The Atlantic path to the Canary Islands, one of many world’s deadliest migration paths, has seen a dramatic surge in arrivals since 2020. NGO Caminando Frontera reviews that the route claimed almost 10,000 victims in 2024, with some boats drifting so far as 6,000 km to Central and South America. Preliminary responses to the rise in arrivals to the islands centered on migrants’ extended containment. Frustration over stalled transfers unfold amongst migrants and locals, along with widespread worry of the archipelago being become an open-air jail.
Graffiti on wall exterior Las Raices camp, San Cristobal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. Picture courtesy of creator taken on 18 Could 2023
Fears of the islands changing into a web site of incarceration – as illustrated by the above canary cage graffiti – are comprehensible contemplating the broader European borderscape. Mediterranean islands akin to Lampedusa and Lesbos have turn out to be synonymous with extended retention below the EU’s Hotspot strategy. And the EU’s just lately adopted screening regulation inside the Pact on Migration and Asylum protracts border detention practices.
But, does the chook cage metaphor maintain true for the Canary Islands? Fieldwork performed in 2023-2024 suggests in any other case. Regardless of file arrivals over the previous two years, Spain’s migration insurance policies prioritize speedy transfers to the mainland, reshaping the Canary Islands as hubs of identification, categorization and switch to the mainland – an evident departure from the EU’s prevailing logic of border administration.
The Canary-Islands bridge
Whereas famend as a prime vacationer vacation spot, the Canary Islands are additionally a strategic node of the EU’s Atlantic Ocean border management and migration administration. Located 1,500 km from the Spanish peninsula and fewer than 100 km from Morocco, they act as a bridge between three continents. As one analysis associate put it throughout my 2023 ethnographic fieldwork in Tenerife, ‘Here, we often say that the Canary Islands have their head in Europe, their heart in Latin America and their feet in Africa.’ The Canary Islands are the outermost area of the Schengen space and, subsequently, essentially the most crucial southernmost border of the EU.
Whereas the first migrant sea crossing to the Canaries happened 30 years in the past, it wasn’t till the early 2000s that the passage turned newsworthy. From the outset Spain tried to stop confinement on the islands. As a result of lack of reception infrastructure on the archipelago, newly arrived individuals who couldn’t be deported have been launched from detention with an unenforceable expulsion order and informally transferred to the mainland. In keeping with NGO SOS-Racismo, some 10,000 folks have been relocated from the Canaries to the Spanish mainland between 2002 and 2003. Initially casual and discreet, these transfers have been formalized in 2005 below the Plan Caldera, making territorial redistribution an official coverage.
When arrivals elevated in 2006 to 31,678 folks throughout what has been referred to as the ‘cayuco crisis’, Spain applied a sequence of insurance policies that concurrently addressed the departure of African migrants and managed their arrival. The Spanish authorities agreed a sequence of plans with West African international locations to intercept migrants utilizing joint surveillance operations, and to discourage their departure via growth help and cooperation. The federal government additionally sought the EU’s help below the newly created European Border and Coast Guard Company. Frontex, because the company is often recognized, launched operation HERA that very same 12 months: its first and longest mission, patrolling African coasts and supporting Spanish authorities throughout identification procedures within the Canaries. Such practices would later inform the European strategy within the Mediterranean.
Concurrently, the Spanish authorities launched the Humanitarian Help programme to cope with the state of affairs migrants discovered themselves in after their launch from detention centres. It regulated grants to entities to develop companies centered on emergency socio-healthcare, reception, switch and different mandatory assist companies. An interview with a Crimson Cross worker revealed that the group was the only subcontracted entity implementing the programme within the archipelago and remained the one supplier till 2019. Between 2007 and 2009, the one service supplied was switch to the mainland after migrants have been launched from detention. And it wasn’t till 2010 that the primary reception centre, with capability for 8 folks, was established in Tenerife. That very same 12 months, deterrent measures at sea and in West Africa produced their desired impact and arrivals dramatically decreased, with lower than 200 folks reaching the Canary Islands. Because of this, the archipelago misplaced relevance as an arrival level for nearly a decade – a interval during which migratory journeys redirected in direction of the central Mediterranean.
A cage in development
Stringent border management measures within the Mediterranean noticed resurgent migration to the Canary Islands: in 2020 arrivals elevated by a staggering 756.50% in comparison with 2019. The sudden inflow revealed the archipelago’s lack of preparation. With out established reception services, the preliminary response was makeshift and chaotic: migrants have been detained for extended time period on docks in crowded, improvized shelters below precarious circumstances.
