Wounded Memories, Besieged Lives: Surviving and Resisting across the Mediterranean Borders

Since the explosion of the so-called “refugee crisis” and the introduction of increasingly restrictive policies aimed at preventing migrants from crossing European borders, the topic of migration and death across the Mediterranean has gained high visibility in public debate. The endorsement of harshly questioned policies aimed at enforcing the externalization of European borders often through violence and human rights abuses and the rise in the number of migrants missing/drowned in the Mediterranean, however, have actually enhanced a collective indifference in public opinion on the dramatic conditions migration by sea still largely occur and on the destiny, identity and right to be mourned of those who disappeared in the Mediterranean.

Based on ongoing research addressing three major shipwrecks occurred in the Mediterranean (2013-2023), this paper deals with the relationship between hegemonic forms of narration enhanced by institutional agencies and mainstream media and counter-narratives of the same disasters promoted by survivors and victims’ family members who witnessed the tragic event or their consequences both at public level and in their intimate lives and relationships. In particular, through the analysis of biographical interviews carried out with survivals and victims’ family members – men and women of different nationalities and generations, often dispersed across borders and operating at transnational level –, the paper focuses on the forms of memorialization and memory practices carried out in the public arena that strongly call for a recognition of victims’ rights, agency and identity. Attention will be devoted to the role played by women (mothers, sisters, daughters) in promoting forms of mobilization through art-based participatory practices where mourning for their beloved ones becomes not only a way of remembering, but also an act of disobedience that challenges that regime of invisibility, censorship and oblivion that politics and history would like to consign those bodies and their identity to.