salaries, and gasoline,
were funded directly from the Spanish budget,
FRONTEX and other agencies (Guardia Civil
Interview February 2012).
Seahorse operations seek to trace migrant itiner-
aries from their places of origin through their various
key transit nodes and routes. These operations are
the latest step in an evolution in border management:
from police units patrolling small segments of a
coastline to a hi-tech upgrading of surveillance for
large areas of the border, and currently to the novel
efforts to monitor and intercept migrant in other
countries (Figure 2).
According to a member of the General Directorate
of External Relations and Migration Unit part of the
Spanish Ministry of Interior:
Not too long ago, the border used to be patrolled by two
members of the Guardia Civil walking for hours along
the beach, who would be caught by surprise when
spotting ships only a few meters away from the coast.
Nowadays, coastal border patrolling is done by teams
of Guardia Civil personnel seated in rooms with lots of
radar screens and when they see a ship, they click with
the mouse and drag a helicopter, or whatever is needed
to that area. This sends a signal/message to the concrete
unit in the field to intervene in a given exact location.
…On the basis of a Risk Analysis we establish where it
is important to work. For example, we interviewed
[detained migrants and they] tell us ‘well I come from
this place because there was a war where my tribe was
being targeted’ and another says: I came from this place
on foot…On foot!… How?!…and on the basis of that

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8 European Urban and Regional Studies 
Figure 3.  Joint Euro-African patrolling of the West African coast.
Source: Serrano (2010) Seahorse (image 9).
information about places at war and itineraries, we
began to work more in transit and origin. We had to go
to the place where migration began in order to be
efficient. (Spanish Interior Ministry Interview, Madrid
March 2012) (Figures 3 and 4)
The rolling out of Seahorse operations increased
after the fence jumps at Ceuta and Melilla of 2005,
which led to a general acceleration of police plan-
ning on the part of Spanish forces. Within a few
weeks of the first Cayucos arriving in the Canary
Islands, the Spanish Guardia Civil launched a series
of bi-lateral operations beyond Morocco with coun-
tries such as Senegal and Mauritania (operations
Atlantis, Cabo Blanco and Goree) (Boletin Oficial
del Estado, BOE 2006). This was followed by an
accelerated implementation of the Seahorse Project,
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a multi-lateral program, which established the initial
experiments in a multi-partner state series of joint
patrols by border and coast guards, police training
missions, and donations of equipment (EuropeAid,
2007: 12). These were followed by Seahorse
Network, which established a more formal means of
communication among the different participating
gendarme forces via secure satellite networks and
the establishment of ‘local contact points’ (Guardia
Civil, Oficina de Relaciones Informativas y Sociales,
2009). Afterwards, the Seahorse Cooperation
Centres aimed at transforming local contact points
into coordination centers modeled on the Centro de
Coordinacion Regional de Canarias (Guardia Civil,
Oficina de Relaciones Informativas y Sociales,
2009), the main node coordinating border surveil-
lance from the Straits of Gibraltar down to the West
Casas-Cortes et al. 9

Figure 4.  Technical equipment for setting up communication centers in Seahorse partner countries.
Source: Leon (2009, 2012) ‘Seahorse’ Projects: Present and Future (image 20).

African coast and Cape Verde (Ministry of Interior
interview March 2012). The result is a deepening of
institutions and practices that ensure that ‘the com-
munication continues, as do the patrols, to keep the
route closed’ (Guardia Civil interview February
2012, our emphasis). The network of Seahorse
Cooperation Centres comprises 10 units, with one or
two centers in each of the participating countries.7
The different cooperation centers focus on monitor-
ing irregular departures from coastal areas and,
through the communications network, they coordi-
nate interception missions between the different
national forces patrolling the area. The work of these
institutions is praised in some security circles as ‘an
unprecedented experience and laboratory of new
forms of coordinating border control’ (Arteaga,
2007: 1).8
The ‘spatial stretching’ of these externalization
practices is graphically shown when Seahorse is
said to ‘control the maritime border of West Africa,
where Spanish borders and the pan-European
border overlap by 8,500 km’ (Arteaga, 2007: 3,
authors’ translation). This territorial extension of the
borderline is only possible thanks to the collabora-
tion of several transnational actors dispersed across
states. Different cooperation centers focus on moni-
toring irregular departures from coastal areas, and
through the communications network coordinate
interception missions between the different national
forces patrolling the area. This level of coordination
exists after years of training missions and joint
patrols have developed shared protocols for operat-
ing among the gendarme forces of different
countries.
