Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HeBo (Healthcare at the Borders: Managing Camps and Informal Settlements for Refugees and Migrants)
Período documentado: 2020-09-01 hasta 2022-08-31
The HeBo research program focused on the tension between protecting people at the border and protecting borders, inquiring into the relationship of bodies, healthcare, and borders in the context of the Central Mediterranean route, the deadliest migrant route in the world, and in particular on Lampedusa, one of the crucial sites of contemporary migrations. The prism of body and health allowed to shed new light on the current politics of borders in Europe, the management of migration, and the experience of border crossings.
Through HeBo I have managed to develop a new perspective on the dialectic between two sides of the corporeal experience of borders. I focused on the one hand a healthcare apparatus at the border, which serves as a central mechanism of the border regime, with its political dimensions and organizational configurations. On the other hand, I enquired into the experience of the border as it is embodied by the people attempting to cross it. In this light, this research grasped the relationships between borders and bodies, rethinking the notion of embodiment, inquiring into how bodies shape and at the same time are shaped by borders, along with an in-depth account of the role, forms, and political stakes of body and healthcare in the workings of European borders.
Through HeBo I have managed to develop a new perspective on the dialectic between two sides of the corporeal experience of borders. I focused on the one hand a healthcare apparatus at the border, which serves as a central mechanism of the border regime, with its political dimensions and organizational configurations. On the other hand, I enquired into the experience of the border as it is embodied by the people attempting to cross it. In this light, this research grasped the relationships between borders and bodies, rethinking the notion of embodiment, inquiring into how bodies shape and at the same time are shaped by borders, along with an in-depth account of the role, forms, and political stakes of body and healthcare in the workings of European borders.
My scientific work built upon the intensive ethnographic fieldwork and analysis that I have carried out in Lampedusa and other European borderlands during the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship period.
During the development of the first part of the HeBo project, and in relation to the organizational and political challenges constituted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to focus on Lampedusa, together with some field trips to other sites on European borders (in particular, the areas of Calais, in France, and the French-Italian border on the Alps). Due to its geographical location and the current geopolitical framework, Lampedusa is one of the major gateways to Europe for undocumented migrants crossing the Mediterranean. This configuration makes this island a site where the differences and inequalities between different forms of mobility and body management are at the same time explicit and specifically entangled. Moving forward from these premises and focusing on ‘illegal’ migrants, the hypotheses on which I could base my work were therefore twofold: an analysis of healthcare provision as a tool of the government of migrations, drawing on, and in spite of, the universal right to health; a questioning of the ways in which the border is embodied, and of the corresponding politics of life.
In this general theoretical and empirical framework, the implementation of the HeBo research program allowed me to develop a reflection on the possibility of a clinical gaze on the borders translating into a political and moral exploration of their contemporary forms, especially in Europe and the Mediterranean.
One of the greatest challenges HeBo posed was its reconfiguration in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amongst the many transformations it caused, COVID-19 pandemic reconfigured several paradigms, policies, and practices in the management of European borders. HeBo’s research themes are at the core of such fundamental changes. However, these difficulties became research objects and objectives themselves, leading me both to reorganize effectively the research plan and to reconfigure the scientific questions underlying the project, with entirely positive analytical outcomes. Such changes included for example: 1) The dynamics either created or unveiled by the pandemic in terms of medical relationships, political management of a public health crisis, and biosecurity concerns at the borders; 2) Relationships shaped by new medical concerns and risks of contagion, especially in politically-sensible space as borders are; 3) New forms of medical interactions and changes in the practices of medical inspection at the border; 4) New racialized conceptions of migrants as possible threats for the health of a community and a territory; 5) New policies blurring the political limit between migration management and public health management. In this framework, the island of Lampedusa emerged as the privileged context where to ethnographically observe such dynamics with the highest effectiveness.
Despite the obstacles and delays imposed by the pandemic, HeBo’s dissemination program included a book project (to be published in 2024 and tentatively titled Odysseus’ Scars. Borders and Bodies in the Mediterranean), three peer-reviewed articles, a chapter for a collective volume, and other dissemination actions.
Publications stemming from HeBo also included several non-academic articles published in some of the most known online cultural and political magazines, with the aim of valorization for non-academic audiences. Other non-academic publications will follow soon, in addition to intersectoral symposia and, when the book will be published, public meetings. Finally, through the network and the relationship built around my research work, and through its reputation, I had the opportunity to present the developments of HeBo in several public occasions through the two-years fellowship (in Paris, Bern, Dublin, Catania, Rome, and elsewhere).
During the development of the first part of the HeBo project, and in relation to the organizational and political challenges constituted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to focus on Lampedusa, together with some field trips to other sites on European borders (in particular, the areas of Calais, in France, and the French-Italian border on the Alps). Due to its geographical location and the current geopolitical framework, Lampedusa is one of the major gateways to Europe for undocumented migrants crossing the Mediterranean. This configuration makes this island a site where the differences and inequalities between different forms of mobility and body management are at the same time explicit and specifically entangled. Moving forward from these premises and focusing on ‘illegal’ migrants, the hypotheses on which I could base my work were therefore twofold: an analysis of healthcare provision as a tool of the government of migrations, drawing on, and in spite of, the universal right to health; a questioning of the ways in which the border is embodied, and of the corresponding politics of life.
