ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the shifting configuration of the relation between rescue NGOs and states since the beginning of their deployment in the Mediterranean, and the oscillation of their position between complicity, transgression, and normalization. The deployment of the first rescue NGO in 2014 was led in support of state activities and was partly led by former state actors. While in 2015, following the ending of the Italian Mare Nostrum (MN) operation, several other NGOs intervened with a far more vocal and oppositional stance, their presence was temporarily normalized. It was only at the end of 2016, when European states sought to seal off the Mediterranean frontier by re-outsourcing border control, that a campaign to criminalize civilian rescue activities was initiated. As criminalization intensified, NGO responses diverged, with some organizations seeking to frame their activities in exclusively humanitarian terms, while others affirmed their oppositional stance and forged new practices of civil disobedience. This succession of phases, this chapter argues, holds important lessons to think about the politics of humanitarianism and solidarity, which depends not only on the intentional (de)politicization of civilian actors but also on the attitude of the states facing NGOs.