The West Sahel project builds on these multi-
country coordination and police training projects,
but extends the activities of the joint forces from the
sea inland. The Guardia Civil is the coordinating
agency, working with the Mauritanian Gendarmerie,
Senegalese Gendarmerie, Malian Gendarmerie, and
the National Police of Niger (European Commission,
2011b). Annual meetings ‘between Sahel states and

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10 European Urban and Regional Studies 

Figure 5.  Seahorse Mediterranean: the extension of the West African strategy.
Source: Serrano (2010) Seahorse (image 28).

the EU, especially between police and Gendarmerie
corps’ (Oumar, 2011) are organized to facilitate joint
operations. Donations of equipment and the estab-
lishment and improvement of border checkpoints
and joint patrols have already begun in Mauritania,
Senegal, and Mali (EuropaPress, 2012; Guardia
Civil, 2014; Gueye, 2012; Kante, 2012; Le
Renouvateur, 2012; Oumar, 2011).
At the heart of these multi-level operations is a
series of emerging expanded visions for how trans-
border cooperation between European and African
states should be coordinated through joint operational
forces and national-level committees, with the goal
of reframing the geo-political realities and spatial
imaginaries of the border. The differentiation of part-
nering states in this process is crucial. As one officer
of the Guardia Civil indicated while pointing to a
map of the participating states in West Sahel, ‘since
we cannot get the necessary cooperation of North
African states to stop irregular migration we will cut
off the routes from here, i.e., the Sahel and the area of
Mali and Niger]’ (Guardia Civil interview February
2012, our emphasis). As a result, Mali and Niger –
two countries new to the project – emerged as impor-
tant migration hubs for managing migratory routes
and for circumventing the increasingly independent
role of North African states in the process.9
As part of this spreading process of border exter-
nalization, Seahorse and West Sahel have generated
an increasing level of debate, budget studies and EU
evaluations about its possible extension to a possible
Seahorse Mediterranean, which would extend the
lessons learned and models developed in Projects
Seahorse and West Sahel to the entire Mediterranean
region (Figure 5). Such a comprehensive EU border
management plan for the Mediterranean has gained
greater traction and assumed more importance with
the events around and following the Arab Spring

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Casas-Cortes et al. 11
(European Commission, 2011a; Leon,
Serrano, 2010).
Shifting performances of
sovereignty
The EU has praised the results and lessons learned
from Seahorse operations for improving collabora-
tion, information exchange, and dialogue between
EU and third countries on migratory matters
(EuropeAid, 2007: 12, 2010: 12, 20). According to
the Guardia Civil, the broad goal of Seahorse opera-
tions is to ‘intercept’ migrants’ sea vessels en route
from different points in the West African coasts
toward the Canary Islands (EuropeAid, 2007, 2010).
Colonel Cortes Marquez (2010: 3) of the Guardia
Civil suggests that Seahorse is ‘the pioneer and long
term integral project’ on migration control for the
EU with its different levels of coordination, includ-
ing diplomatic and operative ones, aimed at develop-
ing comprehensive multinational cooperation.
According to a representative of the Spanish Interior
Ministry, for the moment, Spain is the first and only
[EU] country that has achieved this operational level
with and within third countries to prevent departures
(interview March 2012). Although other EU member
states have developed advanced border cooperation
arrangements with third countries, the legal ability
for their security forces to act in the territories of a
third state over a period of years is not yet as
developed.10
At the peak of the ‘cayuco crisis’ in 2006, 31,836
‘irregular immigrants’ were ‘intercepted’. Since the
initiation of the Seahorse project the number of
interdictions had declined to 2249 in 2009 (Leon,
2012: 11). According to the Guardia Civil, this trend
has continued over the past two years: ‘The objec-
tive was achieved: starting in 2009, the cayucos no
longer arrive in the Canary Islands, in 2010, not
even one, in 2011 only one, (those who try do so
now, do it more from the area of the Western
Sahara)’ (Guardia Civil interview February 2012).
