Ceuta, When the Border Becomes a Weapon

by Cristina Di Silvio

Migration, Sovereignty and Hybrid Warfare in the Mediterranean

Abstract: The exceptional migration crisis of summer 2026 provides a starting point for examining the transformation of European borders into spaces of geopolitical pressure, security and hybrid conflict. Between sovereignty, law, migration and disinformation, the article explores a crucial question: when border vulnerability becomes an instrument of power, how can a democracy defend itself without losing sight of its own values?

Keywords: #Ceuta #Migration #EuropeanSecurity #Borders #Jihadism #Radicalization #Terrorism #DigitalMobilization #Disinformation #Intelligence #BorderSecurity #Frontex #Europol #DigitalServicesAct #Morocco #Spain #FundamentalRights #HybridWarfare #CristinaDiSilvio #EthicaSocietas #EthicaSocietasReview #ScientificJournal #SocialSciences #ethicasocietasupli

versione italiana

The Question Coming from the Border

There are places where geography ceases to be geography and becomes politics. Ceuta is one of them. On 12 August 2026, Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles arrived in the North African enclave to meet the President of the Autonomous City, Juan Jesús Vivas, and visit the military units stationed there. Her visit came amid an extraordinary migration crisis, with tens of thousands of people reaching Ceuta from 30 July onwards.¹ The institutional picture is already, in itself, significant. When a migration crisis brings Foreign Affairs, the Interior Ministry, territorial authorities and Defence onto the same stage, it means that the phenomenon is no longer perceived merely as a migration issue. It has become a security issue. But this is precisely where the problem begins. Because security does not necessarily mean war. And migration does not necessarily mean threat. Between these two propositions lies a vast space in which law, geopolitics, organised crime, social vulnerability, propaganda, diplomacy and sovereignty intersect. It is this space that Ceuta forces us to examine.

A North African City That Is Europe

Ceuta is a Spanish city located on the African coast, at the western entrance to the Mediterranean. Its history is already a geopolitical statement. The city was conquered by Portugal in 1415, as part of Portuguese expansion beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, and passed definitively to the Spanish Crown in 1668, following the recognition of Portuguese independence under the Treaty of Lisbon.² Five centuries later, the issue has not disappeared. Morocco continues to claim Ceuta and Melilla, while Spain regards its sovereignty over the two cities as an integral part of its territorial order. This historical layering is essential to understanding the present. Ceuta is not simply a European city accidentally located in Africa. It is a historic frontier of European sovereignty. And this is precisely why its border with Morocco has such a distinctive character. The European Union has clarified that the Schengen acquis applies to Ceuta and Melilla and that the borders of the two cities with Morocco constitute external borders of the Schengen area.³ This apparently technical statement contains one of the great geopolitical contradictions of contemporary Europe. One of Europe’s borders lies in Africa.

The Border That Is No Longer a Line

For centuries, the border was imagined as a line. A line on a map. A frontier to be guarded. A barrier to be crossed. In the twenty-first century, this representation is no longer sufficient. The contemporary border is simultaneously territory, technological infrastructure, legal system, surveillance device, economic space, diplomatic instrument and point of strategic vulnerability. The European Union itself regards the management of external borders as an integral part of the European area of freedom, security and justice, in which internal freedom of movement necessarily requires a common system for controlling external borders.⁴ Ceuta makes this architecture visible. A person crossing the border is not merely crossing a physical barrier. They are crossing a legal threshold. They are entering European space. They are entering a system of rights and obligations.They are entering territory subject to Spanish law and the legal order of the European Union. This is why every crisis in Ceuta is simultaneously Spanish and European.

The Day the Border Filled with People

The crisis of summer 2026 reached extraordinary dimensions. Estimates reported by different sources vary, but the common element is a mass movement concentrated within an exceptionally short period. News reports referred to more than 70,000 people involved in the movement towards Ceuta.¹ But the number alone does not explain the phenomenon. The real strategic variable is speed. A border can be designed to manage thousands of people. It can be reinforced. It can be monitored. But every infrastructure has a threshold beyond which quantity becomes quality. When a border system is suddenly subjected to a flow vastly exceeding its normal capacity, the result is not merely a logistical problem. It creates vulnerability. And vulnerability is one of the principal raw materials of geopolitics.

