The Gates of the Sea: Migration and Rescue at the Edges of Europe

Luna Vives is a political geographer and associate professor in the Department of Geography, Université de Montréal. She has a background in sociology (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), geography (University of British Columbia) and social work (McGill). Her research explores how governments in the European Union and North America use borders to filter people and exclude certain groups of migrants. She has studied the situation of unaccompanied migrant children, the transnational mothering practices of Senegalese women living in Spain, the use of the "crisis" framework to push forward radical and costly changes to migration and border policy, and the standardization of maritime search and rescue systems in Europe. Her work has been published in several academic journals, including Geopolitics, Political Geography, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, International Migration, Criminologie and the Journal of Borderland Studies. She also contributes regularly to print media and radio. Her current research focuses on the use of drones and atmospheric and low earth orbit satellites to watch over the border.