Conclusions

This concluding chapter weaves together the core, overarching themes developed by the authors of the volume. By doing so, it highlights the need to scrutinize visual and textual discourses, sociotechnical systems, and a variety of practices expanding well beyond the border, such as property rights, health regulations, and criminal law. Examining the entanglement of discourses, sociotechnical systems, and practices over a long timespan allows for capturing the importance of temporalities in securitization and desecuritization processes alike, assessing how time can be weaponized to deter or inhibit mobility, crystallize emergency logics into route responses, or normalize migrants’ presence. The chapter unravels the theoretical and policy implications stemming from this awareness and sketches some avenues for multidisciplinary research on securitization framing today’s Central Mediterranean Route in historical and comparative perspective.