Inhabiting Unsettlement: Migration, Labour, and Housing in the Black Mediterranean

Torino, Giulia

This paper investigates the complex interplay between migration, housing politics, and the Mediterranean border regime, framed within the dynamics of racial capitalism at Europe's southern frontier. It critically examines how migrants, especially those who are undocumented, experience displacement and precarious living conditions in the agro-urban peripheries of Southern Italy, where they are systematically exploited within the agricultural sector to sustain Italy’s renowned food production. The study brings attention to the often overlooked and increasingly unstable conditions of migrant inhabitation, marked by marginalization and insecurity.

Drawing new connections between critical border and migration studies, racial capitalism, and urban studies, the paper offers an in-depth analysis of the processes shaping migrant "unsettlement" (Torino, 2023a,b) in Europe’s agro-urban margins, with a focus on Sicily as a key case study. Utilizing qualitative data gathered over several months of fieldwork in 2024, it explores migrant dwelling and labour across various sites, including informal "migrant ghettoes" (as they are known locally), squatted farms, greenhouses, and institutional camps. Often, these spaces not only capture and exploit migrant labour but also impose a panopticon-like securitization and surveillance on their lives that work against spatial agency and dignity.

In situating Sicily and Southern Italy within the broader framework of racial capitalism and the Mediterranean border regime, this paper reveals how these global structures manifest locally through the repeated cycles of migrant capture, displacement, and exploitation of Italy's agro-industry. Lastly, the paper foregrounds migrant-led initiatives to reclaim rights and dignity, offering concrete examples that resist the necropolitics of border control and of the agro-economy under globalised racial capitalism.

This presentation builds on the author’s British Academy-funded research project: "Extending Urbanisation: Migration, Camps, and Labour in the Black Mediterranean" (2022-2025).