Abstract

Libya in Euro-African Migration Governance: Between Transit Space, Legal Grey Area and Laboratory of Postcolonial Security Engineering

Crispin Katamb A Yav and Emmanuel Isengoma Kipimo

Volume: 15 Issue: 4 2025

Abstract:

This article analyzes the strategic role of Libya within the contemporary Euro-African migration architecture. Situated at the heart of migration routes to Europe, Libya functions simultaneously as a crucial transit territory, a legal grey zone under international law, and a key site for the securitized experimentation of the European Union’s externalized migration policies. In the absence of a stable centralized state since 2011, Libya has become a fragmented space of governance, where migration control is outsourced to a mosaic of actors: local militias, the Libyan Coast Guard, non-governmental organizations, international agencies, and European states. This institutional fragmentation enables the EU to maintain a strategy of border externalization while distancing itself from direct accountability for the resulting human rights violations. The article argues that this configuration reflects a postcolonial logic of migration governance, in which Libya serves as a security laboratory, combining delegated control, the instrumentalization of chaos, and the production of a legal space of exception.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.37648/ijrssh.v15i04.005

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