As this surge occurred concurrently the COVID-19 pandemic, a call was made to repurpose empty accommodations as momentary reception services. Nonetheless, the pandemic was additionally a software for confining migrants to the islands. Official transfers to the mainland have been severely inadequate. Nationwide law enforcement officials stationed at ports and airports even prevented the motion of newly arrived migrants with legitimate journey paperwork, justifying the restriction on public well being considerations.
By late 2020 the federal government had rolled out Plan Canarias, resulting in the development of seven large-scale reception services scattered throughout Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura, relinquishing accommodations of their improvized function. The 2 largest centres, Las Canteras and Las Raíces, each situated in northern Tenerife, housed 1,800 and 1,450 migrants respectively. Whereas these services offered various areas for migrants, in addition they signalled a shift in containment practices, from chaotic public visibility on docks and accommodations to secluded institutionalized settings.
Las Canteras Camp. Picture courtesy of the creator taken 31 October 2023
Extended retainment in extraordinarily poor circumstances inside these camps, coupled with the dearth of a adequate switch mechanism to the mainland, quickly drew widespread condemnation. Reviews from NGOs, human rights teams and the Spanish Ombudsman painted a grim image of overcrowding, insufficient sanitation, restricted entry to important companies and rights violations. Comparisons to the then notorious Lampedusa and Lesvos camps shortly emerged from organizations such because the Spanish Fee for Refugee Support (CEAR) and Docs of the World.
Pissed off by their confinement and poor circumstances, migrants started to voice dissent. Many left Las Raíces to create a makeshift camp supported by native civil society teams. As an activist remembers, the makeshift camp ‘was called the camp of dignity, in comparison to the camp of shame’. Graffiti akin to that of the canary cage appeared presently conveying anger, despair and defiance. Such creative expressions captured the collective sentiment of immobility and abandonment, resonating with broader fears that the Canary Islands have been changing into Europe’s newest border jail.
The cage graffiti gained traction. State Watch printed evaluation, using the identical imagery, framed Spain’s actions as aligning with EU insurance policies, which had remodeled different border islands into detention areas. The investigative staff argued that the Canary Islands weren’t an exception however the replication of a scientific EU technique of containment geared toward deportation.
Nonetheless, the state of affairs within the Canaries deserves a extra nuanced interpretation. Merging crises – the speedy improve in arrivals alongside a worldwide well being emergency – formed the measures applied there throughout 2020 and 2021. Somewhat than reflecting a deliberate technique to rework the islands right into a detention zone, these insurance policies appeared reactionary and momentary.
Past the cage
After I arrived in Tenerife for my first fieldwork go to in August 2023, I anticipated overcrowding as a result of upsurge in arrivals, which reached almost 40,000 by the top of the 12 months. Whereas I knew that airport interception operations had ceased post-pandemic, particular person transfers to the mainland nonetheless required monetary means, information of administrative procedures and documentation – sources which can be usually unavailable to many migrants.
Nonetheless, when visiting Las Raíces and Las Canteras camps, I witnessed a shock state of affairs. Reception services had expanded: Las Raíces and Las Canteras now host as much as 5,000 folks. New centres structured round vulnerability standards had additionally been established: for instance, the Crimson Cross-run centre in Santa Cruz de Tenerife serving weak teams like households and girls had opened in 2021. New typologies of centres had been launched to guage vulnerabilities and direct people to acceptable services. In 2023 two new Help and Referral Centres (CAEDs) have been launched by the Crimson Cross within the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Nonetheless, this enlargement of infrastructure alone didn’t totally clarify the absence of overcrowding.
Interviews quickly revealed that the important thing issue was not simply more room however a shift in political strategy. An activist concerned in solidarity initiatives for the reason that improve in arrivals in 2020 described the transformation: ‘Now it’s completely different as a result of they spend little time’ within the camps, ‘this is the first time that people are staying for two weeks. For two years, we had people spending months in the camp.’ And when requested concerning the cause for this shift, she defined: ‘Now they transfer them’ to the mainland. ‘You stay for a week, two weeks. But now, well, of course, we are going through a different time.’ The Spanish authorities’s change in strategy was later confirmed by camp managers, who defined that speedy transfers are coordinated and scheduled by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Safety and Migration primarily based on arrival numbers, particularly to stop overcrowding. By February 2024 this mechanism had turn out to be systematic and transfers have been happening on a weekly foundation from the camps.