In this general theoretical and empirical framework, the implementation of the HeBo research program allowed me to develop a reflection on the possibility of a clinical gaze on the borders translating into a political and moral exploration of their contemporary forms, especially in Europe and the Mediterranean.
One of the greatest challenges HeBo posed was its reconfiguration in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amongst the many transformations it caused, COVID-19 pandemic reconfigured several paradigms, policies, and practices in the management of European borders. HeBo’s research themes are at the core of such fundamental changes. However, these difficulties became research objects and objectives themselves, leading me both to reorganize effectively the research plan and to reconfigure the scientific questions underlying the project, with entirely positive analytical outcomes. Such changes included for example: 1) The dynamics either created or unveiled by the pandemic in terms of medical relationships, political management of a public health crisis, and biosecurity concerns at the borders; 2) Relationships shaped by new medical concerns and risks of contagion, especially in politically-sensible space as borders are; 3) New forms of medical interactions and changes in the practices of medical inspection at the border; 4) New racialized conceptions of migrants as possible threats for the health of a community and a territory; 5) New policies blurring the political limit between migration management and public health management. In this framework, the island of Lampedusa emerged as the privileged context where to ethnographically observe such dynamics with the highest effectiveness.
Despite the obstacles and delays imposed by the pandemic, HeBo’s dissemination program included a book project (to be published in 2024 and tentatively titled Odysseus’ Scars. Borders and Bodies in the Mediterranean), three peer-reviewed articles, a chapter for a collective volume, and other dissemination actions.
Publications stemming from HeBo also included several non-academic articles published in some of the most known online cultural and political magazines, with the aim of valorization for non-academic audiences. Other non-academic publications will follow soon, in addition to intersectoral symposia and, when the book will be published, public meetings. Finally, through the network and the relationship built around my research work, and through its reputation, I had the opportunity to present the developments of HeBo in several public occasions through the two-years fellowship (in Paris, Bern, Dublin, Catania, Rome, and elsewhere).
Lampedusa is a crucial point on the Central Mediterranean migration route and, at the same time, a strategic place for military control of the area. Drawing on the long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lampedusa and on its healthcare apparatus, the HeBo project proposed a reflection on clinical visibility and the medical gaze, and on the forms of bodily visibility that emerge in borderlands, between the clinical gaze at the border and on the border, between the medical gaze and political recognition.
At the intersection of the politics and experiences of migration, militarization, environmental conflicts, and illness, HeBo offered theoretical and ethnographic tools to disentangle the elements underpinning the contemporary regime of borders. It also suggested a definition of border which stems from the politics of life that structures it and from the experiences of illness and activism that have an effect on its very essence.
Within HeBo’s specific context of research, I reiterated and articulated some of the questions raised in particular by historians of medicine and borders, critical legal studies in the field of migration in the Mediterranean, anthropologists working on migration and hostile environments, critical public health, forensic perspectives, archeology of the contemporary, geography, and several other disciplines composing a scholarly environment where innovative heuristic perspectives emerged and allowed me to grasp the place of the universal right to health, body, and subjectivity in the contemporary world and in its border regimes.
In conclusion, the HeBo research program resulted in an innovative and insightful inquiry into the corporeal experience of the Mediterranean border regime. In this light, through its dissemination actions, HeBo will have a relevant impact on the public and political debate about its themes. Moreover, HeBo’s scientific and societal expected impact is developed through the full adherence to European and international policy frameworks and validity in terms of knowledge transfer and ethical requirements.
At the intersection of the politics and experiences of migration, militarization, environmental conflicts, and illness, HeBo offered theoretical and ethnographic tools to disentangle the elements underpinning the contemporary regime of borders. It also suggested a definition of border which stems from the politics of life that structures it and from the experiences of illness and activism that have an effect on its very essence.
Within HeBo’s specific context of research, I reiterated and articulated some of the questions raised in particular by historians of medicine and borders, critical legal studies in the field of migration in the Mediterranean, anthropologists working on migration and hostile environments, critical public health, forensic perspectives, archeology of the contemporary, geography, and several other disciplines composing a scholarly environment where innovative heuristic perspectives emerged and allowed me to grasp the place of the universal right to health, body, and subjectivity in the contemporary world and in its border regimes.
In conclusion, the HeBo research program resulted in an innovative and insightful inquiry into the corporeal experience of the Mediterranean border regime. In this light, through its dissemination actions, HeBo will have a relevant impact on the public and political debate about its themes. Moreover, HeBo’s scientific and societal expected impact is developed through the full adherence to European and international policy frameworks and validity in terms of knowledge transfer and ethical requirements.