Abandonment and Institutional Violence against Migrants: A Territorial Analysis
This report provides an in-depth look at three key areas linked to Catalonia’s borders: sea arrivals in the Balearic Islands, the reception of children and young people without adult references in Barcelona, and migratory transit at the Catalan-French border.
The same institutional racism that explains the absence of safe and legal pathways, and that enforces violence at borders—whether through externalization or directly by police forces—also operates by creating exceptionalism in how institutions fulfill their duties to guarantee rights and address people’s needs.
The report we present today aims to serve as a tool of denunciation for three realities linked to Catalonia’s borders: arrivals in the Balearic Islands and transfers to Barcelona, the reception and institutional neglect of children, and the situation of migratory transit from Catalonia to France at the Catalan-French border.
This report is the result of ongoing monitoring and research work, which would not have been possible without the collaboration of organizations, collectives, and professionals who face and experience border management in its many forms, day after day, in the Balearic Islands and Catalonia. Using a mixed methodology based on direct observation, interviews, and data analysis, and from a decolonial, anti-racist, and feminist perspective, the report denounces institutional violence and abandonment, documents shortcomings in the detection of vulnerabilities, and calls for effective mechanisms of transparency, oversight, and accountability.