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ABSTRACT
This article revolves around a specific materiality: a hole in the fence surrounding Lampedusa’s refugee centre. By allowing migrants to informally leave the violently guarded centre and enter Lampedusa town, the hole connects social worlds that on paper should be separate. For the local population, the hole materialises an absence of state management and ‘clear rules’, but it also facilitates encounters between locals and migrants in the form of economic transactions and acts of helpfulness. This does not mean that anti-immigration sentiments are absent, but they remain generally concealed beneath civil pragmatism—measures of etiquette aimed at peacefully preserving public space. Further, by highlighting everyday ambiguity and pragmatic interests, the article provides a tempering of the ideologically overdetermined vocabularies that dominate much discourse on migration in Europe.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Ruben Andersson has recently reported having similar difficulties locating the whereabouts of the centre which, ‘like most migrant “reception” or detention facilities in Europe today, [is] rather hard to find’ (Citation2019, 167).
2 The work of cultural mediators, such as Aziz, revolves generally around easing interaction between migrants and Italian/European authorities.
3 The practice of allowing migrants to leave the centre constitutes a curious historical parallel to the penal colony that operated on Lampedusa from the early 1870s until the Fall of Fascism. Here, ‘inmates’ were not kept behind bars during the day, but allowed to leave the colony’s premises (Taranto Citation2016)
4 The introduction of the Hotspot was essentially a Europeanised ’rebranding’ of the island’s already existing centro di primo soccorso e accoglienza (CPSA, first aid and reception centre) which had been operating on Lampedusa (under changing appellations and in different locations) since the late 1990s.
5 Lampedusa, Trapani, Pozzallo, Messina, and Taranto in Italy; Kos, Leros, Samos, Chios, and Lesbos in Greece. The Hotspots at the external EU border have a cumulative capacity of approximately 2,000 migrants (European Parliamentary Research Service Citation2018).
6 If anything, it is Lampedusa’s remote geography rather than the flimsy fence around the Hotspot that keeps migrants from reaching the mainland (cf. Elbek Citation2020).
7 Since ‘time immemorial,’ physical barriers such as fences, walls, barricades, and ramparts have been universally employed by rulers to materialise claims to territorial control. Prominent historical examples of course include the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, and the ramparts and stone walls surrounding Europe’s medieval cities (e.g. Jones Citation2016).
8 This is not to say that similar logics of fencing cannot be observed on other scales. The emergence of so-called gated communities are illustrative cases in point where the addition of walls and gates to the urban landscape encode class distinctions into the physical environment (Low Citation2001, 47). Hedges or fences between adjacent gardens in suburban residential areas or the barbed wire that marks and enforces the boundary between Old McDonald’s farmland and that of his neighbour are other, yet more mundane, examples (Harvey Citation2017).
9 The municipality (Il Comune di Lampedusa e Linosa) is constituted by Lampedusa and the smaller neighbouring island Linosa.
10 An important exception to this generally negative image is the Guardia Costiera, the coast guard who are commonly seen to serve an actual and important function by providing search and rescue services — for migrants and local fishermen alike.
11 By talking about civility, I intend neither to indicate a facile ontological distinction between 'the state' and 'civil society' (e.g. Mitchell Citation1991) nor to imply a particular urban bourgeois world-view (e.g. Holston Citation2011). Rather, my usage of the term denotes how many Lampedusans seem to rely on collective norms pertaining to what is considered appropriate public behaviour (e.g. Thiranagama et al. Citation2018).
12 From this perspective, my argument is located in the vicinity of other studies from the Italian context that have dealt with notions such as civiltà (Silverman Citation1975) or la bella figura (e.g. Pipyrou Citation2014) — norms that in different ways relate to understandings of proper public conduct and self-presentation in relation to others.
13 The question of enforcement is tricky for shopkeepers that need to balance considerations of running their businesses and following the instructions of the authorities. Note, for example, how Tunisian fishermen employed in the Sicilian fishing fleet routinely buy beer when they land temporarily on Lampedusa to ship their catch to the mainland (see also Ben-Yehoyada Citation2017).
14 For the uninitiated, chakchouka is a North-African/Middle Eastern dish consisting of tomatoes, peppers, onions, and boiled eggs, which is often served for breakfast.
15 See also Koch (Citation2018) on the simultaneity of mistrust in and dependence on the state in marginal places.
16 The Rete del Caffè Sospeso (Suspended Coffee Network) is an international grassroots collaboration that revolves around this particular custom (see www.retedelcaffesospeso.com).