The criminalisation of freedom of movement is key to the formation of racial apartheid in Europe and globally.

This podcast is based on the online community course on Resisting the Criminalisation of Facilitation (Spring 2023). Syllabus.

The idea to do this course and this podcast emerged at a workshop held in Palermo in fall 2023, in conversation with associations and activists involved in the struggles for freedom of movement, including the Captain Support Network. There, a consensus emerged on the need to create spaces of mutual learning and materials to counter the discourses of ‘smuggling’ and ‘trafficking’ that mobilise public support for criminalisation, incarceration, pushbacks, and other forms of border violence. 

In this podcast, we look at how the concept of ‘facilitation’ allows us to reflect on the continuum of criminalisation, without fabricating differentiations between the migrant activist, the boat driver, the sea rescuer, or the lorry driver.

Placing the focus on the practices that are criminalised, rather than on the actors themselves, brings to light that most forms of facilitation are a necessary product of the international nation-state system, border violence, and the criminalisation of migration.

From this perspective, we can build a decolonial, abolitionist analysis: the abolition of borders requires the decriminalisation of any form of facilitation of migration.

Freedom of Movement! Free Them All!