Currents and countercurrents in the Central mediterranean: decolonizing humanitarian sea-border

Keywords: Mediterranean, activism, solidarity, migration, border
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea, since the 2000s, has become known as one of the deadliest borders in the
world. Boats sailing from North Africa with migrants on board are, in many cases, shipwrecked. The
European authorities, after an initial phase of indifference and then of activation, have decided to replace humanitarian apparatuses with securitarian border control apparatuses, externalizing the borders and delegating the detention of departures to third countries.
Since 2015, there have been numerous SAR NGOs working with migrants crossings.
Thanks to the ethnographic research carried out on board several ships, I reflect on three aspects: on the process of humanitarisation of the political and the simultaneous radicalisation of the humanitarian that has taken place in SAR activities in the Central Mediterranean; on the specificity of the sea as a field of ethnography and deployment of humanitarian and political actions; on the relationship and tension between the professionalisation and bureaucratisation of the SAR and, on the other hand, forms of "maritime radicalism" and solidarity.
Reflecting on my own positioning and the assumption of a crossed-eye perspective – researcher and rescuer/activist – I stress how it was possible to immerse myself in the context of the ships and to understand practices, rhetorics and imaginaries deployed by activists and humanitarian workers.
Starting therefore from the specificities of the different organisations, I attempt to investigate the possibilities of making anthropological reflection practical, and anthropological practice political, trying to give back a new gaze about decolonialization of the humanitarian work at the sea-border.