A ride from Tangier, the largest city in northern Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta takes less than two hours. The border crossing has its own, sleepier rhythm, quite different from the tourist-driven bustle of Tangier. In Ceuta, traders run their errands, Morocco-based expats make visa runs and Spanish people catch ferries to the mainland. On most days, the border crossing seems almost ordinary. The fences, though menacing and topped with razor wire, are less imposing up close and officers make small talk with the expats waiting to get their visas stamped. 

Then there are those days when the routine collapses and Ceuta becomes the center of Europe’s migration debate. 

The territory is a geographic and political paradox. Despite falling under Spain’s — and the European Union’s — jurisdiction, it sits on the northern edge of Africa, surrounded by Morocco and separated from the Spanish mainland by the Strait of Gibraltar. It is an entry point to Europe, yet not fully part of the Schengen zone, requiring additional immigration checks for travelers crossing to the mainland. 

When more than 60,000 people — mostly Moroccan men and teenagers — rushed into Ceuta (almost doubling the coastal city’s population), the images reverberated across Europe. There seemed to be no dramatic buildup to the incident, nor any obvious explanation why thousands of people chose that day to make their way to Spain. 

Europe’s far-right politicians seized the narrative, portraying the influx as an imminent invasion, warning that the men were on their way to “Calais” and “Germany.” Italy temporarily suspended the Schengen free movement regime with Spain, meaning travellers arriving by sea and air would now be subject to border checks. Spain threatened to take “proportional measures” in response and did so at midnight on August 8, when it imposed similar checks for visitors from Italy. 

The standoff between European governments — led by socialist Pedro Sánchez in Spain and conservative Giorgia Meloni in Italy — is not simply a test for European border security. Instead, what transpired in Ceuta poses bigger questions about the shifting nature of state sovereignty itself: How are we to understand borders, if they’re shaped by forces beyond the state’s reach? 

Borders are not just lines separating geographic entities. They are systems built on surveillance, diplomatic bargains and digital networks. Ceuta is the place where all three converge. Its borders, already protected by the sea, have been fortified with steel, outsourced through diplomacy and tested by coordinated rumors.

Steel

The crossings into the enclave are blocked by a multi-layered barrier of fences and wire. Morocco administers a fence separating it from the neutral area between the two countries. Two fences on the Spanish-controlled territory follow, creating an enclosure monitored by the Spanish Civil Guard. The physical infrastructure is reinforced with motion sensors, thermal and CCTV cameras, maritime communication systems and facial recognition technology. 

Even the sea has now been incorporated into the border system. Just three days after the Ceuta border chaos, Spanish authorities installed a 500-metre floating barrier and anchored naval buoys to create another monitored enclosure. 

The EU has funded most of the fortifications. The Border Violence Monitoring Network’s report says that since the construction of Ceuta’s border barrier in the 1990s, the EU has spent tens of millions of dollars to make the Spanish-Moroccan frontier more secure, technologically up-to-date and heavily surveilled. With the recent mass crossing, Spain will now receive additional emergency financial aid. 

Yet, the architecture of physical surveillance, built and re-built with European money for decades, cannot prevent the human cost of attempting to cross a border. In Ceuta alone, at least 100 people died according to local authorities. “The rationale behind increasing surveillance is that you'll be able to save lives and smash the [people trafficking] gangs, right?” asked Nathan Akehurst, who has written about Ceuta’s border for Jacobin. “Where was that in this case?” 

Diplomacy

Akehurst’s question touches upon the human-centered rationale for heavy border surveillance. But there is also a political one. It is not only Spain, as a EU member, that receives funds to manage migration. Morocco has received €427 million since 2015, for migration-related expenses, including technology and training. That’s part of Europe’s wider strategy of border externalization, a practice where Europe moves border control beyond its own territory. 

The practice has been around for decades, but went into overdrive after 2015, when approximately 1.3 million people, mostly from Syria, came to the continent seeking asylum. Many of them reached Europe through Turkey, prompting the EU to strike a deal with Ankara: €6 billion in funds, visa liberalization and EU-ascension negotiations in exchange for stricter border controls and curbing irregular arrivals to Greece. The EU also agreed to resettle within Europe one Syrian from Turkey for every Syrian returned to Turkey from Greece. But by 2020, when the EU failed to resettle Syrians, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared he would no longer prevent migrants from crossing Turkey en route to the EU. 

“Border externalization is basically paying other countries, but also subjecting them, through a carrot and stick approach, to performing functions that are usually performed by a state itself at their borders,” explained Josephine Solanki from the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based think tank. It leaves space for leaders like Erdoğan, Solanki added, to bargain for influence by turning migrants “into political leverage.”

The cost of outsourcing borders is not just material. It is measured in control that Europe cedes to the foreign governments it relies on for migration policy enforcement. 

In Ceuta, migrants claimed local authorities did not stop them from crossing the border. A young Moroccan man told the New York Times a day after the event: “They opened the border and let everyone go by.”

