Migration Studies Commons^™

Risking Rescue: The Politics Of Precarity In Mediterranean Crossing, Eleanor Paynter

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Over the course of Europe’s recent refugee crisis, the role of Search and Rescue (SAR) has changed dramatically, first forming a critical part of (inter)national responses to the crisis, and now occupying an antagonistic position, as countries have closed their ports to NGO-operated vessels and the European Commission (EC) has ceased naval Search and Rescue operations. As a result, migrants crossing the Central Mediterranean face different and increased risks, including dying at sea, being held by European authorities, or being apprehended closer to Libya and sent to a Libyan detention camp.

In response to these shifts, groups that continue SAR …

Postcolonial Trauma In The Mediterranean: The Italian-Libyan Transnational Community, Rosario Pollicino

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study aims to recuperate the Italian collective remembering originating from the colonial offense in Libya. Focusing on works of testimony in different genres of contemporary literature written by the Italian former settlers in Libya, I analyze how these former settlers who moved to Libya have been subjected to different kinds of traumas by the Fascist government. I focus on how these traumas, individual and collective, are documented through these works and discuss how they continue to be relevant today. Drawing on sociology, anthropology, history, literary and trauma studies I argue that these cultural representations prove the existence of a …