The decline in the numbers of intercepted migrants,
both en route and in the Spanish territory, has led the
Civil Guard to conclude: ‘The Atlantic route has
been closed’ (Guardia Civil interview February
2012) and Spain’s ambassador to Senegal to claim
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2012; that ‘Migration by the maritime route has disap-
peared’ (Cristina Diaz Fernandez-Gil, quoted in
Kante, 2012).
It is possible that the 2007–2008 recessions and
on-going financial crisis explain the decrease in
migration streams, but the Guardia Civil ‘are con-
vinced that it has been our collaboration [with third
countries] that has closed the route’ (Guardia Civil
interview February 2012). This claim to be able to
‘cut off the route’ is at the heart of a bureaucratic
management understanding of migration control that
asserts its goal while being fully aware of the on-
going migrant streams and their overcoming of the
various obstacles placed in their path. As with the
development of the modern passport, the goal, above
all, is to manage migration; to perform state sover-
eign power as a ‘monopoly over legitimate means of
movement’ (Torpey, 2000: 5), not in competition
with other states, but increasingly in cooperation
with them.
Extra-territorial dilemmas of
mobile sovereignties
Given the international reach of joint operations and
police collaboration, the legal and institutional foun-
dations for the emerging programs remain unclear,
particularly with the near-permanent basing of oper-
ational border control and policing foreign forces in
other states. The legal consequences and underwrit-
ing regulations and laws that allow Spanish and
other EU police forces to regularly patrol West
African coasts and engage in inland Sahelian opera-
tions have yet to be clarified, particularly with gov-
ernmental changes in the region.
Such jurisdictional issues are not totally new;
they are at the root of the legal autonomy of national
embassies in foreign countries, or the permission
given by national authorities for foreign forces to
intervene in local conflicts, or the legal determina-
tions derived to manage condominium territories.11
However, as legal scholars have pointed out (Chueca
et al., 2014; Nessel, 2009; Ryan and Mitsilegas,
2010; Taylor Nicholson, 2011), these new joint juris-
dictions pose serious questions about the status of
international law and responsibility. For example,
what procedures are legal when migrants intercepted
12 European Urban and Regional Studies 
during these patrols? In those cases, where national
policies differ in significant ways, which country has
legal responsibility for processing such fundamental
issues as asylum claims, re-admission agreements,
and refugee status? Who protects their rights under
international law? Who is responsible for migrant
well-being, for what happens to them in incarcera-
tion, their return to their home country (if these are
their fates), and their welfare and rights while in cus-
tody? Is sovereignty being reconfigured to facilitate
this process?
Flexible and informal international
agreements
The first Plan Africa (2006–2008) resulted in a flurry
of diplomatic activity that initiated or deepened dip-
lomatic and legal relations with at least nine West
African countries. ‘Plan Africa I’ was initiated in
2006 and the accords were signed in 2007. Azkona
and Sagastagoitita (2011) have suggested that many
of the official agreements signed under the Plan
Africa framework – while relevant to migration –
were not agreements that stipulated the legal condi-
tions under which Seahorse activities were being
carried out (joint patrols, police training, operations
in national territory, and the disembarking of migrants
in transit to Spain while in African territory).
If the agreements that stipulated the kinds of polic-
ing enacted under Seahorse are not treaty-like agree-
ments, their juridical basis remains unclear. Mauritania
and Senegal are particularly interesting cases. In
Mauritania, the only agreement on migration that
existed in 2006 was one on re-admission. In Senegal,
while agreements were signed in 2006, these dealt
only with the migration of unaccompanied minors
and development (Azkona and Sagastagoitita, 2011).
According to Garcia Andrade (2010: 311–312), the
legal basis for extra-territorial operations remains
questionable and at odds with international law, com-
pounding the need to clarify ‘Spain’s powers to oper-
ate in foreign territorial waters, or to extend its
criminal jurisdiction outside its own territory, and also
the limits to those powers.’
