Fixed Lines, Permanent Transitions. International Borders, Cross-Border Communities and the Transforming Experience of Otherness

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Fixed Lines, Permanent Transitions. International Borders, Cross-Border Communities and the Transforming Experience of Otherness

Giacomo Orsini, Andrew Canessa, Luis Gonzaga Martínez del Campo & Jennifer Ballantine Pereira

To cite this article: Giacomo Orsini, Andrew Canessa, Luis Gonzaga Martínez del Campo & Jennifer Ballantine Pereira (2017): Fixed Lines, Permanent Transitions. International Borders, Cross-Border Communities and the Transforming Experience of Otherness, Journal of Borderlands Studies, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2017.1344105 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2017.1344105

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjbs20 JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2017.1344105

Fixed Lines, Permanent Transitions. International Borders, Cross-Border Communities and the Transforming Experience of Otherness Giacomo Orsinia, Andrew Canessaa, Luis Gonzaga Martínez del Campoa and Jennifer Ballantine Pereirab,c aDepartment of Sociology, University of Essex Colchester, UK; bGibraltar Garrison Library, 2 Library Ramp, Gibraltar (GI), UK; cInstitute for Gibraltar and Mediterranean Studies, University of Gibraltar, Europa Point Campus, Gibraltar (GI), UK

ABSTRACT Beyond their most physical manifestations as fences, gates and border guards, international borders are social constructs experienced by individuals as they traverse them. Anchored on the ground as relatively fixed lines, international borders transform through time as the crossing is alternatively allowed or hindered depending on changing relations between countries. This is especially true given the social, cultural, and economic structures generated on either side of the border. In this article, we draw on three studies conducted since 2008: Melilla and Morocco, Lampedusa and Tunisia, Gibraltar and Spain. Looking at the recent history of local cross-border relations, this work analyzes how the tightening of previously porous borders altered existing sociocultural, economic and political relations on both sides of the frontier. As Lampedusa and Melilla became points on Europe’s external border, the almost osmotic cross-border relations previously experienced by locals diminished significantly: profound changes challenged their perception of identity and otherness. Similarly, throughout the 20th century, the Gibraltar/ Spain border operated both as a bridge across related communities, and as an almost insurmountable barrier when it was closed (1969–1982). This work explores the many ways in which borders transform local linguistic, cultural and economic constellations of neighboring “Others.”

Introduction We are not worried by “them.” They are not even “them”: they are some of us … People here know Tunisians better than Italians. We are all the same people!1 International borders today are often perceived as a natural and universal constituent of the global social, political and cultural spaces we inhabit. As such, borders are frequently imagined as fixed, with pre-existing lines marking the separation of nation-states’ territories. Nevertheless, international borders established over previously unseparated

CONTACT Giacomo Orsini [email protected]; [email protected] Dr, Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Office 6.322, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK © 2017 Association for Borderlands Studies 2 G. ORSINI ET AL. territories have a history—sometimes a very recent history; despite their relatively fixed spatiality, the working of borders has transformed dramatically through time (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). Given this ambivalent nature—fixed and yet constantly changing—borders generate “otherness” by demarcating “the parameters within which identities are conceived, perceived, perpetuated and reshaped” (Newman 2003, 15). Ethnic and sociocultural boundaries are thus closely related to the functioning of international borders. Created to organize the geographical and political space inhabited by people, international borders have ended up shaping our perceptions of the sociocultural space we inhabit. Consequently, the constant evolution of the functioning of border controls and checks directly transforms social life and does so even more profoundly in local cross-border communities. To explore the geographical fixity of borders together with their management, which we suggest generates social differentiation, this article concentrates on three significant and contested Mediterranean borderlands. They are all small communities living some distance away from their corresponding “motherlands.” Yet, they are also communities whose neighbors are, according to contemporary discourse, profoundly “other” but were not so in the relatively recent past. They thus provide a heuristic tool to examine how international borders influence social life. The aim is to illustrate (a) how both the tightening and opening of borders play a role in changing the perceived identities and geographies of cross-border communities and, (b), how social proximity can be transformed into radical difference in a short space of time. Located on the southern periphery of Europe, the cases of the Italian island of Lampe- dusa, the Spanish exclave of Melilla, and the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar are here examined. Whilst Gibraltar is connected to a Spanish hinterland and Melilla to Morocco, Lampedusa is an island in the Mediterranean. Given their small size and their dependency on imports for supplies and resources, the dynamics informing cross- border interdependence are extremely visible in these examples. The absence of a national hinterland means that locals are compelled to engage with their nearest neighbors even if these are from another country. At the same time, social ties are often more intense and identities more sharply drawn when small communities exist alongside a much larger “foreign” country. However, as we shall see, the very foreignness of that country is attenu- ated when borders are easily traversed. There is thus a profound paradox whereby difference can simultaneously be sharply drawn and blurred; borders are, after all, bridges as well as barriers. As such, our article both confirms and confounds Barth’s(1969) central thesis about border identities—as being more “intense” than those experienced, perceived and imagined by individuals and communities living at the “center” of a specific sociocultural and geographical unit. We focus on the relations between locals and their immediate geographical neighbors in Tunisia, Morocco and Spain, to unpack how the major transformations in border management during the last century led to the transformations of local cross-border sociocultural and ethnic fabrics. With the European integration of Spain and Italy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the previously porous national borders dividing Lampedusa from Tunisia and Melilla from Morocco were tightened as both the island and the exclave became points of the external border of the Schengen2 space of free movement of people. Similarly, the functioning of the land border dividing Gibraltar from Spain was drastically transformed over the second half of the last century: historically largely a permeable border, it was closed JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 3 between 1969 and 1982, and even after the border opened there have been long periods where crossing has been difficult. Gibraltar, although an EU member, is nevertheless (with the UK) outside the Schengen area. Consequently, these somewhat contained border territories and communities represent unique case studies to examine the geographical relative fixity of international borders. It must be noted that this sense of fixity is de facto counteracted by a constantly transforming management of border crossing which produces permanent transitions in the modes of sociocultural interaction. It is from this perspective that this article develops a 20th century genealogy of border management in these locations together with an analysis of how sociocultural and interethnic relations across the border became subject to change. With this aim, this paper is divided into two sections. The first of which deals with the period when local borders were relatively—if not completely—open. The second part concentrates on the recent past when border controls and checks started to be tightened. We draw on empirical data collected from three studies conducted between 2008 and 2016: the Melilla data are drawn from four months’ fieldwork in 2008 on the management of Europe’s external border conducted in the enclave and in Morocco; the Lampedusa, data were collected in a six months’ field study between 2012 and 2013 focusing principally on local fisheries; and the Gibraltar data are drawn from over 300 oral history interviews collected on the Rock and in the bordering Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción between 2013 and 2017.3