Interviews performed between August 2023 and February 2024 reveal varied interpretations of the explanations behind this shift: some attributed it to political activism, others to the necessity to stop tensions each contained in the centres and with the native inhabitants, and there have been these who pointed to the political leverage that the regional authorities holds over the nationwide authorities. One other issue might be Spain’s restricted capability to deport folks arriving by sea: Gran Canaria’s immigration detention centre recorded fewer than 370 deportations in 2022. Whereas exact causes stay unclear and will contain a mixture of components, Spain’s evolving strategy within the Canary Islands – now centred on speedy identification, categorization, and redistribution throughout nationwide territory – stands in distinction to the EU’s hardline deal with containment on the entry level, as outlined within the Pact on Migration and Asylum, efficient from June 2024.
A divergent border technique
One of many pact’s central measures is the ‘pre-entry screening’ regulation geared toward classifying people, conducting a preliminary evaluation of their admissibility into EU territory and processing asylum functions. If an asylum declare is rejected throughout this stage or the particular person is recognized as an financial migrant, the process mandates their referral to return procedures. In different phrases, the principles prioritize processing migrants at entry factors, figuring out their standing shortly and solely permitting entry for these deemed eligible whereas eradicating all others. The framework for this course of permits the restriction of freedom of motion for as much as six months.
A key authorized mechanism underpinning the pact is the ‘fiction of non-entry’, below which people are bodily current on the territory however not legally thought-about to have entered till their admission is permitted. Italy’s migration centres in Albania are an excessive instance of this strategy criticized for potential human rights violations and producing tensions between the chief department that developed the mannequin and seeks its implementation and the judiciary tasked with approving detentions however by no means validating them, elevating considerations concerning the legality of those insurance policies. Regardless of these points, the European Union Fee has endorsed the strategy as a promising mannequin of migration administration.
Spain’s obvious divergence from the EU’s strategy, initially noticed in its restricted capability for deportations and emphasis on transfers to the mainland, turns into much more pronounced when contemplating how its asylum functions are processed. Though the preliminary steps of identification and knowledge assortment performed by the police align with the screening mechanisms outlined within the pact, asylum claims of migrants arriving by sea are sometimes not processed instantly inside the confines of border services at entry factors. As an alternative, as recounted by a CEAR consultant, Spain tends to delay the formalization of asylum functions till after people have been transferred to the mainland.
The divergence turns into much more pronounced when inspecting Spain’s just lately adopted Royal Decree 1155/2024 relating to the rights and freedoms of overseas nationals, which can come into impact on 20 Could 2025. Opposite to the EU’s push for heightened expulsions of irregular migrants, the brand new legislation focuses on facilitating integration and regularization. Key measures embody simplifying visa processes and their length, plus easing entry to present regularization mechanisms and introducing new pathways. The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Safety and Migration describes Spain as ‘the only EU country with a specific framework for regularizing migrants through five different “arraigo” modalities’: the authorized mechanisms that enable non-EU residents who’re irregularly current in Spain and have lived within the nation for a sure interval to regularize their standing. It estimates that these measures may regularize the standing of 300,000 people yearly over the subsequent three years.
What lies forward?
Whereas Spain’s current developments recommend a possible departure from the EU’s detention-focused border administration logic, it’s untimely to declare a constant and vital shift. First, the implementation of Spain’s new regulatory framework should be evaluated in follow, because the true impression of those insurance policies will rely on how they’re utilized, not merely on their intentions. Second, Spain’s adaptation to the Pact on Migration and Asylum will play a crucial function in shaping the Canary Islands’ future function. Considerations stay legitimate, particularly fears that the archipelago may rework right into a ‘large, open-air detention and expulsion centre’, as MEP Estrella Galán has warned.
Which brings us again to the Las Raíces graffiti and the central query of this piece: Does the picture of the canary cage nonetheless maintain true? Based mostly on the developments over the previous two years that I used to be in a position to observe, it might be mentioned that the picture’s that means has advanced. If seen as consultant of the archipelago’s migration management dynamics, the picture aptly describes circumstances from 2020 to 2021. Nonetheless, primarily based on developments noticed over the previous two years, it now not totally applies. As an alternative, it stays related as an emblem of collective fears – of migrants, native communities and policymakers alike – that the Canary Islands may turn out to be island prisons.
The final word trajectory of the Canary Islands’ function, nevertheless, will rely on the evolving interaction between Spain’s insurance policies and EU pressures. Will the archipelago keep its place as a hub for identification, categorization and redistribution, or will it progressively realign with broader EU methods of detention and expulsion?
For now, the graffiti stands not as a remaining verdict however as a strong reminder of what was and as a warning of what may nonetheless be; the challenges that have an effect on the archipelago’s function in migration administration stay all too actual.
This text is predicated on analysis carried out in the course of the venture ‘Elastic Borders: Rethinking the Borders of the 21st Century’ primarily based on the College of Graz, funded by the NOMIS basis.