But Who Moved That Mass?

This is where we must pause. The political temptation is immediate: to turn the event into a ready-made narrative. Morocco opened the border. Morocco used migrants. Morocco conducted a hybrid operation. These statements may be formulated as hypotheses. They cannot automatically be transformed into facts. Available information presents a contested picture: on the one hand, analysts have interpreted the crisis in light of the previous instrumentalisation of migration flows and territorial tensions between Rabat and Madrid; on the other, news organisations have stressed the lack of sufficient evidence to establish that the Moroccan government deliberately organised the event.⁵ This distinction is not a detail. It is the boundary between analysis and propaganda. And it may be the first methodological principle a democratic society should apply when studying hybrid crises: do not confuse what is possible with what has been proven.

Can Migration Become an Instrument of Power?

The answer from the scientific literature is: yes, but under specific conditions. The phenomenon is generally described through expressions such as instrumentalisation of migration or weaponisation of migration. The literature on hybrid warfare recognises the possibility that a political actor may deliberately use migration movements to exert pressure on another state. This does not mean that migrants are “weapons”. It means that their vulnerability can be exploited by an actor seeking to produce a political effect. The Belarus–European Union crisis became one of the most extensively studied examples. Legal scholar Aurel Sari demonstrated how, during the 2021 crisis, legal dynamics and normative asymmetries could be exploited to produce coercive effects.⁶ The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats has also developed a taxonomy of migration instrumentalisation, describing it as a potentially low-cost strategy for actors possessing few other means of exerting pressure.⁷ The concept is therefore scientifically legitimate. But applying it to Ceuta requires additional evidence. The mere fact that a migration crisis is enormous is not enough. One must establish intent, coordination capacity and a causal connection between an actor’s behaviour and the political effect allegedly sought.

The War That Does Not Need Tanks

This is the deepest transformation of contemporary warfare. A hybrid threat is not necessarily a military attack. The Council of the European Union defines hybrid threats as coordinated and harmful activities carried out with malicious intent, potentially combining information manipulation, cyberattacks, economic coercion, political manoeuvring, coercive diplomacy and military threats.⁸ The European Union explicitly includes the weaponisation of migration among the forms of hybrid activity observed against Europe.⁹ This fundamentally changes our understanding of borders. Because a border can be attacked without being militarily assaulted. It can be overloaded. It can be destabilised. It can be subjected to diplomatic pressure. It can be transformed into a domestic political crisis. It can be used to fuel polarisation and fear. It can become the point at which a democratic society begins to doubt the state’s ability to control its own territory. The border, in other words, can become a weapon without a shot being fired.

Interdependence as Vulnerability

This is where another fundamental theory enters the picture. In 2019, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman developed the concept of weaponised interdependence, demonstrating how global networks generate not only interdependence and cooperation, but also coercive power when certain actors occupy strategically central positions within those networks.¹⁰ The principle can, with caution, be extended to migration governance. Europe depends on the cooperation of countries of origin and transit. European states need the cooperation of Mediterranean countries to control migration routes. Transit countries therefore acquire bargaining power that does not necessarily derive from military superiority. It derives from European dependence on their cooperation. This is a different form of power. Not the power to destroy. The power to interrupt.

Morocco and the Leverage of the Border

This is where Ceuta becomes particularly revealing. Relations between Spain and Morocco are simultaneously cooperative and conflictual. The two countries cooperate on security, trade and border control, yet remain separated by profound territorial and geopolitical disputes. Recent history has shown how rapidly migration can become embedded within this relationship. The May 2021 Ceuta crisis is a crucial precedent and helped consolidate within political and institutional literature the concept of migration instrumentalisation. European parliamentary documents from the period explicitly discussed the allegation that migration controls could be used by Morocco as a means of exerting pressure.¹¹ But the scientifically correct question is not: “Is Morocco using migrants as a weapon?” The correct question is: “What conditions make it possible to transform a migration flow into a geopolitical instrument of pressure?” It is a much more serious question. And a much more disturbing one.