In practice, the legal framework that allowed
Seahorse to be carried out was embedded in a series of
bi-lateral agreements (Spain – third country) called
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Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs). These
‘constitute the basis for the development of joint vigi-
lance of the jurisdictional waters of the corresponding
third country and for cooperation in maritime rescue’
(EMN, 2011: 40). As defined by the Spanish Ministry
of Interior’s International Relations Directorate:
Indeed, it was the flexible and informal character of
these agreements that facilitated the complex operations
developed under Seahorse, allowing the operation to
maintain a low profile and less controversial public face
than would have been possible under international trea-
ties. According to Seron et al. (2011: 37), ‘The MOU’s
are less formal but not less important [than more formal
agreements] in practice. […] The Memorandums are
more flexible, less mediatized and less transparent’.
They are produced by consular and administrative
authorities, usually without the constitutionally required
parliamentary permissions and publication (Cabrera,
2008: 170). Given this flexibility, the MOUs can be
adopted more quickly than other diplomatic agree-
ments. According to Guardia Civil officials:
Spain has Memorandums of Understanding with all of
the involved countries [in Seahorse], although some give
more possibilities than others: the best up until now are
with Mauritania and Senegal. Both allow us to act in their
territorial waters. With Mauritania we have a patrolling
and interception zone of 24 miles from the coast. With
Senegal much more; up to 200 miles. This means that if
we intercept the boat vessel within those limits, those
countries accept that the migrants disembark in their
territory. (Guardia Civil interview February 2012)
For an official in the Spanish Interior Ministry,
agreement on the MOU:
…allows a Spanish police officer acting in that third
country to work as if he were in Spain. It is a ceding of
sovereignty…this is most advanced in Mauritania and
Senegal…the quality of the intervention and its
characteristics depend on the agreements reached with
each country, the more aspects that there has been
consensus on the better the collaboration and the more
effective the control of flows. (Spain Interior Ministry
interview March 2012)
In the view of the Guardia Civil, it is precisely
the ability to act in third countries’ territory and the
ability to intercept and disembark migrants in
Casas-Cortes et al. 13
those countries that has been the recipe to success
of the Seahorse Project (Guardia Civil interview
February 2012).
Ad hoc transnational bordering
assemblages
The ability to operate in third countries and to return
migrants there is not limited to a single nation-state.
The matrix of institutional and legal geographies
embedded in the MOUs extends to a variety of emerg-
ing actors who have become increasingly involved in
the process of border stretching. FRONTEX, the
semi-autonomous agency founded in 2004 to coordi-
nate the control of the EU’s external borders in col-
laboration with all member states, launched a series of
operations on the West African coast named HERA
(Figure 6). HERA operations included the ability to
patrol and intercept migrant vessels, and they have
been described by FRONTEX as its most successful
joint operation (FRONTEX annual report 2009). The
HERA missions are also the longest running
FRONTEX missions to date as well as the first (and
only) FRONTEX operations in waters not bordering
the continental EU. Yet FRONTEX currently does not
have the same level of legal agreements or formal
understandings as the Spanish Guardia Civil to allow
FRONTEX to intervene in foreign territory. Instead,
our research suggests that FRONTEX patrols and
interdictions operate under the MOU of the Spanish
authorities:
For example, in the HERA operations- the MOU [of
Spain] with Senegal specifies the boats, contingents, etc.
that will be operating there, including those of other
countries that FRONTEX has obtained to participate in
the operation, these are detailed in the MOU. Senegal,
for example, does accept the activity of ‘third parties’
such as FRONTEX, but those embarcations, once in the
territory of those countries,…are the responsibility of
Spain, because they are deployed there in the framework
of the agreement/accord/MOU attained with Spain.
Even though it is a FRONTEX operation- it is not
FRONTEX per se that acts. (Madrid, Interview to
Director of the International Relations Department,
Ministry of Interior, March 2012)
The police and gendarme forces of signatory
states are allowed by MOUs to operate as proxies for
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the forces of other states and supra-national bodies
such as FRONTEX. The result is a multiplication of
institutional actors and ad hoc arrangements – an
assemblage – that is particularly well illustrated in
the ways in which the Spanish Ministry of Foreign
Affairs – which is normally the body charged with
formal authority to manage diplomatic work and
cooperation with other countries, including on
migration and border policy – has in recent years
been joined in these duties by other actors who have
begun to play important roles in making interna-
tional working agreements without formal political
authorization. For example, in 2006, the Spanish
Ministry of Interior founded the Directorate General
of External Affairs and Immigration, largely in
response to events such as the cayucos crisis. The
Directorate has facilitated the deployment of Liaison
Officers from the Ministry to other countries, focus-
ing on migration from a security perspective (Boletin
Oficial del Estado (BOE), 2007; EMN, 2011). In
addition, the Guardia Civil, through the Fiscal and
Border Command, has also established for itself a
level of autonomy to create working relations with
similar bodies and police colleagues in third coun-
tries (Guardia Civil interview February 2012).
