SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE | NOV 18, 2010 | GABRIEL JEWELL-VITALE | PRIMARY : ANDA FRENCH | SECONDARY: DEAN ROBBINS

PRODUCTIVE BORDERS: CEUTA AND CRISIS

1

2

1

2

“A boundary is not that at which something stops, but as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing”.

-Martin Heidegger

“A boundary is not that at which something stops, but as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing”.2

The effects of transnational political situations are radically changing the way we live. The realities of cross-border conflicts and political disputes of autonomy have created strife within cities leading to crises of identity, place, and hate within culture.

I contend that transnational borders are places where conflict and identity crises have manifested in the most cogent and attainable form. By investigating transnational border crises, one can study its effects at a local and transnational condition, enabling geophysical forces to manifest in a productive border for the crises at hand.

A transnational border condition at the edge of the European Union, in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, is the site of the project. The exclave, which was seized by Portugal in 1415, and Spain in 1560, became an autonomous city in 1995, as a part of Spain. For over 600 years, it has been a stronghold of European presence in the North Africa and the Mediterranean.

In 1985, the same year Spain joined the EU (then the EEC), the Shenghen Agreement was signed, creating the abolishment of internal boundaries inside the EU, emphasizing the external boundary for movement within. Once inside, a traveler has

unrestricted access to all countries under the Shenghen Agreement. In 1995, the EU funded a $320 million border fence in Ceuta under EU’s motto, “Fortress Europe.” Ceuta’s border has become a siphon for the emergent Sub-Saharan migratory phenomenon.3 Ceuta is one of three Sub-Saharan migratory destinations in order to cross into mainland Europe, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, and Malta. As the Strait of Gibraltar is the one of the closest points between two continents in the world, it has become a deathtrap for migrants, as 1,200 people die each year either crossing the strait or attempting to jump fences.4 Thus, Ceuta has become the physical manifestation of the motto, “Fortress Europe.” Additionally, the condition that exists presents a crisis of identity. Morocco, which does not recognize Ceuta’s as an autonomous entity, is rooted in Muslim North Africa cultural ideologies. This forces Morocco to play “host” to Spanish-Christian Ceuta creating conflicting spheres of identities within an existing sphere of conflicting geopolitics. The binary dialectic emerges at the moment of difference—the border. I propose the re-imagining of the Ceuta border as a space of productive difference. Border, constructed in this way, will act as filter for the geophysical forces bridging first world with developing world sphere’s of influence. The resultant hybrid amalgamation will be programmed, producing a prototype for the motto of “Fortress Europe,” re-conceptualizing what “border” constitutes in an age of increasing transnational and global flows.

2

EU

EU as legally constructed EU as resultant border EU Border?

ON BORDER

Geographically, we are in a space of transition:betweenAfricaandEurope,theMediterraneanandtheAtlantic;aspacethatseparatesandconnects,andhasalwaysbeenpermeabletothecontinuousflowsof life.Todaythisplacefulfillsastrategicfunctionbyactingasabarrier,bothphysicalandmental,separatingthelegalfromillegal,likeafoldinglinethatsplitsourworldintwo.

Butbordersarehabitableterritoriesthatcan’tbereducedtolinesonamap.Theyareenvironmentsthatencourage interchange and hybridity, highly dynamicterritoriesthatgenerateagradationofsharedspaces,wherethecharacterof“crossing”prevailsoverthatof“barrier.”Tocrosstheirthresholdsmeanstophysicallymovefromoneplacetoanother,but,evenmore,itimpliesthe start of a transformation, to becoming-others.

Spaces for movement and mobile spaces;capitalistmodernityacceleratesthisqualityevenas itexpands, bounding over mobile borders. Like the FarWest, destruction and colonization, but also a horizonfor creative exodus. There is a single substance,that of capitalism and of those who escape from itschaings to create (and create themselves as) freeterritory; even if people who want to stake it out andprivatize it follow close behind. Our modernity has itsown mobile borders, which, as always , are in searchof the other: the external other that we call nature,andtheinternalother-subjectivity,ourselves, inplural. Against sterile, immutable linear abstraction

stand ideas that spreak like contagious viruses; fromhere springs Madiaq territory. Here, at the dense cruxwhere seas, lands and multitudes convege, over themoattheyhavemadedeadly,wearebuildingamultipleterritory, both geographic and infographic, social andtechnological, that extens infinitely in four directions:towardtheSouthandtowardtheNorth;towardsthedepthsofcarnalbodiesandtowardthe immaterialnoospherethat grows in the ferile land of words without owners. Maps report existing territories, but they alsoconstruct them; thus territory lives in the mind and isconstructedasknowledge.(MaghrebConnection,175)

Thus, the project will produce an architecture that does notattempttosolvethetheconflictingconditionsthatexistattheCeutaborder:religiousconflict, identitycrisis,andmigratorydeaths.

Rather, the architecture will be a vehicle to spatialize theseforces, bridging the gap between what is an intense reality,and an “architectural reality” that suspends judgementin order to juxtapose and highlight conflict producing areconceptualizationofthecurrentEUborder.

CEUTA AS PHYSICAL EMBODIMENT OF FORTRESS EUROPE

20

100

300

550

850

3300

Source: UNITED for Intercultural Action, European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees 4002000 600 800 1000km

Drowning |shipwreck, river or lake|

Suicide

Lack of car |racist act|

Other|hypothermia, exhaustion, minefield

MIGRANT DEATHS IN EU

Policing

20

100

300

550

850

3300

4002000 600 800 1000km

Drowning |shipwreck, river or lake|

MIGRANT EXTERNAL DEATHS VS. INTERNAL

Suicide

4002000 600 800 1000km

RESULTANT EU

20

100

300

550

850

3300

4002000 600 800 1000km

CEUTA AS EPICENTER OF EU BORDER?

CEUTA AS MOMENT OF CONFLICT BETWEEN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

RELIGION IN AFRICA

0 2 5 10 40 60 75 85 90 95 100 90-100

MIGRATORY PATTERNS WITH RELIGIOUS CONTEXT

12 3

DISTANCES TRAVELED IN CONTEXT OF CHRISTIANITY

1,600 Mi

Kampala

Mogadishu

Ceuta

Ceuta

What You See

What “others” See

*

Border Crossing

Pending Expulsion

Grant of asylum or other permit

BORDER BORDER

Overstay

Border rejection

Return Unathorized entry Authorized Entry

Border rejection

RegularizationNon-Return

Illegal Residence Legal Residence

Ceuta Ceuta Ceuta Ceuta

Ceuta Ceuta Ceuta Ceuta

Cueta Migrant Death Scenario_(Boundary implications)

Migrants reach Ceuta

Migrants held in Ceuta for minimum 40 days New “border” established at Strait of Gibraltar Migrant passes away in Strait Boundary extends, cycle repeats

Migrants wait outside border for 1-2 yrs. Migrants breach boundary, filters through Boundary “accepts difference”

4 Zones where urban meets border

CEUTA RELIGION:

MOROCCO RELIGION:

EL BARRIO DEPRINCIPALRELIGION:

URBAN AREAS IN CEUTA