Exploring a solidarity route: cultural artefacts, art interventions and encounters on the French–Italian border

ABSTRACT

From the European migration crisis of 2015 onwards, the refugee and migration issue in Italy has become central to the production of a political imaginary centred on hostility. Through the lenses of a long ethnographic experience, the article focuses on the French–Italian border of Ventimiglia, highlighting the existence of a heterogeneous support coalition that favours the transit and escape. The practices of this coalition, whose functioning echoes the history of the North American Underground Railroad, are often invisible precisely in order to effectively circumvent the constraints of current European migration prohibitionism. In this article, cultural artefacts considered in their relational context, including a graphic novel based on a No-Border camp, border guides for migrants in transit and disobedience manuals, and an art installation, are taken as traces to cast light on what is normally invisible. Through these artefacts, activists tell their stories to a larger audience or support transit operations.

RIASSUNTO

Dalla crisi migratoria europea del 2015 in poi, il tema rifugiati/migrazioni è divenuto centrale in Italia nella produzione di un immaginario politico centrato sull’ostilità. Attraverso le lenti di una lunga esperienza di etnografia, la ricerca realizzata osserva il confine franco–italiano di Ventimiglia, mettendo al contrario in evidenza l’esistenza di una eterogenea coalizione di supporto che favorisce il transito e la fuga di migranti e richiedenti asilo. Le pratiche di tale coalizione, il cui funzionamento riecheggia la storia della Underground Railroad nord-americana, sono spesso invisibili proprio per aggirare in modo efficace i vincoli del proibizionismo migratorio europeo. Nel presente articolo, assumiamo come tracce per portare alla luce ciò che di norma resta invisibile alcuni oggetti culturali nel loro contesto relazionale – una graphic novel su un campo No-Border, guide del confine rivolte ai migranti in transito e manuali di disobbedienza, una installazione artistica – attraverso cui gli attivisti si raccontano pubblicamente o sostengono le operazioni di passaggio solidale.

KEYWORDS:

• French–Italian border
• solidarity
• ethnography
• migration
• refugees

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• confine franco–italiano
• solidarietà
• etnografia
• migrazioni
• rifugiati

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Elena Boschi for her editing and translation work on this article.

Notes

1. For example, for 56% of Italians interviewed (48% of all EU citizens) migration from outside the EU ‘evokes a negative sentiment’ (Eurobarometer 2019c, 35). For 32% of Italians (34% of EU citizens) migration is the main concern at EU level (Eurobarometer 2019b, 22).

2. Data is available in the report of the Ministry of the Interior and in the report of the Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees. See: http://www.libertaciviliimmigrazione.dlci.interno.gov.it/it/documentazione/statistica and https://www.sprar.it/pubblicazioni (accessed November 2019).

3. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, rejection rates for protection applications oscillated between 58% and 67% from 2015 to 2018. During 2019 the average rate grew to 80%. However, the percentage of accepted appeals is very high.

4. On historical precedents, see for instance: Bordewich (2009) and Foner (2015).

5. And, following an inverted logic, this is happening after an adequate Search and Rescue system has been progressively removed from the central Mediterranean – crossings on boats and dinghies are being kept under wraps as much as possible, and independent action and testimony are being criminalized so that the solution to the ‘problem’ of migration is left to the sea.

6. At the time of writing, four years later, this suspension is still in force.

7. George Francois Leclerc, press conference, La Repubblica, 27/12/2017: http://genova.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/12/27/news/ventimiglia_nel_2017_respinti_in_50mila-185295112/ (accessed November 2019).

8. With the exception of Cédric and Delia, figures who have attracted the attention of the major media, all the other names used in the following pages are invented.

9. This Arabic term meaning ‘young people’, ‘guys’, is used by activists to redefine those who are travelling by their generation in order to escape the ethnicizing and reductive gaze of biographies.

10. All the tables can be viewed at: https://www.graphic-news.com/stories/la-bolla-di-ventimiglia/ (accessed November 2019).

11. At the end of the summer of 2016, sixty activists received expulsion orders issued by the Police Office with motivations like public order and endangering society, which prohibit their residence in, or transit through, the Ventimiglia area.

12. Some of which have started this testimony and denunciation project: https://parolesulconfine.com.

13. See: https://borderguide.info/en (accessed November 2019).

14. Code on the entry and stay of foreigners and on their asylum rights.

15. See: https://www.Roja-citoyenne.fr/2018/04/a-telecharger-guide-lhebergement-cest-legal-et-manuel-de-defense-en-garde-a-vue/ (accessed November 2019).

16. See: https://www.lacimade.org/publication/delit-de-solidarite-guide/ (accessed November 2019).

17. This question remains open at the time of writing, as the legislators wonder about the possibility and opportunity to rewrite the incriminated articles, adding new exceptions (Muller 2020).

18. See the film made by Luca Giliberti and Massimo Cannarella (2018, Laboratorio di Sociologia Visuale): Transiti. La valle solidale (http://www.laboratoriosociologiavisuale.it/lab/?page_id=899).

19. At the time of writing, both the bridge in Ventimiglia and the camp where migrants in transit used to stay in Breil no longer exist, although new places keep sprouting back up on the two sides of the border.

20. Installation by Milotta/Donchev. Photographs by Emanuela Zampa. Curated by Amina Gaia Abdelouahab and Anna Daneri (Genova 2019).

21. See a short visual presentation of Eufemia at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHKBru-ARIw.

22. 20K is the name of the collective that started Eufemia/place. Among its collaborators there are volunteers from all over Europe and Ligurian scout groups, militants from self-managed squats and Italians who are second-generation immigrants, in addition to a group of doctors and nurses who bring drugs and visit people under the bridge. See: https://www.facebook.com/progetto20k/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luca Queirolo Palmas

Luca Queirolo Palmas is Professor in Sociology of Migration at Genoa University, where he coordinates the activities of the ‘Laboratorio di Sociologia Visuale’. He’s also Co-director of Mondi Migranti, Journal of Studies and Research on International Migrations. His most recent book is Como se construye un enemigo público? Las bandas latinas (Traficantes de sueños, Madrid: 2017).