Life “Before”—and Across—the Border As is the case with most international borders, those analyzed here were not established in a sociocultural vacuum. When borders were left relatively open and easily crossable, social life flourished across them, leading to the intertwining of individual and community bio- graphies with those of the immediate neighbors. Starting from the historical and geographical location of these three borderlands, what follows here is a detailed analysis of how local border management changed across the last century up until Europe’s external border was established around Lampedusa and Melilla in the early 1990s, and the border dividing Gibraltar from Spain was closed in late 1969.

Lampedusa: A Mediterranean Fishing Island Geologically part of the African continent, Lampedusa is much closer to the coasts of Tunisia than it is to Sicily, the closest point to the Italian territory. The Sicilian port town of Porto Empedocle is 205 kilometers north of Lampedusa, while the Tunisian port of Ras Kaboudja is only 167 kilometers to the south. This island of almost 26 square kilometers part of the archipelago of the Pelagic Islands, has just over 6,000 inhabitants and is today mostly known as one of the most symbolic places of the EU’s fight against undocumented migration (Cuttitta 2014). Situated at the center of the Mediterranean, Lampedusa has served as a natural safe port for seamen over the centuries. Historically, islanders experienced the maritime geography they inhabited, as many Lampedusans lived off the sea and frequently sailed to the Tuni- sian mainland. Lampedusa’s location makes the island a natural safe port, as well as a stra- tegic outpost in the middle of the Mediterranean (Radi 1972). The Pelagic archipelago, 4 G. ORSINI ET AL. whose major island is Lampedusa, also became a site of conflict and a land for corsairs interested in disrupting and making profits out of the trade between North Africa and Sicily. The most important religious site on the island is the sanctuary of Our Lady of Porto Salvo, the Preserver of All the People of the Sea. Already in use in the 14th century, the sanctuary worked as an interreligious space shared by both Muslims and Christians (Formentini 1999). After centuries of diverse occupations, the Bourbons took full control of Lampedusa in 1843 and began attracting settlers with the intention of transforming it into an agricultural colony. Soon people started to arrive from Sicily—90 men and 30 women, mostly peasants and artisans—with the promise of plots of land (Mancini 1978). However, when Italy was unified in 1860 and the Bourbons lost their dominions in Italy, the Italian government almost immediately revoked the property rights that the islanders has previously enjoyed. Nevertheless, most islanders remained there (Taranto 2012). When, in 1887, a fisherman from the Sicilian fishing town of Trapani discovered a school of sponges just off the shores of the island, dozens of Greek, Turkish, Tunisian and Sicilian surface- supplied divers and fishing vessels moved to Lampedusa (Taranto 2012). However, the lack of a telegraphic cable connecting the archipelago to mainland Sicily and the overfishing of local sponges soon encouraged fishing entrepreneurs to move southward and base their activities directly in Tunisia—and especially in the coastal town of Sfax (Mancini 1978). Yet, in the early 20th century, entrepreneurs who had been fishing sponges in Lampe- dusa decided it was time to exploit the abundant bluefish passing seasonally in the local seawaters, and dozens of fishing steam vessels began reaching what was becoming “the mackerel island” (Roghi 1954 ). At the time, relations with Tunisia were frequent, as Gian- franco4—an 86-year-old Lampedusan and retired fisherman and captain—said:

Locals used to go to fish in Tunisia, in Sfax: there were many Lampedusans based there … Depending on the conditions of the sea, we spent entire weeks and months in the Sfax lagoon … Starting from November we used to go fishing in [the Tunisian town of] Madhia where we used to salt the catches … Later, in March, when the conditions of the sea improved, we came back to Lampedusa to fish … Those with fewer resources used to remain longer in Tunisia as they did their boat maintenance there. Many kinship ties then unified the island with the North African country as thousands of Sicilians and hundreds of Lampedusans established themselves there since the late 19th century (Choate 2007). In the words of Lina, a 95-year-old retired accountant from Lampedusa:

The connection of this island with Tunisia was very close … That was our closest mainland, and there were plenty of Lampedusans who had even some relatives on the other shore. In light of the Italian-Tunisian Friendship and the Trade and Navigation Agreement of 1868, there were no specific limitations to crossing the maritime border dividing Italy from North Africa. Sicilian fishermen had full rights to fish in Tunisian waters and used the country’s ports and beaches without a licence. The treaty was then renewed in 1881 and continued to operate until Mussolini’s regime declared war on France in 1940 (Medici 1991). Even when, following Tunisia’s liberation from France in 1951, a bilateral agreement with France stipulated that the vast area of the Mammellone—located a few JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 5 nautical miles south from Lampedusa, would become a Tunisian exclusive fishing area, Italian fishers were still allowed to fish there in exchange for compensations offered by the Italian government to its Tunisian counterpart (Chevalier 2005). However, while in the 1980s the economy of the tiny island transformed and fishery was progressively abandoned in favor of tourism, so too did the working of the international border separating Italy from Tunisia. By the end of the decade, the Italian-Tunisian border had become the outer boundary of the European space of free movement of people. The frequency of cross-border interactions decreased and, from the Lampedusans’ perspective, Tunisians progressively transformed into “distant others.”

Melilla: A Hispano-Moroccan City Melilla is a Spanish city and territory located on the northeastern coast of Morocco. Forming a sort of semicircle facing the Mediterranean, the enclave covers a little over 12 square kilometers and, in 2008, was inhabited by almost 85,000 people (Mayoral 2008). On the other side of the city’s border is the Moroccan province of Nador. The Spanish history of the city begins in 1487, when a Spanish expedition bought the area off some Muslim notables in order to construct a garrison (Salafranca Ortega 1987). Fortified on top of a cliff, for centuries the Spanish inhabitants of the fortress lived separated from the surrounding land as the city suffered consecutive sieges by the neighboring Berber populations of the Rif Mountains. During this period, locals lived separated and yet geographically attached to Morocco, as the only contacts with the outside world came via Malaga, 270 kilometers across the Alboran Sea. With a stable population of about 2,000 inhabitants, the situation remained almost unchanged until the 1859 Treaty of Tétouan between Spain and Morocco, which established the borders of the city outside the fortified walls. Now people in Melilla could finally access the agricultural land surrounding the city (García Figueras 1945). Nevertheless, as war in Africa broke out just a few years later, the agreement was not ratified until October 1861. It was only then when Morocco delivered the lands around Melilla to Spain—the extension of which was decided by a cannon shot marking the limits of the semicircle corresponding to today’s nine-kilometer-long border (Madariaga 1999). Since 1861, a series of policies were implemented to populate the enclave: as such, the number of residents doubled between 1882 and 1889 as 1,875 people moved to Melilla from the province of Malaga, and established themselves there together with 1,500 military personnel and 500 detainees (Saro Gandarillas 1985). Among these new residents, the only non-Spanish element of the population included 159 Jews who came predominantly from the Moroccan city of Tétouan5 (Salafranca Ortega 1995); they were the only ones allowed to trade and have interactions with the neighboring Muslim population (López Guzmán et al. 2006). Shortly after, the first indigenous Armed Forces were established in Melilla, bringing into the enclave an increasing number of Berbers (Saro Gandarillas 1996). Whereas in 1907 fewer than 180 Moroccans lived in Melilla, the number steadily increased to almost double in 1928—as 294 Moroccans then resided in the enclave—reaching 6,270 in 1950, and up to nearly 35,000 today (Nieto 1996). When the Treaty of Fez was signed in 1912, the Spanish protectorate of Morocco was established and Melilla’s 6 G. ORSINI ET AL. relationship with the surrounding territories and peoples become almost osmotic: no fence or physical manifestation of the border was installed. In fact, very little work exists con- cerning what is today a rather visible and controversial border—confirming the irrele- vance that the frontier had for local sociocultural and political life. This is how Juan Francisco Mayoral—Head of the Delegation of the Spanish Government in Melilla in 2008—explains the lack of documents concerned with the border at the time.