The Person Is Not the Weapon

This point must be preserved. Because the language of security can produce a dangerous consequence: turning people into strategic objects. The migrant becomes a “flow”. The refugee becomes “pressure”. The person becomes a “threat”. This process of linguistic dehumanisation has been examined for decades within research on the securitisation of migration. Mariana Gkliati has shown how the language of hybrid threats and instrumentalisation can profoundly affect the legal management of borders and the rights of migrants, particularly when exceptional categories are used to justify extraordinary control practices.¹² The distinction must therefore be absolute: a person is not a weapon. They may become a victim of a system in which other actors attempt to transform their movement into a political instrument. This difference is ethically decisive.

Law Cannot Become Collateral Damage

The border is also a legal space. Spain has the right to control its territory. The European Union has the right to protect its external borders. But both powers are constrained by law. The European Commission has stressed that border control must be exercised proportionately and with respect for fundamental rights.¹³ This principle is fundamental because it introduces a distinction between state security and the securitisation of the foreigner. The former is necessary. The latter can become dangerous. A democracy does not demonstrate its strength by suspending its principles during a crisis. It demonstrates its strength by preserving them precisely when the pressure is greatest.

The European Border and the Schengen Contradiction

Ceuta brings this contradiction to an extreme. Europe has progressively removed internal borders. But precisely this freedom of movement makes a common external border indispensable. The Schengen area is therefore built upon a paradox: fewer borders inside mean greater importance for the border outside. The European Parliament explicitly recognises this relationship within the framework of integrated external border management.¹⁴ Ceuta is one of the places where this architecture becomes physically visible. Its barrier does not protect merely a Spanish city. It protects a European threshold. And this is why every local crisis can potentially become a European crisis.

From the City to European Security

The presence of the Spanish Defence Minister therefore acquires a precise significance. It does not necessarily mean that Spain considers the migration surge a military attack. It means that border security is being viewed within a broader conception of national security. This is a transition Europe will have to manage with great care. Because expanding the category of security can be useful. But it can also produce a perverse consequence: if everything becomes security, nothing remains merely law. Migration becomes security. The border becomes security. Mobility becomes security. Communication becomes security. Dissent becomes security. And a society in which every phenomenon is interpreted through the lens of threat risks turning emergency into normality.

The Question of European Defence

There is an even deeper level.If Ceuta is Spanish territory and an external border of the Schengen area, what would happen if a migration crisis evolved into a genuine attack against Spanish territory? The answer cannot be found exclusively through NATO. The European Union itself has Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union, the so-called mutual assistance clause, under which, in the event of armed aggression against a Member State, the other Member States have an obligation to provide assistance.¹⁵ The provision does not mean that every migration crisis automatically triggers a defence clause. Quite the opposite. Its wording presupposes an armed aggression. But its existence demonstrates how difficult it has become to completely separate migration policy from security policy. Europe has built a common territory. Now it must learn how to protect it without turning every vulnerability into a pretext for undermining its own values.

The Real War May Be Against Perception

There is another dimension we risk underestimating. A hybrid crisis does not necessarily have to physically destroy a border. It may be enough to demonstrate that the border does not work. If a population sees tens of thousands of people suddenly crossing a frontier, a perception may emerge that the state has lost control. If that perception is amplified through social media, disinformation and propaganda, the political effect can become far greater than the material event itself. Vulnerability then becomes psychological. And the security of a democracy also depends on citizens’ trust in institutions’ ability to manage crises. This is one reason why the European Union considers information manipulation an integral part of the response to hybrid threats.⁸ The border can therefore be attacked in three ways: physically, politically, perceptually. And the third may be the hardest to neutralise.

Ceuta as a Laboratory of the Twenty-First Century

Ceuta is small. But great historical transformations do not require large territories. Sarajevo was small. Berlin was a city. Gdańsk was a port. Yet these places became symbols because they concentrated, within a limited space, the contradictions of their time. Ceuta may become one of the symbolic places of the twenty-first century. Because it brings together: the migration question; territorial sovereignty; Europe–Africa relations; Mediterranean security; cooperation with third countries; organised crime; hybrid warfare; disinformation; border protection; asylum law; foreign policy; European defence. It is not a periphery. It is a crossroads.

And Here the Italian Question Begins

For Italy, Ceuta is not a Spanish story. It is a Mediterranean warning. Spain looks towards Ceuta. Italy looks towards Lampedusa, Sicily and the Central Mediterranean. Greece looks towards the Aegean. Poland looks towards the eastern border. Finland looks towards the Russian border. The places are different. But the structure of the problem is similar: an EU external border becomes the point at which a regional crisis encounters European vulnerability. This is why Europe can no longer continue to treat migration crises exclusively as national emergencies. If external borders are European, their resilience must also be European.

