Book Event: In “The Gates of the Sea” Geographer Luna Vives Examines Migrant Search and Rescue in the Mediterranean
Please join me on Tuesday, October 28, 2025, from 2:00–3:00 PM EST for a virtual discussion with fellow geographer and longtime friend Luna Vives about her new book The Gates of the Sea. If you’re interested in understanding how borders reshape humanitarianism, and what it means to resist from within, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
As always, there will be time for Q&A, and a recording will be posted the following day for anyone who cannot attend live. Free registration is required at the link below. If you plan to join, I’d love to hear what questions you’d like me to ask Luna, share them in the comments.
About The Gates of the Sea
At Europe’s maritime frontier, the line between saving lives and policing borders has never been thinner. The Gates of the Sea exposes this tension with remarkable clarity, revealing how Spain’s civilian maritime rescue service, once known for its life-saving mission, has been pulled into the orbit of border control.
Unlike other European states that militarized search and rescue, Spain entrusted it to a civilian agency whose members often describe themselves as “firefighters of the sea.” Caught between their duty to protect life and the government’s push to turn them into gatekeepers, these workers have fought back through their anarcho-syndicalist union, the CGT.
Luna Vives traces how these rescuers are challenging state power from within. Her deeply researched and accessible book shows what resistance looks like at the edge of Europe, where humanitarianism and enforcement collide.
Maritime search and rescue sits at the heart of contemporary border politics. In The Gates of the Sea, Vives invites us to confront the paradox of a system that saves lives only to sustain the very borders that endanger them. Her work illuminates how solidarity can thrive even inside institutions built to contain it, a lesson that resonates far beyond the Mediterranean.
About the Author
Luna Vives is a political geographer and an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the Université de Montréal. Her research and teaching focus on international migration, borders, and the tension between state security policies and the protection of migrants’ rights. Luna’s work broadly explores how governments in the European Union and North America use borders to filter and exclude migrants, with a particular focus on the militarization of maritime search and rescue (SAR) and the impact of restrictive policies on unaccompanied migrant children. Her book is titled The Gates of the Sea: Migration and Rescue at the Edges of Europe.
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