Border outsourcing agreements were made, among others, with authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where EU funds were used to detain migrants and quell domestic protests, rights organizations say. Alliances with “deeply unreliable and authoritarian actors” in the name of stability, said Nathan Akehurst, “is short-termist, insane and loses Europe any credibility it has left.” These alliances also allow Europe to “shift the blame to the Moroccans, the Eastern Libyans, the Turkish or whoever decides to take advantage of that moment.”

Rumors 

It is yet to be revealed who, if anyone, has taken advantage of the mass crossing into Ceuta. Local and international media have uncovered now-deleted posts that shared tips on routes and equipment for the journey. One of the main networks was called Hrig Sebta network — “Sebta” being the Arabic name of Ceuta and “hrig” being the Maghrebi term for undocumented migrants, literally referencing the burning of identity papers. 

In the wake of Ceuta, European ministers pledged to tackle online misinformation to avoid migration crises, but remained cautious when asked about thousands of posts reportedly linked to Russia. Other theories attributed the crossing to Morocco’s tensions with Spain over its closer ties with Algeria, or to Spain’s position on Palestine.

But those rumors, and what appears to be a weeks-long coordinated online campaign behind them, reveal something deeply human that fences can’t deter: movement that is spurred by hopes for a better life. 

“[The crossing] would have happened anyway at some point,“ Akehurst argues. “There would have been a crossing because all of the circumstances that generate that are already there before someone with a twitter account throws a match on the fire.”

Yet, let’s pause at the match. It’s not about someone with a social media profile creating chain messages. It is about the ecosystem that can jeopardize borders by creating information flows, turning rumors into perceived opportunities.

Moroccan newspaper TeleQuel already published a report about social media posts amplifying the next hrig — another attempted crossing into Ceuta — on August 15. 

When packaged to a hungry audience, rumors carry the currency of truth. They’ve driven migration long before social media was even conceptualized. Now those rumors speed through digital space owned and operated by private companies not prone to accountability and sitting well outside the reach of any single state.

And the EU has understood that for years. “It is necessary to structure the information space, as we have organized in the past the territorial space, the maritime space and the air space,” Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market of the EU said back in 2018. He warned about Big Tech companies treating digital space as a no-man’s-land that they would write rules for. 

The no man’s land between Morocco and Spain appears calmer now. But the turmoil of the crossing revealed a new, digital dimension to border governance. Information has always found a way to spread; digital platforms have given it new channels: ones which allow those behind the information to remain faceless, while the information itself passes from screen to screen. It reaches a boiling point, spills over from the digital space and then can be disappeared, even before anyone has had a moment to scroll back.

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Julia E, an 18-year-old influencer from Germany, was hanging out with her family on the Palm Jumeirah beach when she heard a blast and saw a fireball erupt into the sky. She knew tension was mounting following the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran the previous day, but she didn’t imagine Dubai would be on the frontline. “I was a little scared,” she says. “Usually you just read about it in the newspapers, you see it online, but when you see it in front of you, it’s a different feeling — like your heart just drops.”

The fear was not an emotion she expressed on Instagram. Julia’s family moved to Dubai from Germany in 2024, tempted by the business potential of an emirate that aggressively marketed itself as the influencer capital of the world — a digital utopia carved out of the desert, with its gleaming skyscrapers and Insta-ready waterfronts. Dubai’s state-backed Creator HQ offers content creators long-term residencies, legal support, networking opportunities, training and an environment geared towards digital entrepreneurship. Influencers need a permit to legally operate in Dubai but taxes are negligible — 5% VAT on taxable income from clients in the UAE over AED 375,000 (about $102,000), and a flat 9% corporate tax on income exceeding AED 1,000,000 (about $272,000). It has attracted over 50,000 content creators to Dubai, which has a population of about 4 million.

With 60,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, Julia is looking to build her own marketing company in Dubai. In an effort, she says, to comfort her younger brother, she recorded a video shortly after witnessing the explosion. It showed Julia, a palm tree and the glittering night skyline behind her, with the caption: “You live in Dubai, aren’t you scared?” The video cuts to a montage of Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and other Emirati sheikhs: “No, because I know who protects us.” The short video is set to an AI-generated rendition of the Belgian singer Stromae’s ‘Papaoutai’, a song that laments the loss of a father.

According to Julia, she was the first content creator to post an ‘Are you safe?’-style video, a now viral trend across the Gulf as influencers counter the narrative of a region in turmoil. 

“I decided to make that video,” she says, “because I did feel safe. And I wanted to spread some positivity and my perspective that we are still being protected and we still have someone behind us here.” As Iranian drones hit the Gulf, including luxury tourist hotels destinations like Fairmont, The Palm hotel and the Burj Al Arab hotel, there was a wave of schadenfreude online. Some users outside Dubai could not contain their glee that the city’s glossy surface, its influencer-curated image of sunkissed luxury, had been ripped apart. The distress of those who spend their working hours flaunting luxury and throwing shade at the cities they come from, were, it has to be admitted, amusing to many.

