Descrizione del progetto
La crisi migratoria vista dal lato africano del Mediterraneo
Zarzis è una piccola cittadina costiera della Tunisia sud-orientale. Il suo tratto di costa mediterranea attira turisti… e persone che desiderano disperatamente raggiungere l’Europa. Purtroppo, non tutti i tentativi di migrazione hanno buon esito: a migliaia sono stati intercettati al largo della costa tunisina, e molti sono quelli che hanno perso la vita in mare. In tale contesto, il progetto VITAL ELEMENTS, finanziato dal CER, indagherà la crisi migratoria dal lato africano del Mediterraneo. L’attenzione si concentrerà in particolare sulle morti in relazione alla vita e alle fonti di sostentamento. Nell’intento di scoprire come le vite delle persone siano rese permanentemente invivibili, il progetto unirà l’antropologia e la scienza forense, per rintracciare le risorse fondamentali per la vita e il sostentamento e studiarne il rapporto.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Istituzione ospitante
1012WX Amsterdam
Paesi Bassi