The Border of the Future Will Not Be a Wall

It would be a mistake to believe that the answer is simply to build higher walls. The border of the future will be made of sensors, biometric systems, intelligence, maritime surveillance, drones, data analysis, diplomatic cooperation, criminal-network disruption, counter-disinformation capabilities and predictive capacity. Research on migration flows has shown that heterogeneous data, including geolocated events and digital indicators, can be used to improve the forecasting of migration movements.¹⁶ The future border will therefore be less a line than a network of knowledge. And a network can be resilient only if it knows what is happening. Real security does not consist in preventing every movement. It consists in being able to distinguish between: those fleeing; those migrating; those trafficking; those organising; those manipulating; those exploiting; those threatening; those protecting. Complexity is more difficult than simplification. But genuine security is complex.

The Border as a Moral Test

Ultimately, however, Ceuta asks a question that no surveillance system can answer. How strong can a border become without ceasing to be democratic? It is an enormous question. The state has the right to protect its territory. But the person arriving at the border does not lose their dignity. The border can be controlled. The person cannot be dehumanised. Security can be strengthened. The law cannot be erased. Sovereignty can be defended. Moral responsibility cannot be outsourced. This is the line separating democratic security policy from a politics of fear.

When the Border Begins to Move

We have always imagined borders as something fixed. But borders are not fixed. They move through perception. They move through diplomacy. They move through technology. They move through politics. They move through history. And sometimes they move through people. This is the deepest lesson Ceuta offers Europe. We do not yet know, based on the information currently available, whether the July 2026 surge was simply an exceptional migration mobilisation, whether it was facilitated by criminal networks, whether deliberate tolerance played a role, or whether part of the event resulted from a coordinated political strategy. That question must be investigated, not transformed into narrative certainty.¹⁷ But we know something more important. We know that the system is vulnerable. We know that a border can be subjected to enormous pressure without a war being declared. We know that a migration crisis can immediately become a diplomatic crisis. We know that a diplomatic crisis can become a security crisis. And we know that fear itself can become an instrument of power. Perhaps this is the real border of the twenty-first century. Not the one between Spain and Morocco. Not the one between Africa and Europe. Not the one between migrant and citizen. But the much subtler boundary between security and fear, sovereignty and abuse, information and propaganda, law and the state of exception. Ceuta is a city. But it is also a warning. Because when a border becomes a weapon, the first thing put to the test is not its barrier. It is a democracy’s ability to remain itself.

