Exploring a solidarity route: cultural artefacts, art interventions and encounters on the French–Italian border

Abstract

ABSTRACT From the European migration crisis of 2015 onwards, the refugee and migration issue in Italy has become central to the production of a political imaginary centred on hostility. Through the lenses of a long ethnographic experience, the article focuses on the French–Italian border of Ventimiglia, highlighting the existence of a heterogeneous support coalition that favours the transit and escape. The practices of this coalition, whose functioning echoes the history of the North American Underground Railroad, are often invisible precisely in order to effectively circumvent the constraints of current European migration prohibitionism. In this article, cultural artefacts considered in their relational context, including a graphic novel based on a No-Border camp, border guides for migrants in transit and disobedience manuals, and an art installation, are taken as traces to cast light on what is normally invisible. Through these artefacts, activists tell their stories to a larger audience or support transit operations.