Migrants’ Journeys through Libya and the Mediterranean

In recent years, the arrival of unauthorized migrants at the shores of southern Europe has been sensationalized into a migration ‘crisis’. Yet these depictions fail to grasp migrants’ experiences and fall short of addressing a more complex phenomenon. In this lecture, migrants’ journeys and economic practices will be examined underpinning mobility to recast how we think of migration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Libya and Malta, and bringing the perspectives and voices of migrants to the fore, sub-Saharan migrants’ journeys will be traced along one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes: through the Sahara Desert, Libya, and then by boat to Malta in Europe. Marthe Achtnich will highlight how the journey is variegated, constituted by different forms of immobility, and the ways in which it is enmeshed in different economic arrangements, including those that seek to profit from migrants’ lives. This prompts a necessary rethinking of mobile life and economic practices under contemporary capitalism, and draws out the complex relationship between the two. The talk builds on Marthe Achtnich’s book, Mobility Economies in Europe’s Borderlands: Migrants’ Journeys through Libya and the Mediterranean.

Bildnachweis: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1292985#google_vignette und Luca Galuzzi (Lucag), CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons