Border Realities - The Gates of the Sea: Migration and Rescue at the Edges of Europe

In this online lecture, Luna Vives examines how European border policies have reshaped sea migration governance and maritime rescue in and around Spain. Drawing on two decades of fieldwork on Spain’s maritime rescue agency Salvamento Marítimo, she shows how humanitarian principles anchored in international law are increasingly subordinated to migration control. The talk traces the foundations and institutional history of maritime rescue, highlights shifting routes in the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic, and examines how rescue crews – supported by the CGT union – resist being turned into border guards, thereby challenging Europe’s politics of organized abandonment.

03/02/206
4 pm-5:30pm (GMT+01:00) 
Online, WebEx

Registration here

Luna Vives is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the Université de Montréal and the Director of the Centre Jean Monnet de Montréal. Her research explores how governments use borders to filter and exclude certain groups of people. Her work has been published in academic journals including Geopolitics, Political Geography, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and the Journal of Borderland Studies. She contributes regularly to print media and radio.

The 2025/2026 edition of “Border Realities” is organized and chaired by Frédérique Morel-Doridat (UniGR-CBS, Université de Lorraine) and Damien Simonneau (INALCO, Paris). The lecture series is open to the public and is aimed at researchers, students, and the general public.

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