Spotlights in the Middle of Nowhere: Everyday Marginality and ‘the Border’ on Lampedusa

Abstract

A main entry point for boat migrants, the Italian island of Lampedusa is a strategically important and highly symbolic location on Europe’s Mediterranean border, and, owing to heavy militarisation and political and media attention, the island has acquired a central place in national as well as European political imaginaries. Yet, for the island’s population of 6,000, things look rather different. Rather than a fixation point for political attention, Lampedusa is experienced by its inhabitants as a deeply marginal place with weak ties to the mainland and, by extension, the border, which is described by locals as ‘not our business’. Drawing inspiration from Doreen Massey, the chapter argues that Lampedusa’s simultaneous centrality and marginality should not be understood as a kind of paradox to be ‘solved’ but as the outcome of different, yet overlapping, political histories that go well beyond the island itself. Lampedusa thus testifies to ‘location’ as a potentially multiple concept that never stands on its own but is inherently constituted in relation to other locations across time and space. By approaching the Mediterranean as both a periphery and politically important border zone, the chapter draws together two ethnographically well-known ‘Mediterraneans’ that are typically studied in separate contexts.