lo Squaderno (Nov 2022)
The hole in the hotspot. Undocumented migration in Lampedusa between insularity and detention
Abstract
For the past thirty years, Lampedusa has been at the centre of undocumented mobility towards Europe: a process in which the island has been transformed into a border, and the border into a spectacle. This contribution stems from an ethnographic research that began in Lampedusa in December 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and is still ongoing, based on various ethnographic stays, through participant observation in key locations, repeated encounters with privileged actors and thirty-five semi-structured interviews. The article analyses a metaphorical and, at the same time, real figure: a hole in the hotspot fence which allowed migrants to exit the centre, particularly at times of increased “saturation” due to a concentration of arrivals and/or delays in transfers. Until 2020, before the pandemic, the hole functioned as an outlet valve to ease the conflict inside the centre – crossed several times by riots – informally allowing migrants to go out and have some relations with the inhabitants, in an island-prison that is a hotspot itself and where migrants do not leave except through institutional channels. At the height of the pandemic, the hotspot’s management officially declares the beginning of renovation works of the facility, through which materially and symbolically the hole is closed, representing the seizing and violence of European borders. The hotspot thus becomes a real prison, a locked structure that no longer allows any relationship and porosity between the island and migrants, confirming the pandemic as a key moment of crossed tightening of policies and practices of migrant containment.