You cannot find much written about this frontier, as simply it did not exist until about 50 years ago … You know that until this area was a Spanish protectorate [in the 1950s] there was no fence! According to what most people say, border crossing was basically free and uncontrolled … until a cholera epidemic … that is when the first tiny fence was placed [to control goods] where today you have those gigantic fences … People were free to cross it. While an initial physical manifestation of the border separating Melilla from Morocco dates back to the mid-20th century, things changed dramatically after Spain joined the EU in 1986.

Gibraltar: A British Fortress in Continental Europe Covering an area of just under 6 km2 and with a population of approximately 30,000, the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar is located on the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula, nine nautical miles from Morocco and connected to Spain by a narrow isthmus just over a kilometer long. Gibraltar has a long history of Phoenician, Roman, Visigoth, Moorish, and Christian (Spanish)6 occupation. Apart from a brief period in the 14th century when Algeciras was Christian and Gibraltar Moorish, for most of its history until the British occupation Gibraltar was not separated from the surrounding land. The fortified city formed a unified area called Campo de Gibraltar, which, in essence, is the area around the bay bordered by mountains on all sides and forming a natural crescent shape. However, when a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet captured Gibraltar in 1704, during the War of Spanish Succession, the city was separated from its hinterland. Although the succeeding three centuries were punc- tuated by wars and sieges there were also long periods of peace. The border remained highly porous to people and goods even as it was militarily defended (and often through the wars and sieges). This was especially the case after the Napoleonic Wars when Gibraltar’s economy became increasingly dependent on the workforce and supplies coming from the adjacent Spanish area (Grocott and Stockey 2012). As an example of this interconnectedness, in 1849 the average number of cross-border workers and traders entering Gibraltar with a work permit was 1,500 daily although the number could exceed 4,000 on a single day. By 1871 this figure was as high as 4,500 but numbers could exceed 5,000 in a single day (NA/CO91/313; CO91/314). Given the political and economic discontinuities and differentials generated by the frontier, locals crossed into their neighboring regions for a variety of reasons such as fleeing war or pes- tilence (Sawchuk, Benady, and Burke 2005). Similarly, while traders in Gibraltar looked to the Spanish market to sell and smuggle their products (Sánchez Mantero 1981), the Spanish workforce relied on the many opportunities available in Gibraltar to make a living (Stockey 2009). As cross-border interactions increased exponentially, Spanish very quickly became the lingua franca (Grocott and Stockey 2012, 84) among the JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 7

Gibraltarian civilian population and intermarriages became even more common than previously. This is how George, a 68-year-old Gibraltarian and retired teacher, described the situation in the 20th century:

[By then] the frontier was very amorphous: people could just go through, [so that the border] was not so much of a barrier, but [rather] something which kept unifying [Gibraltar and La Línea]. Over 10 to 12,000 [Spanish] workers used to come here, while almost 3,000 Gibral- tarians lived on the Spanish side. Not to mention how most mothers from el Campo wanted their daughters to marry a Gibraltarian man. Our interviewee here points to an important feature of cross-border relations: these were not only economic but people on both sides of the border enjoyed significant kinship ties. Even when the British established a fence marking the border with Spain in 1908 to combat smuggling (Grocott and Stockey 2012), people continued to cross freely. When the Spanish Civil War erupted in the 1930s, many sought refuge on the Rock (Ponce Alberca 2009). At the time, Spanish workers were marginalized—mainly because of British colonial and hierarchical governance and Gibraltarian society’s class system, rather than for their different ethnic and cultural background. Here the interviewee quoted above continues:

In the dockyards, there were three kinds of toilets: one for the English, the other for the [Gibraltarians] and one for the … Spaniards … The toilet for the English was very well kept, while that of [the Gibraltarians] was a bit worse. That for Spaniards was simply a hole in the floor … Up until the late 1960s, Gibraltarians overwhelmingly spoke Spanish socially and very large numbers had Spanish kin. Sawchuk and Walz (2003) estimate that approximately 30% of marriages contracted in Gibraltar in the 1920s and 1930s were between Gibraltar- ian men and Spanish women. Gibraltar and La Línea were socially and economically effec- tively a single unit: it is approximately a 20-minute walk from Gibraltar’s main square to La Línea’s. Nevertheless, when the nationalist General Francisco Franco took power in Spain and developed a revanchist policy, border controls became stricter. Yet, controls were tightened even more when more autonomy was offered to Gibraltar in 1950 with the newly established Gibraltarian Legislative Assembly, and again when Queen Elizabeth visited the Rock in 1954. The succeeding decade saw even more border restrictions up to when, on June 8, 1969, General Franco ordered the closure of the border. Approximately 10,000 Spanish workers lost their jobs overnight, and people were cut off from their families as even telephone communication was cut. At the time, there were approximately 25,000 civilian inhabitants on Gibraltar: 19,000 were registered as Gibraltarian, 4,000 as citizens of the Common- wealth (mainly from India) and 2,000 “foreigners” who were almost all Spanish (Hermet 1968).

Then the Border Came Although border management in all three examples had changed dramatically throughout the centuries, social, cultural and economic cross-border relations with neighbors from 8 G. ORSINI ET AL. across the border were central for all the three examined communities. What follows here is an analysis of how the tightening of border controls disrupted such close links, and reconfigured locals’ identities almost in opposition to those living on the other side of the frontier.

Lampedusa at the Core of Europe’s Border With Italy joining the Schengen space of free movement of people in 1997, Lampedusa became part of the EU external border and an expansive and massive border machinery became established on the island and its surrounding seawaters. Given the complex and multi-layered European border system, undocumented border crossing started concen- trating on limited and remote portions of the EU’s outer border—such as Lampedusa— where the EU response consisted in quasi-militarizing the frontier (de Haas 2008). Thus, while border management changed dramatically on the island, the linear international border traced on the sea to divide Italy and Tunisia was somehow reinforced and reaffirmed by means of a variety of surveillance and control apparatuses such as large navy ships; drones and helicopters; Coastguard boats; radars; law enforcement officials and soldiers; and migrants detention and first aid facilities (Orsini 2016). Over two decades several military coordinated operations were organized around Lam- pedusa to deal with illegal immigration, yet more than 200,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers crossing the Sicilian channel were landed and detained on the island. If at sea Lampedusans had to frequently take part in dangerous—and costly— rescue operations, on land they had to get accustomed to several humanitarian emergen- cies—an example being in 2011 when more than 8,000 Tunisian migrants reached Lam- pedusa within a few weeks and had to sleep in the open with almost no assistance from institutions (Orsini 2015). In addition to these complex dynamics, the permanent border crisis and emergency in Lampedusa brought the media—as well as academics and artists—from all over the world, constantly reminding Lampedusans of the border geography they inhabit (Mazzara 2015). In other words, the process of European integration made the border much more per- vasive and visible in Lampedusa. Today, in the minds of many, Lampedusa appears to exist solely because of this border; increasingly, for Lampedusans themselves, pre-border Lam- pedusa is scarcely visible. Yet, while the new border geography is often reproduced by islanders who have arguably interiorized it, in everyday life practices Lampedusans con- tinue to articulate the historic cross-border sociocultural geography of the island. These two contradictory visions of the border are in constant tension, not only at the level of the community but also individuals themselves. For instance, despite the abandonment of professional fishery from the 1990s and a shift towards tourism, many keep fishing, albeit illegally, sailing southwards towards Tunisia and Libya. Many connections with Tunisia and the port towns of Sfax, Hamamet and Madhia still exist, as islanders frequently spend their holidays or even run their business and trade there. This is Andrea, a 42-year-old fisherman from Lampedusa:

The last time that I went to Tunisia was during the Christmas holidays: in a few weeks, I will marry a Tunisian woman! On average, I go to Tunisia four to five times a year together with a few Lampedusan friends … Generally, we go by ferry from Palermo … Often we directly sail from here an eight-hour journey. JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 9

Although similar stories are common, the much more public discourse describes Tunisia and Tunisians as the “evils of the island.” Corresponding to the period when most Lampedusan fishers abandoned fishing for tourism, the relations between Tunisian and Italian fishers around the border was progressively turned upside down. Over the last 20 years, the sea once crossed by Lampedusans to fish in Tunisian waters became a fishing ground for the increasingly competitive Tunisian fishery. In the words of Luca, a 53-year-old captain and the assessor for Lampedusa’s fishery:

More than ten years passed since Tunisians started to come fishing in our waters: they come in groups of five to ten boats … and incessantly occupy fishing grounds … That is why we no longer fish on this island! Thus, the disappearance of Lampedusa’s fishing industry was not attributable to the actions of Lampedusan fishers who had abandoned professional fishing for tourism. Nor was it the consequence of nearly 50 years of overfishing practiced by Lampedusans in the waters surrounding the island. The blame, instead, is attributed to Tunisian fishermen working in increasingly competitive seawaters. Observing, from the door of his tool shed, two migrants walking along the pier of the old port, Gianfranco—a Lampedusan fisher in his 50s—said:

