Staging Ceuta: The Border Spectacle, Empathetic Distance, and Hegemonic Narratives

The migration crisis in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave, and Italy’s unilateral move to suspend the EU Schengen agreement for Spanish arrivals, serve as a stark reminder of how rapidly such events can destabilize European institutional frameworks.

Yet, my genuine interest lies in how this sharp crisis offers a powerful starting point for in-depth sociological study: despite clear, documented knowledge of border areas, particularly given Ceuta’s unique situation and colonial past, why do such incidents repeatedly incite strong public fear and political reprisal throughout Europe? I am not questioning whether this fear is legitimate, given that Ceuta is an EU territory (even if outside the Schengen area); rather, answering this question requires a deeper, critical examination of the cognitive architecture through which contemporary media and political discourse mould social reality.

The rigorous sociological analyses of migration dynamics that cyclically invest border enclaves such as Ceuta demand a decisive epistemological leap: moving far beyond a purely descriptive horizon to interrogate the underlying cognitive mechanisms and media frames that structure public perception (Goffman, 1974). On one hand, prominent geopolitical outlets and analytical outlets like Limes attempt to decode these complex migratory flows through historical-spatial frameworks focused heavily on structural “whys,” operating securely within a perceived perimeter of objective neutrality. On the other hand, however, a critical and unsettling question persistently emerges: why, even when confronted with a clear, well-documented, and deeply rooted historical and geographical awareness of these border territories, do such dramatic events continue to elicit profound astonishment, shock, and a heightened sense of alarm within European public opinion?

The Production of Induced Empathetic Distance and Experimental Insights

Dominant political and media discourses systematically deploy a macro-statistical and utilitarian approach—a cold, technocratic lexicon built on demographic rates, abstract variables, and policy analogies directly borrowed from debates over pension system sustainability, where human lives are treated merely as financial liabilities to be managed or cut. This utilitarian framing successfully generates what can be conceptualized as induced empathetic distance, a cognitive state wherein migrants are stripped of personal biographies and humanized features, and instead transformed into anonymous digits, statistical quotas, or direct threats to fiscal stability and the welfare state. This pervasive dynamic is not the product of a secretive, conspiratorial plot; rather, it responds directly to structural political logics functional to agendas of othering, alterization, and the active marginalisation of the out-group.

Conversely, when narrative structures shift away from macro-quantification toward micro-biographies focused on the subjective meanings and lived experiences of border crossers, immediate mechanisms of emotional resonance, co-participation, and deep empathy are unlocked, effectively dissolving the abstract fears manufactured by securitised alarmism. To substantiate this theoretical perspective, contemporary experimental research has rigorously tested the efficacy of narrative treatments against aseptic statistical data. For instance, in middle-income contexts characterised by acute fiscal tensions, experimental studies on the Venezuelan migration crisis in Colombia demonstrate that exposure to personal life stories and narratives emphasising migrants’ economic contributions, framed in terms of personal biographies, significantly diminishes threat perception and boosts public support for open migration policies by approximately 0.1 standard deviations (Bandiera et al., 2026). Similarly, within complex institutional settings such as Australia, narrative vignettes prove superior to raw statistical information in mitigating material and housing-crisis resistances, driving up public endorsement for immigration by 4 to 7 percentage points (Leng et al., 2024).

Nevertheless, empirical literature uncovers a fundamental intrinsic vulnerability within these strategies: purely humanitarian narratives that focus exclusively on human suffering and travel pathos activate only a superficial level of empathy. These narratives ultimately fail to translate into stable, long-term policy support for inclusive migration policies unless they explicitly confront and address the material and fiscal challenges of public resource redistribution. Furthermore, the effects of narrative-based information treatments exhibit a high degree of geopolitical context-dependency and are prone to temporal decay over the medium term, especially when individuals are re-immersed in daily media cycles dominated by emergency and alarmist frames. All these converging elements highlight why examining Ceuta acts as a perfect theoretical and empirical magnifying glass, proving that collective perception is never the automatic byproduct of a real event, but rather the constructed outcome of a deliberately polarised discursive apparatus.

The Border Spectacle and the Extended Field Site Methodology

To fully understand how this empathetic distance is systematically engineered, we must examine the conceptual framework of the Border Spectacle, formulated by Ruben Andersson (2014) following prolonged ethnographic fieldwork conducted precisely along the razor-wire fences of Ceuta and Melilla. Andersson’s work reveals how the theatrical staging of the frontier serves to solidify abstract alterity and perpetuate a vast, self-sustaining security-industrial complex.

