Thinking Lampedusa: border construction, the spectacle of bare life and the productivity of migrants

Abstract

This article interrogates the relationship between the Italian island of Lampedusa and trans-Mediterranean migration. It explores how the construction of Lampedusa as a border zone has been implicated in the rise and fall in numbers of migrants reaching the island's shores over the last two decades. It proceeds to consider the appropriateness of interpreting death and detention on Lampedusa in terms of ‘bare life’. While acknowledging how Giorgio Agamben's formulation of bare life has been problematized in relation to irregular migration and taking into account the frequent acts of migrants' political agency on the island itself, it is argued that the transformation of Lampedusa by the media and political establishment into a spectacle of bare life is not only instrumental to the functioning of migration management at Europe's southern border but is also constitutive of the subordinate position of migrants in Italian society and its labour market.

Keywords:

• Mediterranean migration
• borders
• Giorgio Agamben
• bare life
• political agency
• migrant labour

Notes

1. Between 2000 and 2006, an average of 12% of irregular migrants entered Italy via its maritime borders, while between 50% and 75% were overstayers (Cuttitta 2012, 27).

2. To date, there have been three significant pieces of immigration legislation in Italy: the1990 Martelli Law, the 1998 Turco-Napolitano Law and the 2002 Bossi-Fini Law. Irrespective of their differing ideological tones, all these laws were primarily focused on restricting entry and combating irregular migration in order to comply with EU directives on migration management and the Schengen Aquis. For an overview of immigration policy in Italy, see Zincone (2006).

3. In 2007, the centre was moved from the airport to a former barracks at Contrada Imbriacola in the centre of the island.

4. Andrijasevic (2010, 154–155) argues that it would be more correct to talk of the ‘retraction’ of Italy's asylum system rather than its ‘externalization’ because Libya had no legal processing centres or any refugee policy. Italy's push-back policy was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights’ 2012 Hirsi Jamaa judgement.

5. From the 459 arrivals registered in 2010, the lowest figure since 2000, the number of migrants landing or brought ashore on Lampedusa rose to 51,753 in 2011 (Cuttitta 2012, 26).

6. Furthermore, in September 2011 Interior Minister Roberto Maroni declared Lampedusa a ‘port unsafe for sea rescue’, following a riot and fire in the island's reception/detention centre. The upshot was the dismantlement of the island's reception system including legal and health services. Those intercepted at sea were now taken to Sicilian ports while the few who reached Lampedusa were held in tourist accommodation with no chance of applying for asylum. The ‘unsafe port’ status was maintained until the centre at Contrada Imbriacola was reopened in March 2013.

7. For information about these campaigns, see: http://lampedusa-hamburg.info/en and http://asylstrikeberlin.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/lampedusa-in-berlin

8. It is no coincidence that Lampedusa, like other minor Italian islands, served as a penal colony during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

9. The Charter of Lampedusa is a declaration of migrant rights that was collectively written by mainly Italian migrant rights activists and local residents in response to the 3 October disaster. For an English summary, see: http://www.meltingpot.org/Lampedusa-Charter-a-new-pact-for-a-new-European-citizenship.html

10. For the full speech in Italian, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmUXwGLpuKc

11. Such a perspective dominated Italian sociology until the late 1990s. For a critical history of sociological approaches to migrant labour in Italy, see Sacchetto (2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nick Dines

NICK DINES is Research Fellow in the Department of Criminology and Sociology at Middlesex University.

Nicola Montagna

NICOLA MONTAGNA is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Criminology and Sociology at Middlesex University.

Vincenzo Ruggiero

VINCENZO RUGGIERO is Professor in the Department of Criminology and Sociology at Middlesex University.