Notes

ANSA. (2026, August 12). La ministra della Difesa di Madrid a Ceuta. The report concerns Margarita Robles’ visit to Ceuta amid the ongoing migration crisis. (ansa.it⁠)
For the historical reconstruction of the Portuguese conquest in 1415 and the subsequent transfer to Spain in 1668, see Gold, P. (2000), Europe or Africa? A contemporary study of the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Liverpool University Press. This chronology is important because Ceuta represents a European presence in North Africa predating the formation of the modern system of nation-states.
European Parliament. (2022, May 17). Answer given by Ms Johansson on behalf of the European Commission: E-000911/2022. The document expressly establishes that the Schengen acquis applies to Ceuta and Melilla and that their borders with Morocco are external Schengen borders. (europarl.europa.eu⁠)
European Parliament. (n.d.). Management of the external borders. External border management is linked to Articles 3(2) TEU and 67 and 77 TFEU within the framework of the European area of freedom, security and justice. (europarl.europa.eu⁠)
Associated Press. (2026). FACT FOCUS: Migrant crossing in Spain’s Ceuta breeds unsubstantiated claims. The report highlights the lack of sufficient evidence to attribute the deliberate opening of the border to the Moroccan government and discusses the possible role of smuggling networks, inequality and information dynamics. (apnews.com⁠)
Sari, A. (2023). Instrumentalized migration and the Belarus crisis: Strategies of legal coercion. Hybrid CoE Paper 17. The contribution analyses the 2021 Belarus crisis and demonstrates how legal asymmetries may be exploited to produce coercive effects. (hybridcoe.fi⁠)
Fakhry, A., Rácz, A., & Parkes, R. (2022). Migration instrumentalization: A taxonomy for an efficient response. Hybrid CoE Working Paper 14. The authors analyse migration instrumentalisation as a potentially low-cost strategy and propose a taxonomy for distinguishing different forms of the phenomenon. (hybridcoe.fi⁠)
Council of the European Union. (2026). Hybrid threats. The European Union defines hybrid threats as coordinated and harmful activities that may combine informational, cyber, economic, political and military instruments. (consilium.europa.eu⁠)
European External Action Service. (2026, March 19). Countering Hybrid Threats. The document explicitly includes the weaponisation of migration among the hybrid activities observed in the European space. (eeas.europa.eu⁠)
Farrell, H., & Newman, A. L. (2019). Weaponized interdependence: How global economic networks shape state coercion. International Security, 44(1), 42–79. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00351. The concept is applied here by structural analogy to migration governance and not as an equivalence between economic networks and human mobility. (direct.mit.edu⁠)
European Parliament. (2022). Parliamentary question E-000911/2022. The European parliamentary record explicitly reports the allegation, formulated within the parliamentary question, that Morocco instrumentalised migration controls. It is important to stress that the document records a political allegation and does not, by itself, constitute evidence substantiating that allegation. (europarl.europa.eu⁠)
Gkliati, M. (2023). Let’s call it what it is: Hybrid threats and instrumentalisation as the evolution of securitisation in migration management. European Papers, 8(2), 561–578. https://doi.org/10.15166/2499-8249/675. The author critically examines the evolution of migration instrumentalisation and its implications for border management and fundamental rights. (europeanpapers.eu⁠)
European Commission. (2021). Answer given by Ms Johansson on behalf of the European Commission: E-003322/2021. The Commission recalls that border controls must be carried out proportionately and with respect for fundamental rights. (europarl.europa.eu⁠)
European Parliament. (n.d.). Management of the external borders. European rules expressly link the absence of internal border controls to the need for effective management of external borders. (europarl.europa.eu⁠)
European External Action Service. (2022). Article 42(7) TEU — The EU’s mutual assistance clause. Article 42(7) TEU establishes an obligation of mutual assistance in the event of armed aggression against a Member State. The provision does not amount to automatic militarisation of every border crisis. (eeas.europa.eu⁠)
Carammia, M., Iacus, S. M., & Wilkin, T. (2020). Forecasting asylum-related migration flows with machine learning and data at scale. The study demonstrates how heterogeneous data, including geolocated events and digital indicators, can be used to improve the forecasting of migration flows. (arxiv.org⁠)
This methodological caution is particularly important when analysing the July 2026 crisis: available sources present divergent geopolitical interpretations and do not currently allow the hypothesis of a deliberate Moroccan state operation to be treated as definitively established fact. (apnews.com⁠)

References

Carammia, M., Iacus, S. M., & Wilkin, T. (2020). Forecasting asylum-related migration flows with machine learning and data at scale. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71613-7

Council of the European Union. (2026). Hybrid threats. Council of the European Union.

European External Action Service. (2022). Article 42(7) TEU — The EU’s mutual assistance clause. European Union.

European External Action Service. (2026). Countering hybrid threats. European Union.

European Parliament. (2022, May 17). Answer given by Ms Johansson on behalf of the European Commission: E-000911/2022. European Parliament.

European Parliament. (n.d.). Management of the external borders. European Parliament.

Fakhry, A., Rácz, A., & Parkes, R. (2022). Migration instrumentalization: A taxonomy for an efficient response. Hybrid CoE Working Paper 14. European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats.

Farrell, H., & Newman, A. L. (2019). Weaponized interdependence: How global economic networks shape state coercion. International Security, 44(1), 42–79. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00351

Gkliati, M. (2023). Let’s call it what it is: Hybrid threats and instrumentalisation as the evolution of securitisation in migration management. European Papers, 8(2), 561–578. https://doi.org/10.15166/2499-8249/675

Gold, P. (2000). Europe or Africa? A contemporary study of the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Liverpool University Press.

Sari, A. (2023). Instrumentalized migration and the Belarus crisis: Strategies of legal coercion. Hybrid CoE Paper 17. European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats.