Foued Ghorbali

Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Gafsa, Tunisia. His research focuses on urban margins, informal economies, youth mobility, and the political sociology of post-revolutionary Tunisia. He has conducted extensive fieldwork on irregular neighborhoods, illicit alcohol trade, and the everyday strategies of marginalized populations in Tunisian cities. His current work explores the intersections between migration, race, and populist discourses in North Africa, particularly in the context of trans-Saharan migration and European border externalization.
He has published in both academic journals and public platforms such as Assafir Al-Arabi, and he actively collaborates with international research networks and development institutions. He is also engaged in developing sociological resource centers for students and researchers in southern Tunisia.

The course Borders, Mobility, and Power: A Sociological Perspective on African Migration toward Europe provides a critical sociological introduction to migration dynamics from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe. It seeks to equip students with analytical tools to understand how mobility across the Mediterranean is shaped by global inequalities, historical legacies, and contemporary political transformations. The course adopts a South-North perspective, paying particular attention to how migration flows from Africa intersect with European border regimes and the socio-political consequences within transit and host societies.
We begin by examining North African migration to Europe, highlighting the historical ties shaped by colonialism, labor migration, and post-colonial mobility agreements. Since the Arab uprisings of 2011, political instability, economic precarity, and changing aspirations have driven significant numbers of North Africans, particularly from Tunisia and Morocco, to seek new opportunities in Europe. The Mediterranean, however, has increasingly become a securitized space, where European states externalize their borders and negotiate migration control with countries like Tunisia and Libya. Through the analysis of Frontex operations, bilateral agreements, and the rise of ‘buffer zones’, we discuss how Europe has turned its peripheries into zones of containment.
The second focus is on Sub-Saharan African migration, particularly through the Maghreb as a transit or destination zone. The growing presence of Sub-Saharan migrants in countries like Tunisia has provoked ambivalent and often hostile responses. On one hand, these migrants are victims of precarious journeys and systemic violence; on the other, their visibility has become a site of political controversy. In Tunisia, recent populist discourses—framed by both state actors and segments of civil society—have racialized the presence of Sub-Saharan migrants, framing them as a demographic and cultural threat. These discourses are entangled with broader anxieties about national identity, sovereignty, and socio-economic crisis.
We will explore how such racialized representations are embedded in longer histories of racial capitalism, Euro-Mediterranean hierarchies, and the reproduction of border violence.
Drawing on works by Didier Fassin, Achille Mbembe, and postcolonial theorists, we critically assess how the moral economies of hospitality and exclusion operate. The course will also analyze the European Union’s instrumentalization of migration policies, including the Team Europe external funding mechanism, and how these policies reshape the domestic political landscapes of countries like Tunisia.
By the end of the course, students will be able to understand the structural factors driving African migration, the role of borders in reproducing global inequalities, and the local political effects of migration, especially concerning race, security, and citizenship in the Euro-Mediterranean space.

Course Plan
Week 1 – North African Migration and the European Border Regime
 Historical trajectories of migration from North Africa
 EU policies: Frontex, visa regimes, externalization
 Tunisia and Morocco as buffer states
 Documentary screening and debate (e.g., Mediterranea, Jonas Carpignano)

Week 2 – Sub-Saharan Migration, Race, and the Politics of Exclusion
 Transit migration and the Maghreb as space of containment
 Racism and populism in Tunisia: the 2023 anti-migrant discourse
 Intersection of migration, race, and local political economies
 Comparative debate: Hospitality vs. Security logic

Keywords
Migration governance, Sub-Saharan migrants, securitization, Tunisia, racialization, Frontex, postcolonial critique, Euro-Mediterranean relations, border regimes

Indicative Bibliography
 Fassin, Didier (2011). Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. University of California Press.
 Mbembe, Achille (2017). Critique of Black Reason. Duke University Press.
 De Genova, Nicholas (2017). The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering. Duke University Press.
 Bennafla, Karine (2011). “Migrations en Afrique du Nord: entre transit et installation”, Revue Tiers Monde, n° 208.
 El Qadim, Nora (2014). “Le gouvernement asymétrique des migrations. Maroc/Union européenne”, Critique internationale, n° 64.
 Cuttitta, Paolo (2018). “Delocalization of Border Control to Africa”, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54(1).
 Lahlou, Mehdi (2020). “Tunisia: Between Transit Country and Immigration Host”, Migration Policy Institute.
 Heller, Charles & Pezzani, Lorenzo (2019). Liquid Traces: Investigating the Deaths of Migrants at the EU’s Maritime Frontier.