Unauthorized Crossings of the Strait of Gibraltar in the Arts

This book is the first single-author English-language monograph to comprehensively analyze cultural representations of unauthorized migration across the Strait of Gibraltar, with a special focus on literature, photography, and installation and performance art from Morocco, Spain, Gibraltar, South Africa, and Colombia. The Strait is a bi-continental micro-region and global geopolitical crossroads that links the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Beginning in the late s, it also became the first major crossing point for people on the move without authorization between Africa and Europe—a movement that prefigured the large-scale seaborne migrations that have been taking place across the central and eastern Mediterranean since the Middle Eastern and North African uprisings of In response to this development, the Strait was transformed into the first segment of the securitized maritime border zone with which Fortress Europe tries to keep out autonomous travelers who attempt to reach European territory by boat.This study of artistic and literary responses to the Strait’s epochal borderization enhances our understanding of the situations faced by the many thousands who have attempted to cross the Strait and kindred sea passages ever since the Cold War’s demise. It also illuminates how defiant journeys and state responses to them have transformed the waters and shores of a key node in the global flow of people, vessels, resources, and capital.