Ceuta is why borders shouldn’t exist
It’s about the bigotry
I’m not sure there’s a better argument for the abolition of borders (and the governing authorities within) than the so-called migration crisis in Ceuta. Reports I’d seen suggested upwards of 50,000 had crossed the land border between Morocco and the Spanish exclave. Italy has suspended Schengen Zone permissions for people coming from Spain.[1] and much of the rest of the European Union has threatened to follow suit.[2]
Apparently, all this is more than a little hysterical and a wider view is rich with irony. First, Stephen Zunes puts the number of migrants at 2,000.[3] (Spain has said that 48,000 migrants had returned to Morocco.[4]) Zunes, who strenuously objects to Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara, focuses on Ceuta’s history as a Spanish (formerly Portuguese) colony in Africa, writing that “[t]he only reason there’s an EU border there at all isn’t geography — it’s because a European empire took a piece of Africa and never gave it back. And now they’re mad that Africans keep showing up to it.”[5]
Ceuta’s population, apparently, consists largely of Muslim Africans.[6] Robert Terrell, a former professor of mine, would surely point out that the E.U. response is hypocritical, racist, and Islamophobic; that at least some of the European countries complaining about the influx have more than a little imperial history of their own, and therefore that they are complaining about Spain’s imperial problems when they have such problems of their own. And he would wonder—rather harshly—what their response would be if the migrants were white and Christian. And I would have to agree. Certainly, we see this sort of bigotry against migrants among white Christian nationalists in the U.S. and their right-wing compatriots around the world.
At bottom, this all about bigotry against other human beings over entirely superficial differences. I cannot criticize it more harshly. But at a fundamental level, this is what borders are about and it serves the elites who seek to preserve their dominions over us by reinforcing these distinctions.
[1] Sofia Ferreira Santos and Sarah Rainsford, “Spain’s PM blames traffickers after 60,000 migrants reach Ceuta from Morocco,” British Broadcasting Corporation, July 31, 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kp639yx4o
[2] Tinshui Yeung, “Spain attacks ‘selfish’ response of some EU countries to Ceuta migrant crossings,” British Broadcasting Corporation, August 1, 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2v91xn1z9o
[3] Stephen Zunes, “July 31, 2026 (Friday),” August 1, 2026,
[4] Sofia Ferreira Santos and Sarah Rainsford, “Spain’s PM blames traffickers after 60,000 migrants reach Ceuta from Morocco,” British Broadcasting Corporation, July 31, 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kp639yx4o
[5] Stephen Zunes, “July 31, 2026 (Friday),” August 1, 2026,
[6] Stephen Zunes, “July 31, 2026 (Friday),” August 1, 2026,