I know that they are good guys: they must be Eritreans [migrants hosted in the island centre]! Although I go to Tunisia often, in Lampedusa I only have issues with Tunisians. I have pro- blems only with those who take the boats and come here thinking that they can do everything they want Here Gianfranco refers to 2011 when, following the Arab Spring, boat-migrants immediately started arriving on the island (Lotan et al. 2011). As authorities took weeks to decide to move them from Lampedusa—whilst at the same time failing to provide them with any assistance—thousands of Tunisians were obliged to sleep in the open. At this point when the entire island was turned into an ultimate border barrier, yet many Lampedusans sided with Tunisians and provided them assistance (Bartoli 2012). Nevertheless, after months of permanent emergency, in September of that same year islanders responded to their new border geography, and hospitality towards their historical neighbors turned into violence. After a protest along the streets of the island’s small town, migrants gathered in front of one of the two petrol stations in Lampedusa and, faced by riot police, threatened to explode a gas cylinder they had taken there. At that point, the local population feeling threatened by those same people they had helped in previous months, assaulted migrants and beat them with clubs and sticks (Bartoli 2012). This is but one example of how images and relationships of neighbors can be transformed overnight under certain political conditions. It is also worth pointing out that there is a difference between Tunisians who are known and with whom people may have worked and “Tunisians” who are unknown. This phenomenon echoes the experiences of many in our other examples too: national identity overlays personal and even kin relations and, at key moments, may override them entirely. It therefore seems apparent that contemporary Lampedusans experience both the tensions of being so close to Tunisia, and yet so far from it—as the enormous machinery of Europe’s outer border is often projected and performed as an insurmountable barrier. Even though this Communitarian border presented itself as being as porous as the 10 G. ORSINI ET AL. previous one, the intensity of the bordering of Lampedusa clearly led islanders to move away—at least discursively—from their past maritime traditions and their cross-border identity. Yet, surprisingly, beyond and behind the production and reproduction of border discourse(s) on the island, everyday practices suggest that islanders keep looking southwest when imagining their closest mainland.

Melilla: Away from Africa and, Yet, Part of it In order to comply with the standards required by the EU, in 1985 the Spanish government legislated to regulate the status of foreign nationals residing in its territory. The then Socialist Spanish government consequently introduced the Ley Orgánica de Extra- njería 7/1985, apparently without considering the historic Moroccan population in Melilla. Due to the almost invisible border that existed, the presence of most Moroccan nationals had simply not been previously recorded and so no special documentation had been required. The 1986 census demonstrated that only 17.5% of Moroccans had a Spanish National ID card, while over the 50% of this population could not document their long-term residency in the enclave (Bodega et al. 1995). As people who had lived all their lives in Melilla were forced to leave, Moroccans in Melilla began protesting under the leadership of Mohamed Dudù—a Melillan activist of Moroccan ethnicity. These protests provoked the immediate response of all local political forces apart from the workers’ union, the Comisión Obrera, which sided with Moroccans (Planet Contreras 1998). As Moroccans were claiming full access to Spanish citizenship, most local politicians and their party representatives demanded the strict and full implementation of the new regulation. After a few confrontations and rallies, the conflict escalated into an international clash between Morocco and Spain. The crisis was exacerbated when, during a visit to Morocco, Dudù asserted the Arab and Muslim character of Melilla, and demanded the recognition of double citizenship for all Moroccans residing in the enclave. Soon violence erupted in the city, with several clashes between protesters and police forces. Nevertheless, 7,000 Spanish national identity cards were distributed to Moroccans by the end of 1988: those who possessed IDs could remain whereas those without had to leave. On top of this tense situation, in 1992 a new phenomenon appeared in the enclave that brought dramatic changes to the border management of the area: 300 Sub-Saharan African arrived in Melilla seeking asylum, taking advantage of its new European status. Melilla was completely unprepared for this influx and tensions with locals soon rose, attracting the attention of the national and international media—thus further accelerating the process of bordering of Melilla. As with Lampedusa, the new European border regime started to become progressively visible in Melilla; the border was strengthened by the installation of a new double three-meter-high fence. In 2005, after five Sub-Saharan Africans died attempting to enter Melilla, two six-meter-high fences equipped with surveillance devices and visible from basically any corner of the town, substituted those installed 13 years earlier (Blanchard and Wender 2007). Because of its enhanced physical presence projecting the image of a barrier, the border has, since 2005, impacted on the relations between Morocco and Spain, as well as, if not more, on social life across both sides of the fence (Orsini and Schiavon 2009). In particular, the restricted cross-border mobility had a major impact on the bordering of the Moroccan JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 11 province of Nador, which had once functioned as a territorial, social and cultural conti- nuum with Melilla. In 2008, the average income differential on either side of the border was fifteen to one, in favor of people in Melilla—one of the greatest income inequalities of all international borders (López Guzmán et al. 2006). An exception to the Schengen agreement is in place which permits Moroccan residents in the area to enter Melilla daily without the need of a visa. Economic opportunities therefore are available to them on the other side of this fence, making the border a bridge that provides access to a better economic jurisdiction. This is a bridge crossed by more than 30,000 people every day, as they enter in the morning and leave by the afternoon (Planet Contreras 2004). These “cross-border” workers work mostly in the informal labor market—particularly in construction—while those women not busy cleaning Spaniards’ houses, are largely smuggling goods of all sorts (Planet Contreras 1998). Of course, this depends on the good- will of the Spanish police—which obviously favors the economic interests of the enclave, and the complacency of the Moroccan officials bribed by groups of small smugglers (Simoncini 2004)

Closing the Border, Making Gibraltarian “More British Than the British” As the border closed completely in 1969, Gibraltar became isolated from the Iberian Peninsula: in order to reach Spain now Gibraltarians had to take a ferry to Tangier and, from there, another one to Algeciras. This is how John, a Gibraltarian man in his 60s, describes cross-border mobility at the time:

I remember that to go to see my grandparents [in Spain] … it was an odyssey: you took the ferry to Morocco, and then another one back to Algeciras … Only few privileged ones could go by boat directly to Algeciras [in Spain] as they had good relation with Franco’s regime. Accounts of border crossing coming from the Spanish side, do not differ significantly. This is Pablo, a retired cleaning manager from La Línea:

When I went the first time to Gibraltar, I had to take a bus to Algeciras and, from there, a ferry to Tangier … I spent two nights there and took the other ferry to Gibraltar where I remained for 18 months … When I got sick I was smuggled back to Spain through the frontier by my uncle: he hid me inside a big bag of tobacco … Only later I bought myself a kayak, I made an agreement with a border guard … and crossed directly by paddling along the bay. Thus, with the border closed, interactions across it became harder and less frequent. With telephone communications cut, sometimes the only way families could communicate was by going to the border gates and shouting across to their relatives. Olga, a Gibraltarian in her 50s, told us what she remembers of these times:

I very well remember those times when we used to go to the fences to hear people screaming to the other side … Once I had to behave like a monkey! [My fiancé’s parents] wanted to meet me. So, we went to the fence and I climbed them so that they could see me … Yet, on the right, there was a family telling their relatives on the other side that the father had died. On my left, other people were celebrating the recently born daughter with their relatives on the Spanish side … That was inhuman! As Spanish workers were no longer allowed entrance into the Rock, an incoming Mor- occan population was invited to move to Gibraltar to replace them (Norrie 2003). 12 G. ORSINI ET AL.

For more than a decade then, up until the mid-1980s when the border started being progressively reopened, cross-border ties were severely tested as only few could cross that frontier that had worked as a bridge for generations. Nevertheless, today the border has returned to its function of a bridge as Spanish workers in La Línea cross it in order to access better salaries, while Gibraltarians do the same to escape the high costs of housing and the limited social and geographical space available in their country. At the same time, however, the frequent and partly unpredictable tightening of border controls by Spanish officials—a practice that generates long queues on both sides of it—serves to constantly remind locals of the new border geography they inhabit (Squire 2015). The long queues and intense frustration makes the border crossing an intense, not casual, experience; difference becomes a kinaesthetic experience. In almost the same way as is recorded in Lampedusa and Melilla, also Gibraltarian attitudes towards their closest neighbors changed dramatically and relatively quickly, redefining the sociocultural and linguistic fabric of the tiny enclave (Lambert 2005; Lipski 1986). This is how Angela, an 83-year-old retired secretary from Gibraltar, feels about Spanish people.

Spanish people always loved Gibraltarians [when] things were not as they are today … And I am telling you this having part of my family there: but even if they tell me anything, I immediately respond! We Gibraltarians are British and we’ll stay British! Now, not only Gibraltarian identity is often produced and reproduced in opposition to everything Spanish, but even the Spanish language is being progressively abandoned in the Rock. While older generations are bilingual, younger Gibraltarian are monolingual or functionally monolingual. This is Alberto, a retired civil servant from Gibraltar:

My grandparents could … only speak Spanish … Even though my father spoke English, at home we spoke Spanish as my mother was Spanish … When I went to school I did not know any English, but luckily I learnt it … Now … everyone speaks [to my niece who is two years old] in English … When we go to Spain to visit the parents of my son-in-law, they cannot understand a word of what my niece says … Today most children do not learn Spanish anymore! Yet, while cross-border similarities seem to disappear, several ties keep connecting the communities on both sides of the border. As a matter of fact, since the border reopened thousands of Spanish workers started entering Gibraltar daily to work. At the same time, thousands of Gibraltarians live in Spain or have their second house there (Gold 2005). Continued tensions at the border, however, mean that crossing is not the casual affair it used to be and this has had a profound effect on social relations, as people express intense frustration at their neighbors. In this context, the distinction between Spain the country and their Spanish neighbors is sometimes difficult to maintain. The rate of inter- marriage is nowhere near what it was before the border closed (Gold 2010) and younger Gibraltarians find they do not share a language with their neighbors. Not so differently from what was recorded in Melilla and Lampedusa, the transforming management of geographically fix border had a dramatic and extremely quick impact in jeopardizing sociocultural cross-border relations between Gibraltar and La Línea. Again, as with both previous examples, social interaction and vestiges of the cross-border community exist but our research shows that these are much more often expressed in private than in public: the public discourse is increasingly one where the imagined community of the nation drowns out the lived and historic trans-border community. JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 13

Conclusions Despite their geographical fixity, international borders are not barriers per se as they work to both disrupt and facilitate contact and exchange across individuals and communities living on either side. In a way, the static nature of border fences and checks is counterba- lanced by flexible and transforming modes of managing border crossing. As such, the ambivalent nature of a border—both static and in constant transformation—has a perva- sive impact on the ways in which cross-border communities, such as the ones analyzed here, perceive themselves and construct the “others.” Sociocultural, economic and linguistic ties which have historically unified people living on opposite sides of a given frontier can be enhanced or erased within the space of a few years depending on specific border managements. Borderlands are thus favorite spaces to study the processes through which ethnic and group identities develop and are defined. As the international border plays a central role for the organization of social life in that territory, the boundaries of group and ethnic belonging are subject to profound contestation and negotiation. From this perspective then the cases of Melilla, Gibraltar and Lampedusa expose the arbitrariness of the process by which the boundaries of ethnic groups are constantly defined and redefined—through otherness and sameness (Coley 1992). Benedict Anderson famously argued (1983) that nations were “imagined communities” and the boundary of that imagination is inevitably the border. “Real” communities, however, often transcend border and national imaginations. Communities based on shared interests, kinship, and affect can exist across international borders and apparent divisions of language, religion and culture. Our examples show that these communities existed in the past but the imagined community of the nation can powerfully redefine these connections and rupture community ties in a remarkably short space of time. With social, political and economic life being extremely dependent on cross-border relations, the possibility for individuals, goods, capitals, culture to cross the border has a profound impact on the ways of interaction among different ethnic groups—as was the case when the border between Gibraltar and Spain was closed between 1969 and 1982, or when the Ley Orgánica de Extranjería introduced by Spain in 1985 obliged many Moroccan nationals to leave Melilla. Yet, simultaneously, the quantity and quality of cross-border interactions can in turn influence the functioning of the border itself— as for instance during the last stages of the 2011 migrant crisis in Lampedusa, when Lam- pedusan hospitality helped manage tensions and authorities to keep migrants on the island. Hence, each of the case studies addressed in this article show us how cross-border everyday life practices seem to resist the social construction of otherness—as it is generated through, for instance, the tightening of border controls. Our analysis confirms that, given the many ways in which borders canalize social life in Melilla, Lampedusa and Gibraltar, “ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact or information, but rather entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation” (Barth 1969,9–10) as they modify depending on the transforming modes of border crossing. Nevertheless, our research shows that, pace Barth, there is a constant tension in borderlands between the imagined community of the nation which is cast in sharp relief at the border, and the lived community of transborder interaction where lived relationships, even if they exist as memories, offer a counternarrative to the discourses of othering. It is at 14 G. ORSINI ET AL. the border where the socially constructed, interactional, and discursive nature of otherness comes to the surface with unexpected and contested vigor.

Endnotes 1. In the documentary La Collina della Vergogna (The Hill of Shame) directed by Antonino Maggiore and produced by Libera Espressione (Free Expression). 2. The Schengen agreement, signed in 1985 by five member states of the European Economic Community (EEC), approved the dismantling of internal borders to create an inner zone of free movement of people, goods and capital. Since then, the space of free movement of people expanded to include today 26 European countries (Rigo 2007). 3. While Dr Orsini conducted the fieldwork studies in Melilla, Morocco and Lampedusa, the Economic and Social Research Council’s project on Gibraltar was led by Professor Canessa. 4. All names of the interviewees are fictional. 5. Gibraltar’s prominent Jewish population also came largely from Tétouan. They point to an exceptionalism for both communities: the Spanish Jewish population was the only significant community in Spain, which continued to be officially anti-Semitic until the second half of the 20th century; and, for almost three centuries, Gibraltar was the only place on the Iberian Peninsula with a substantial Jewish community. 6. When Christians captured Gibraltar, lost it, and recaptured it again in the 15th century there was no polity that was ‘Spain.’

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/ K006223/1]; University of Bologna, Faculty of Political Science (scholarship to undertake research abroad); University of Essex, Department of Sociology (PhD studentship).

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