Comprehending this complex apparatus of control required a methodological innovation: the extended field site, conceived as a singular analytical site articulated across multiple interconnected geographical nodes. To map the friction points and discursive supply chains of illegality, Andersson executed an itinerant ethnography between 2010 and 2011, conducting in-depth interviews and conversations with over 100 migrants, approximately 80 international organisations and NGO officials, over 50 border guards, and 40 Red Cross workers. This sprawling research path traced the architecture of detention and command: from the Guardia Civil command centres in Madrid and Las Palmas to the Frontex headquarters in Warsaw, crossing the Rosso checkpoint at the Senegalese border, the transit hubs of Oujda and Tangier in Morocco, and the desert outpost of Nouadhibou in Mauritania.

This close-range mapping unmasked the linguistic and visual devices constructing the image of illegality through two distinct performative acts of the border spectacle: the humanitarian “huddle” (the huddle) at sea in Melilla and the menacing “horde” (the horde) on land in Ceuta. These are not spontaneous phenomena, but institutional representations driven by a precise visual economy. Within this circuit, iconic imagery, such as Juan Medina’s award-winning photograph of a shipwreck off the Canary Islands, is transformed into symbolic currency, occasionally coopted by law enforcement agencies into promotional videos (such as Commander Francisco’s The Drama of Immigration) to morally legitimise interception under the benevolent guise of “saving lives”, or, vice versa, to mobilise narratives of emergency in the case of “the horde”.

Risk Abstraction, Corporeal Profiling, and Institutional Limbo

Andersson’s analysis demonstrates how European policies actively benefit from this representational machinery. The visceral drama of the borderland (la trastienda) is translated, in his ethnography, into an aseptic, scientific risk management model best exemplified by Frontex’s Risk Analysis Unit (RAU) and their Common Integrated Risk Analysis Model (CIRAM). Here, clandestine migration is depoliticized through a mathematical formula where risk is a function of Threat, Vulnerability, and Impact, reducing human journeys on interactive maps (like i-Map) to mere vector arrows. This geometric abstraction channels millions into defense contractors (like Indra, manufacturer of the SIVE radar) to hard-gate European borders.

On the ground, this risk abstraction translates into meticulous bodily profiling utilized by security forces (such as DPAF brigades in Dakar). Officers screen travelers using a strict visual template: groups of 10 to 15 people carrying identical trafficker backpacks, multiple clothing layers against wind, and copious dry biscuits utilized strategically to block intestinal functions during sea crossings. Travelers hide mobile phones, carry euro currency instead of CFA francs, and wear leather gris-gris amulets intended to render them mystically invisible to European radar. At the Rosso border post between Senegal and Mauritania, this physical profiling takes on psychological dimensions through the concept of siriyan, denoting a hidden, clandestine intent.

To project this manhunt beyond European territory, Spain and the EU enforce an asymmetrical “economy of the gift” recalling Marcel Mauss’s moral frameworks. Through technology transfers (all-terrain vehicles, speedboats, biometric scanners), daily per-diems for local patrols, and funding elite military study visits to Madrid and Las Palmas, the EU binds partner nations into strict subordination. While Senegal cooperates in exchange for subsidies, Morocco leverages migration as geopolitical leverage for territorial claims in Western Sahara and Neighborhood Policy funds.

Within border outposts like Ceuta’s CETI (Centro de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes), time itself becomes a weapon of containment designed to break the financial capital of trafficking networks. Confinement is managed through strict “removal activities,” protocol cards, and spatial stratification: upper bureaucratic offices contrast with lower modular units where migrants hang sheets for privacy and are systematically infantilized as negritos by local society and técnicos (acting as maternal figures like “Mamá”). Broken plastic sandals become the living metonymy of degraded mobility. 

Conclusion: Decoding the Spectacle and Gramscian Hegemony

Ultimately, this intricate interplay of bodily profiling, mathematical risk modeling, asymmetrical gifts, and noisy uprisings reveals the true essence of the industry of illegality: a self-contradictory system that perpetually regenerates the very threat it promises to defend the West against. Media framings centered on invasions and hordes are never neutral descriptions of reality; rather, they are calculated products of a targeted visual economy.

As Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) theory of cultural hegemony elucidates, dominant sociopolitical structures maintain control not merely through direct physical coercion at the frontier gates, but by manufacturing a pervasive, normalized “common sense” via institutional discourse and mass media. Recognizing this cognitive machinery empowers us, through rigorous critical sociological inquiry, to dismantle these artificial securitary alarms, overcome induced empathetic distance, and radically rethink the border not as an impassable wall of violent collision, but as a shared space of authentic human and social recognition.

References

Andersson, R. (2014). Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine migration and the business of bordering Europe. University of California Press.

Bandiera, L., et al. (2026). Narrative treatments and public support for migration policies in middle-income countries. Journal of Economic Policy and Migration, 42(1), 115–140.

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Harvard University Press.

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith, Eds. & Trans.). International Publishers.

Leng, M., et al. (2024). Narrative vignettes and housing crisis framing in immigration attitudes. Comparative Political Studies, 57(3), 412–445.