A political and legal impasse: bordering
processes without accountability
These different foreign affairs actors coordinate
inter-state actions in projects such as Seahorse and
allow agencies to adapt to a shifting policing envi-
ronment without the need for typical public notice
and parliamentary review. The result is not necessar-
ily a confusion of competencies, but a diffusion of
migration and border policy to a wide array of gov-
ernment institutions. At the heart of these coordina-
tion challenges are new practices of collaboration
and collegiality. While formal agreements, technolo-
gies, and institutions were central to the develop-
ment of Seahorse projects, the quality of working
relationships among police forces and governmental
bodies in third countries has been crucial to the suc-
cess and sustainability of operations. While
MOU’s are annual and are renewed…in cases like
Senegal the [working] relationship is so good that they
almost do not need to be renovated or renewed… I
14 European Urban and Regional Studies 

Figure 6.  Joint operation HERA II.

Source: FRONTEX (2012) Beyond Borders, p.64.

should insist that in fact when the co-work relationships
are good, a lot can be done- it is possible to alter or
renew things without an official agreement, within the
framework of the agreements obtained,…and on the
ground with the trust developed with our counterparts,
the necessary work gets done. (Spain Interior Ministry
interview March 2012)
If border externalization in Seahorse accounts for
the ability of Spanish forces and EU security agen-
cies to act upon African state territories, how pre-
cisely is it that this ‘ceding of sovereignty’ can be
negotiated through instruments such as MOUs? How
agreements that have a limited level of international
legal recognition and are not published in official
government publications can shift state/territory
relations in such a way remains an important ques-
tion. The export and mixing of one state’s migration
policy and practices into and with those of another
state whose own policies and practices for handling
migration may be at odds with the ‘externalizing’
state pose serious political challenges on both sides.
In practice, as MOUs and on-the-ground decisions

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Casas-Cortes et al. 15
are implemented without public discussion or formal
state sanction they create de facto and often ad hoc
administrative and legal norms and precedents, a
kind of informalized pragmatic migration and border
management program. Georgi (2010) and Hess
(2010) have described how this informalization of
state practices has led to a depoliticization of migra-
tion issues (including externalization), to a technoc-
ratization of the handling of these issues, and to a
removal of key debates around the control of human
mobility to less formal sites of consultation and
coordination between states and interested actors
(see Georgi, 2010; Hess, 2010; Pecoud and Geiger,
2010). In the case of Seahorse, rather than outsourc-
ing this informalization to an international organiza-
tion (such as the International Organization for
Migration (IOM) or ICMPD), it is the state itself that
is multiplying the agencies, ‘technical agreements’,
and ‘efficient working relationships’ through which
the informalization of externalization occurs.
However, in order for this ad hoc management sys-
tem to stabilize the complex matrix of internal and
external policy, transnational policing operations are
not sufficient; other complementary forms of inter-
national political cooperation are required. In the
process, not only are the institutions themselves
operating with increasingly complex jurisdictions
and coordination challenges about what legally con-
stitutes internal and external actions, but migrants
and citizens are ever more challenged in their efforts
to engage with the resulting absence of migrant reg-
ulations and rights.
There is no alternative to restrictive
migration policy: TINA versus freedom of
circulation
The infamous statement by Thatcher about neolib-
eral policies as the only way to organize economic
relations evokes a parallel logic in border externali-
zation practices that aim at ‘cutting the routes’.
Their main objective is to ‘stop migrants’ who move
outside the current visa policies of the EU. Despite
the rigidities of the Black/White list or Positive/
Negative list for countries whose citizens require a
visa to travel to the EU (Van Houtum, 2010a) prac-
tices such as Seahorse seem to say ‘TINA’ (there is
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no alternative). Despite the broader goals of the
GAM approach, emphasizing a holistic understand-
ing of migration based in three main pillars (irregu-
lar migration, labour migration, and development),
in practice, what is at work is a restrictive model of
migration management: avoid movement tout court.
