ABSTRACT
Tarifa, a former fishing town in the south of Spain, is famous today for two types of travellers who both depend on the wind: surf tourists and ‘illegal’ immigrants arriving by boat. Beginning in the 1980s, windsurfing tourism became the city’s main industry, and around the same time, the first immigrants started coming ashore by small boats, also known as pateras. In June 2003, I went to this city of wind to see for myself how Tarifa had changed, from a fishing town into a port of arrival for immigrants who cannot enter Europe any other way than via patera. A former fisherman in the harbour explained to me how, at first, the inhabitants of Tarifa thought that these ‘poor Africans’ travelling via patera could not afford the expensive ferry ride to Spain. Now Tarifa’s natives understand that these migrants are not necessarily poor: but rather, they have no legal options for leaving and therefore choose to cross in this dangerous way. Meanwhile, fishermen on the other side, in Africa, have left the fishing for another ‘business’: the business of bringing people across. But this new enterprise is not without risks. Border control officers are known to intercept the boats, and the water’s waves are high, making it difficult to navigate a secure course. Human fatalities are the regular result of following a wrong course or a journey that takes too long. Often the boats are also overloaded, which may result in capsizing.
