‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men’: the moral and political scales of migration in the central Mediterranean

Abstract

This article offers recent dynamics of unauthorized migration and interception in the central Mediterranean as an example of historical anthropology of transnational region formation. It exemplifies how we can rescale classical themes in Mediterraneanist anthropology – hospitality, in this case – to illuminate transnational processes. I argue that anthropologists actually share with human rights advocates and European officials these ways of thinking about the scales of the moral and the political dimensions of migration, and I offer an alternative understanding of the scales of action, responsibility, and sovereignty as well as a clue about how regions come to life.

Caring for Others, Managing Migrants: Local and Institutional Hospitality in Lampedusa (Italy)

“…Until the 1960s, fishing and trade in the Mediterranean were the main economic activities in Lampedusa. The latter was often carried out in partnership with people from North Africa (Ben-Yehoyada 2015. Taking place within the relational matrix that Naor Ben-Yehoyada defines as a sea of cousinage (Ben-Yehoyada 2017), these collaborations took a variety of forms.…”

“…At the same time, the chapter aims to analyze how the hospitality models offered to foreigners have changed over time. Building on political anthropology, border studies and migrations studies literature (Friese 2011;Boudou 2012;Ben-Yehoyada 2015) I will explore some of the consequences that arise from this process in the island of Lampedusa.…”

Building a Bed for the Night: The Parisian “Yellow Bubble” and the Politics of Humanitarian Architecture

“…27 This idea has crossed over to the discussion of migration, whereby receiving societies act as hosts, controlling as well as welcoming their guests and making them comply with numerous rules. 28 The Janus face of hospitality was certainly on display at the Paris humanitarian center, and many of my interviewees described how it provided both a welcome for migrants, while also forcing them into a hostile political processing system. This coexistence of hospitality and hostility was evident to those working in the center, but less obvious when the architecture pushed any tension beneath the surface.…”

Arancini, Identity, and the Refugee Debate in Sicily

“…The pro-migrant group applied ideals of Sicilian hospitality and Catholicism, parallel to statements from the EU (Conti, Di Mauro, and Memoli, 2019). For the pro-migrant camp, the offering of arancini to hungry migrants, regardless of their origin, was fundamental to a Sicilian morality with biblical roots (Ben-Yehoyada, 2015). In other words, those in the global moralist camp promoted a moral commitment to accept refugees and migrants that was part of being Sicilian.…”