Security reasons remain the main rationale of these
projects focusing on ‘intersection of irregular
migrants’ to return them back to countries of origin
or transit. Moreover, these overly militarized opera-
tions, funded controversially enough, by a develop-
ment agency such as EuropeAid, work with a
limited conception of mobility, with little or no
attention to intra-African mobility. The reduction of
‘routes’ to ‘EU bound routes’ has meant that other
forms of mobility such as intra-African migrations
are largely ignored or rendered as ‘paths to Europe’.
While Kleist (2011) has shown that the majority of
the migrations in the African continent do remain
within the continent, except for the growing recog-
nition that some transit routes (particularly
Morocco) are increasingly becoming destination
points as further transit opportunities are closed,
South–South movements are largely invisibilized in
Seahorse and other routes management strategies
(DG Home Affairs, 2011; Westh Olsen, 2011).
This issue has even broader geopolitical implica-
tions, given the central commitment of ECOWAS
(the Economic Community of West African States)
to the free circulation of people in the region. To this
end, ECOWAS has a ‘Free Movement of Persons
Directorate’ in its administrative structure, a Protocol
on Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence
and Establishment, and the third Annual ECOWAS
Expert Meeting of Heads of Immigration explicitly
directed its member states to ‘reduce the number of
[migration] check points and cases of harassment’ in
order to facilitate regional migration and integration
and the ‘attainment of a borderless ECOWAS com-
munity of people’ (Federal Ministry of Information,
Republic of Nigeria, 2010).
Re-articulating border practices
and imaginaries
According to its designers and implementers,
Seahorse represents one of the most advanced
16 European Urban and Regional Studies 
examples of the Migration Routes Management
strategy currently being deployed by the EU. When
working at their best, Seahorse operations are indic-
ative of the broader transformations in border con-
trol and migration management emerging in the EU
and neighbouring areas. It fosters a certain kind of
international cooperation and regional integration
based on extra-territorial practices, and a prolifera-
tion of the institutional actors engaged in these re-
articulated forms of bi- and multi-lateralism. In the
process, responsibilities and powers to conduct bor-
derwork are being distributed in increasingly casual,
ad hoc, and yet stable ways. Formal agreements are
being supplemented with commissions, working
groups, and a wide variety of informal ‘working
relationships’ which, in turn, stabilize a complex
assemblage of transnational and extra-territorial bor-
der arrangements focusing on routes and migratory
journeys. Such mobile and extra-territorial border-
work has become an adaptive process that responds
to the fluid and turbulent movement of migration
(Casas-Cortes et al., in press).
The ‘border’ as such is less the contour of a sov-
ereign administrative unit and rather a reactive pro-
cess that, having defined its object as mobility,
responds to the autonomy of migratory movements
(De Genova et al., 2014).
Hyndman (2012) has called for attempts to trace
the contours of ‘bordering’ by following a particular
state’s practice that enacts borders upon the bodies
of mobile migrants or those suspected of migration.
Our research points to how borders are becoming
mobile discontinuous nodes of surveillance and
policing across multiple territories and jurisdictions.
The resulting borderscapes are more labile, extended,
extra-territorial and itinerant. Regardless of the
national boundaries, or in some cases regardless of
even the formal legislative sanction of the participat-
ing sovereign states, these bordering practices are
performing new claims of sovereignty, multiplying
institutions and actors, and asking governmental
agencies to operate under extended, but uncertain,
legal powers. The resulting itinerant b/ordering
assemblages challenge the Westphalian correspond-
ence of state sovereignty and territory.
In the case of operations such as Seahorse, the
central importance of borders is not only as a
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re-defining of national sovereignty, but the ‘border’
is also an instrument to manage, channel, control, or
stop labour migrations. While border externalization
and projects such as Seahorse are linked to national
and state projects – for example Spanish Migration
policy or the strengthening of the Mauritanian state’s
ability to patrol its border – their effects (and perhaps
their intent) is to create a broader coordinated pro-
cess and a corresponding series of institutions for
managing territory and space.
The deployment of coordinated mobile bordering
mechanisms by Seahorse and its counterparts acts as
a prototype for upcoming extra-territorial efforts. As
a policy tool and as a new communications technol-
ogy, the rolling out of the Seahorse prototype
depends on diffusing: (i) a specific way of framing
migration and responses to it; (ii) a re-territorializa-
tion of borders and border-work by states as a flexi-
ble and transnational activity; and (iii) a distinct set
of norms and institutions for carrying out foreign
policy marked by distinct bureaucratic actors (the
foreign relations office of the Interior Ministry),
informal agreements (MOUs), and the creation of
fluid and collegial working relationships among pol-
icy implementers. In this sense, the old adage ‘good
fences make good neighbours’ can be inverted to
‘good neighbours make good fences’.
This transnational and mobile bordering is coor-
dinated in the example of Seahorse through regular
police conferences, through communications struc-
tures on cross-border movements, joint patrols and
police training, shared equipment, and other political
processes of coordination, such as the intergovern-
mental Rabat Process, creating a common vocabu-
lary and set of technologies. In the meantime, what
we mean by national jurisdiction and sovereignty are
being reworked in important ways and herein lies an
important tension. This transnational and mobile
borderwork in the expanding contact zones between
Europe and Africa is redefining, demarcating, and
re-assigning what kind of mobilities there are for
migrants and their communities, often heightening
the already precarious nature of irregular migration.
Border externalization practices such as Seahorse,
based on informal agreements and collegial working
relationships between different state-based security
actors, are creating a distinct level of international
Casas-Cortes et al. 17
migration and border policy and practice – a level
whose public accountability seems for the time being
very limited, due both to the informality of this form
of foreign relations as well as to the security nature
of the implementing organizations. Furthermore, the
deepening of the Seahorse projects (from project to
network to cooperation centers) and the spread of the
Seahorse model (to the West Sahel and perhaps to
the Mediterranean) signal not only a growing accept-
ance of a form of international migration policy
implementation that is not very publically accounta-
ble, but also the acceptance of a highly restrictive
way of framing migration questions in general.12
Finally, in regards to the overall discussion
around the creation of an extra-territorial level of
migration management untethered from (although
not replacing) national boundaries, we must ask
whose extra-territoriality? The development of the
Atlantic Seahorse, West Sahel, and Mediterranean
Seahorse, and the growing role of EU agencies such
as FRONTEX and policy frameworks such as GAM,
is leading to an extra-territorial expansion of an EU
and member state-driven migration policy framed in
terms of security concerns and simplifying complex
migratory and population movements (‘transit
migration’ toward the EU). Nonetheless, intra-Afri-
can mobility is growing, in part in response to
regional protocols for the ‘free circulation of peo-
ple’ (ECOWAS, 2010). How these protocols and
diplomatic attempts articulate with the restrictive
practices of Seahorse operations and their expan-
sion into the West Sahel have yet to be addressed.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the following for their willingness to be
interviewed: the Fiscal and Borders Command of the
Guardia Civil of Spain in Madrid, February 2012; the
Directorate General of International Relations and
Migration of the Spanish Interior Ministry in Madrid,
March 2012; the Directorate General of Home Affairs of
the European Commission in Brussels, February 2011;
and the International Center for Migration Policy
Development in Vienna, September 2011.
Funding
This paper is based on research supported by the US
National Science Foundation under BCS GSS Award
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#1023543. The opinions, findings, conclusions, or any
recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National
Science Foundation.
Notes
  1. Throughout this paper we refer to a series of different
but interrelated projects as ‘Seahorse’ or the ‘Seahorse
operations’. These include ‘Seahorse Project’; ‘Seahorse
Network’; and ‘Seahorse Cooperation Centers’, as well
as the extension of the Seahorse model to the ‘West
Sahel Project’ and ‘Seahorse Mediterraneo’. These are
all distinct phases in the funding documents of the EU,
constituting a progression of one specific model and
strategy of border security.
  2. Investigating EU border externalization led us beyond
the conventional sites where borders are normally
fenced and patrolled, conducting multi-sited research
in Brussels, Vienna, London, Zaragoza, Madrid, and
Rabat.
 3. The first comprehensive border surveillance sys-
tem in Europe was inaugurated in 2003. Led by the
Guardia Civil, this EU-funded program is called
SIVE (Integrated System of External Surveillance).
