Description du projet
Mieux comprendre la crise migratoire du côté africain de la Méditerranée
Zarzis est une petite ville côtière du sud-est de la Tunisie. Son littoral méditerranéen attire les touristes... et ceux qui cherchent désespérément à rejoindre l’Europe. Malheureusement, toutes les tentatives de migration ne sont pas couronnées de succès. Des milliers de personnes sont interceptées au large des côtes tunisiennes et beaucoup se perdent en mer. Dans ce contexte, le projet VITAL ELEMENTS, financé par le CER, entend mieux comprendre la crise migratoire du côté africain de la Méditerranée Plus précisément, les chercheurs se concentreront sur les cadavres afin d’étudier le lien entre la vie et les sources de subsistance des victimes. Afin d’analyser comment leur quotidien est devenu définitivement invivable, le projet fusionnera l’anthropologie et la science médico-légale pour retracer les ressources essentielles à la vie et à la subsistance et étudier les relations qui existent entre elles.
Objectif
For more than a decade, the dead bodies of people who had hoped to cross the Mediterranean have been washing ashore on the beaches of Zarzis, a coastal town in southern Tunisia. This research program starts out from the question: How did these bodies end up here?
While in Europe people who are adrift may be seen as evidence of a “migration crisis,” from the African side of the Mediterranean they point to the chronic, (neo-)colonial depletion of livelihoods. To map how life is enduringly made unliveable, this program develops the method of forensics as the art of paying attention. This method will allow us to trail exemplary vital elements—resources crucial for fostering life and livelihood—and the relations between them. Our cases include: the extraction of phosphate, the fishing of sea sponges, the cultivation of tomatoes, the extraction of water, and the leaving behind of industrial waste.
To better understand the complexity of, and material semiotic relations between, vital elements, we focus on Zarzis as a nodal point. This will make it possible for team members to visit each other’s sites and to work together in a Method Lab as well as to collaborate with local artists who will help to sensitise us to local concerns in a Vital Elements Atelier.
The research program is innovative in three ways: it (1) contributes to a decolonial shift of attention from the “migration crisis” befalling Europe to the “chronic depletion of life” afflicting Africa; (2) develops the method of forensics as an art of paying attention to ethnographically study the complexity of, and the relations between, vital elements and the ways they impact on living and dying; (3) advances the concept of vital elements for materialities that are active, make connections and foster life, or spur on death.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Institution d’accueil
1012WX Amsterdam
Pays-Bas