L’ÉRIQA vous convie au lancement du livre The Gates of the Sea: Migration and Rescue at the Edges of Europe, publié récemment par notre membre Luna Vives, professeure au département de géographie de l’Université de Montréal. La discussion sera animée en anglais par Mostafa Henaway, organisateur communautaire au Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants de Montréal. Le lancement aura lieu à la libraire De Stiil à 19h.

Ouvert à toutes et tous.

À propos de l’autrice: Luna Vives est professeure agrégée au Département de géographie de l’Université de Montréal. Ses recherches portent sur le durcissement des politiques migratoires aux frontières européennes et nord-américaines, ainsi que sur les effets de ces politiques sur les personnes migrantes en situation de vulnérabilité.

English version

ÉRIQA invites you to the launch of the book The Gates of the Sea: Migration and Rescue at the Edges of Europe, recently published by our member Luna Vives, professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Montreal. The discussion will be moderated in English by Mostafa Henaway, community organizer at the Montreal Centre for Immigrant Workers. The launch will take place at the De Stiil bookstore at 7 p.m.

Open to everyone.

About the book: The Gates of the Sea examines the paradoxes of maritime search and rescue at Europe’s frontier. Focusing on Spain, Luna Vives explores how governments have redefined maritime rescue systems towards border control. Unlike other European countries, Spain chose not to assign this responsibility to a militarized state security force, but to a civilian agency whose workers often liken themselves to firefighters of the sea: they are dedicated to saving lives, not enforcing borders. Caught between their duty to protect life at sea and government efforts to transform them into border enforcers, rescuers have pushed back, primarily through their anarcho-syndicalist union, the CGT. Committed to border abolition and international solidarity, the rescuers’ struggle positions them within a global movement of resistance to the politics of organized abandonment along the external borders of the European Union. Vives’ revelatory, deeply researched and accessible book grapples with both state methods of control and containment and, crucially, ways in which solidarity activism can thrive in unexpected places.

About the author: Luna Vives is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Montreal. Her research focuses on the tightening of migration policies at European and North American borders, as well as the effects of these policies on migrants in vulnerable situations.