 4. SIVE (Sistema Integrado de Vigilancia Exterior) is a
combination of fixed and mobile radar stations and
remote sensing equipment along the Spanish coast in
order to detect and interdict irregular border traffic
(see http://www.guardiacivil.es/es/prensa/especiales/
sive).
  5. ‘While the first Plan Africa was in effect, 2006–2008,
Spain developed intense activity, signing twelve new
agreements with West African States. Six of them are
cooperation agreements in migration matters, known
as ‘new generation agreements’ (ANG in Spanish).
Although they comprise diverse aspects of migration,
their focus is, in practice, migratory control. On top
of those ANG’s three agreements were signed regard-
ing some concrete aspect of migratory policy and
another three agreements on development coopera-
tion.’ (Azkona and Sagastagoitita, 2011: 54, authors’
translation)
  6. This section is based on the detailed analysis of pol-
icy documents and interview material from various
officials involved in the implementation to show how
the Seahorse program was conceived and continues
to work on the ground.
 7. A third Seahorse center in Spain, apart from the
ones in Canary Islands and Madrid, was recently
inaugurated in Algeciras: http://www.elmundo.es/
elmundo/2012/01/31/andalucia/1328014331.html.
18 European Urban and Regional Studies 
  8. For a further description of the Coordination Center
in Canarias see Arteaga (2007), who offers a posi-
tive evaluation of the center as a leading example of
multi-country and multi-level coordination in migra-
tion management. He describes the different units
coordinated by the CCRC in the following manner:
‘Amongst the multiple authorities to be coordinated
we find police corps placed in the Foreign Service,
aero naval units of the Armed Forces and FRONTEX,
police corps from the State Security Forces and Corps,
fiscal units from the Customs Surveillance Service
and a broad range of services put under the charge of
the State Society for Maritime Security and Rescue,
the Regional Authority of the Canary Islands, and the
Red Cross among other that gave humanitarian assis-
tance.’ (Arteaga, 2007: 3, authors’ translation).
  9. Current political conflict in Mali and the greater Sahel
region has created delays in implementation and may
force a reconsideration of their extension to Mali
entirely. However, given the current plans for mili-
tary intervention in North Mali and the initial organi-
zation of EU border control missions in Niger (led
by the Guardia Civil) and Libya (led by FRONTEX)
(Le Senegalais, 2012) the eventual extension of EU/
Spanish border management techniques and net-
works into the region seems likely.
10. Italy has developed intensive cooperation with
Libyan authorities, for example, although with lim-
ited operability in Libyan territory (Bialasiewicz,
2012). Important border training missions have
occurred between Italy, Libya, and other neighbour-
ing states (Niger and Algeria in particular) through
the ACROSS SAHARA I & II programs as well as
the Sahara-MED program (EuropeAid, 2007, 2010),
although these have been of limited duration. These
arrangements were obtained under the former Libyan
regime, although it appears that these arrangements
are being re-negotiated with the new authorities.
11. In international law a condominium is a political
territory over which two or more sovereign states
have agreed upon sovereignty, but without divid-
ing the territory into national zones. Perhaps the
most famous condominium is Pheasant Island in the
River Bidassoa, which is a condominium of France
and Spain. More recently, Brcko has emerged as a
condominium district of Republika Srpska and the
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovia.
12. Related to the question of accountability is a further
question about the regional and local contexts where
this migration policy cooperation is a taking place.
While the border management coordination and
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policing may take place at a transnational level among
a variety of agencies, they are occurring in highly con-
tentious national contexts. It remains a question how
the strengthening of a state’s abilities to patrol, man-
age, and demarcate its own border through projects
such as Seahorse may affect existing local conflicts
related to state boundaries. The on-going conflict
over Western Sahara, clashes in southern Mauritania
and resulting population movements toward Senegal
in the late 1980s, the continuing separatist demands
of the Casamance region of Senegal, combined with
repeated recent instances of Tuareg revolt and seces-
sion attempts, as well as the current military opera-
tions in Mali, indicate the political importance of these
border issues locally, although for different reasons
than those that concern the EU or Spanish Ministry of
the Interior. Currently, there is little indication that EU
or Spanish authorities are seriously assessing the risks
that border externalization policies may exacerbate
such local border tensions (Guardia Civil interview
February 2012; European External Action Service
interview January 2011)
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