But Dubai’s influencers doubled down, as the war spiralled and airports shut down, stressing the city’s safety, walking around in crowded public spaces, praising “the best air defense systems” and the men behind it: a reaction so seemingly choreographed that people questioned whether it was part of a government PR campaign. 

On March 3, the UAE’s president and crown prince were conspicuously filmed on a stroll through a Dubai mall, reassuring bewildered shoppers. It was eerily reminiscent of Volodymyr Zelensky’s “The President is here” video from four years ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Vogue Arabia, headquartered in the UAE, praised Gulf leaders and wrote about the influencer campaigns and the people’s “unwavering faith in their nation’s leadership and its steadfast commitment to protecting those who call it home.” 

As inviting as Dubai is to influencers, they must acquire advertiser permits that can cost up to $4,000 and are told to respect the state and avoid circulating rumors and unverified information or any content that can harm the UAE’s foreign relations or “offend or compromise national unity or social cohesion.” In the wake of Iran’s strikes, the UAE’s Public Prosecution announced that "anyone who shares or republishes content from unknown sources may face legal accountability under the country’s applicable laws, even if they are not the original creator of the content.”

There is a sense of vulnerability among Dubai’s influencers, says Zoe Hurley, associate professor of media at the American University of Sharjah and author of the 2023 book ‘Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition’. “They haven't necessarily been trained professionally. They don't have institutional guardrails protecting them, or any formal buffer zones that might have protected people who are putting themselves out there.” she said. Hurley made a distinction between “influencers who are here on holiday who don't live here and who are followed by, say, people in the UK” and homegrown ones, representing diasporas in Dubai — from South Asia, the Levant and Europe — “who people are turning to because they're the thought leaders in their communities.”

None of the influencers we contacted in Dubai or across the Gulf confirmed ever being prompted or paid to post positive content. The German NTV network, however, reported concerns voiced by German influencers: "I don't know what I'm allowed to say and what I'm not allowed to say," one posted, "We're not allowed to post anything!” said another. These stories and reels have since been deleted.

Julia made another video, responding to the accusations that influencers were essentially providing a PR service for Dubai. “I will tell you exactly how much I got paid,” she says. “Dubai pays me in business… in safety… in connections… with weather.” She adds that, unlike in Dubai, she would never venture outside alone in her native Germany after 8 at night.

This point about Dubai’s safety — leaving things in the car without being scared to be robbed, or walking alone at night — is echoed widely among European expatriates in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia who compare it to the relative anxiety they feel in Europe. Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov recently made the same point: “Unfortunately, I had to leave Dubai for Europe a week ago — so I’m not only missing the free fireworks from Iran, but also exposing myself to greater risk. Given Europe’s crime rates, Dubai is statistically safer even with missiles flying.” Elon Musk shared the sentiment, writing that “No country is perfect, but Dubai and UAE broadly are objectively safer and better run than many areas of Europe.” Notorius influencer and ‘manosphere’ icon, Andrew Tate, still facing human trafficking and rape charges in Romania, posted a video of himself dancing on a yacht “as bombs fall.” His brother Tristan Tate chimed in, comparing air attacks in Dubai to stabbings in London. 

What these influencers don’t discuss is Dubai’s underbelly, an invisible city occupied by an underpaid migrant workforce, their treatment explained away on the grounds that they make more money in Dubai than they would in the poor countries in South Asia and Africa that they come from. While the influencers enjoy government-sponsored benefits and status, these other migrant workers remain bound under the kafala (sponsorship) system that binds their residency status to their employer. Despite reforms, under the system their status remains uncertain, their earnings precarious, and imprisonment or fines for relatively minor offences is common. There are no golden visas for laborers and maids, never mind darker reports about human trafficking and sexual and physical abuse. 

London-based barrister Caoilfhionn Gallagher described the UAE’s exploitation of migrant workers as a “grubby reality, with rampant human rights abuses.” She said she had “acted for people prosecuted and jailed in the UAE for daring to work with human rights organisations or criticise the authorities,” referring to the mass trial in 2024, when 43 people, among them human rights activists, had been “subjected to enforced disappearance, solitary confinement and incommunicado detention.” 

The contrast between the city that influencers show their followers and the city built on the abuse of migrant labor is one that governments across the Gulf want to bury. The UAE’s 2031 vision sees creative industries contributing up to 5% of the country’s GDP. 

For decades now, the UAE has been trying to diversify its economy, to pivot away from its reliance on hydrocarbons. It is betting on the digital economy and tourism to be the cornerstones of economic growth. 

But for all the bravado on display, rich people and Western influencers are fleeing the Gulf, as war with Iran continues. Influencers unable or unwilling to leave, must keep grinding. Narcissus could not stop staring at his reflection even as he was dying. Will Dubai’s influencers be allowed to look away from their reflections in the city’s famous mirrored skyscrapers?

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