Alpine Border Research Articles

‘Vaccine populism’ and migrant assistance: On the contingency of mutual aid in Italy's Alpine region

AbstractPrior to COVID‐19, migrant journeys through the Mediterranean were often described with reference to the barriers posed within ‘fortress Europe’ or through registers which centre migrant's adeptness at navigating draconian immigration regimes. Between these two contexts, this paper explores how a public authority lens can assist in understanding the implications of COVID‐19 and associated vaccine bureaucracies. We draw on ethnographic research on the Italian‐French Alpine border and chart how ‘vaccine populism’—perpetuated in nationalist political discourse as well as in the counter‐commentaries of resistance offered by solidarity networks—has specific implications for migrants' access to vaccines and health information. We argue that analyses attentive to the subtle nuances of state and local politics provide an important entry point to map multi‐scalar power dynamics which accompany universal health policies. Through considering the complex realities relating to Alpine crossings, we advocate from less categorising approaches to vaccinating migrants.

Mountain as an Ambivalent Transit Zone: Facing the Battleground of the Alpine Border Crossing

ABSTRACT Through ethnographic research carried out in the Alpine border zone between Italy and France, this contribution analyses the ambivalent usages and meanings of the Alpine environment in the conflict between border policies and intra-EU irregular migration. This article identifies how the morphological characteristics of the landscape can be mobilized with conflicting purposes, and explains how the geophysical elements of space can define and diversify irregular mobility patterns and crossing conditions. To grasp the complexity of border struggles, Alpine migrant mobility conflicts are divided into three intertwined and contentious political arenas, namely networks of solidarity, mountain trails patrol and, finally, means of transport. This article builds on the awareness that the ambivalence concerning natural settings remains understudied, at the risk of assuming a universal effect of the environmental dimension on migrant journeys.

COVID-19 vaccines, mobility, and pandemic bureaucracies: Undocumented migrants’ perspectives from Italy's Alpine border

While scholars have noted the deeply unequal effects of the pandemic containment, there has been limited attempt to map the socio-political lives of vaccination policies, particularly from the perspective of undocumented persons moving at state margins. This paper explores how undocumented migrants, who were predominantly male travellers attempting to cross Italy's Alpine borders, encountered Covid-19 vaccines and contemporary legislation. Based on ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews with migrants, doctors, and activists at safehouses both on the Italian and French sides of the Alpine border, we trace how mobility centred decisions to accept or reject vaccines were significantly shaped by exclusionary border regimes. We move beyond the exceptional focus of the Covid-19 pandemic to show how centring visions of health connected to viral risk diverted attention from migrants’ wider struggles to move to obtain safety. Ultimately, we argue for a recognition of how health crises are not merely unequally experienced, but may result in the reconfiguration of violent governance practices at state borders.

Towards a genealogy of migrant struggles and rescue. The memory of solidarity at the Alpine border

ABSTRACT This article advances a genealogy of migrant struggles and citizens solidarity practices, with a focus on the French-Italian migrant passage. It contends that scholarship has mainly mobilised a spatial approach to migrant struggles, while the temporality of solidarity and the collective memory of struggles have remained under-theorised. Then, the article moves on by focusing on the French-Italian Alpine border and it analyses the longstanding history of migrants’ passages there and, jointly, the mobilisations that took place in that area over the last decades exploring how these sedimented a citizen collective memory of solidarity practices. The final section deals with the history of mountain rescue at the French-Italian Alpine border and shows how migrants were saved by volunteers. The piece concludes by arguing that an insight into the memory of migrant struggles and solidarity practices enables foregrounding the transversal alliances which have been built between migrants and citizens and unsettling binary opposition between the former and the latter.

Hunter-gatherers across the great Adriatic-Po region during the Last Glacial Maximum: Environmental and cultural dynamics

During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 30 to 16.5 ka ago), the Great Adriatic-Po Region (GAPR) was deeply affected by the spread of glaciers from the Alps to the southern foreland and by the dropping of the sea level to ~ -120 m amsl. The combination of these two events triggered the aggradation of the Great Po Plain (GPP), a vast flat area between the Alpine chain, the Italian Peninsula and the north-western Balkan Peninsula, physically and ecologically featured through a range of palaeogeographic and palaeoecological conditions. The low-elevated Prealpine sectors and the Alpine foothills supported more extensive forest stands, due to increased orographic rainfall. These were open boreal forests which persisted throughout the LGM, while open woodlands, steppes, semideserts and wetlands occupied the lowlands. A complex ecogradient, including both an Alpine and a continental timberline, is documented by the fossil records at the NE Alpine border, with a larch-pine forest-steppe belt, in contact with steppes and loess areas extending in the plain, on the dry extreme of the gradient. Still, edaphic wetlands occupied the waterlogged silty soils in the lowlands. Other areas, marked by active geodynamic processes, supported semideserts, i.e. grooves of xerophytic herbs and shrubs. Enhanced aridity and the development of deflation areas, prompted the accretion of loess cover at the northern and southern margins of the GPP. Fauna recorded the gradual disappearance of mammoth, woolly rhino and giant deer, together with cave bear. Gravettian and Epigravettian hunter-gatherer groups inhabited the GPP, although their presence and settlement dynamics at the margins and across this region has long been questioned. As a matter of fact, a handful of archaeological sites composes a patchy record of the peopling of the plain itself. At the northern rim of the GAPR, characterized by a well-developed karst region, several caves and rock shelters record the presence of hunters of bisons and horses at the margins of the GPP and ibexes and cave bears in some hilly landscapes. Nonetheless, evidence of contacts across this area is provided by the exploitation of chert sources and by stylistic and technical similarities in the lithic industries. The work resumes the currently available multidisciplinary data and adds new petroarchaeological evidence for reconstructing the settlement dynamics of the Gravettian - Epigravettian hunter-gatherers in this vast region up to the early Late Glacial, when the Prealpine and the Apennine foothills, along with the Dinarids, were persistently settled.

Towards a History of Mountain Runaways“Migrants” and the Genealogies of Mountain Rescue and Struggles

This paper looks at current migrant crossing on the Alps from the standpoint of a history of runaways. It interrogates the traces left by the recent migrants’ fleeting presence at the Northern French-Italian Alpine border situating these in connection with both the memory of past migrants’ passages and with mountain rescue practices and solidarity networks that have shaped those Alpine valleys. It starts with a section on mobile infrastructures of solidarity deployed at the French-Italian Alpine border, retracing its brief history as well as of the sedimented memory of the struggles in the Susa Valley. The paper moves on with a section about the history of mountain rescue at the French-Alpine border, showing how foreigners and also Italian “clandestine emigrants” were rescued there in the past. It concludes by advancing a history of mountain runaways as an analytical framework to politicise migrants’ passages on the Alps.

What is Left of Migrants’ Spaces?

This article deals with the political legacy of migrants’ spaces across Europe that are the outcome of border enforcement policies but that are also shaped by migrants’ struggles and movements. It interrogates what is left, after their vanishing forced eviction, at the level of spatial-political traces, as well as in the collective memory of the citizens of those places. The main argument of the piece is that in order to come to grips with these spaces beyond their ephemeral dimension, we need to consider the temporality of migrant struggles and of solidarity practices – between migrants and citizens. The article focuses, first, on the French-Italian Alpine border, and analyses how the sedimented memory of the struggles in that valley has been reactivated in the present to support the migrants in transit. Then, the article moves on by developing the notion of transversal alliances through an insight into the Gilets Noirs movement in France, a collective of undocumented migrants which mobilised towards getting to permit to stay and accommodation, while at the same time framing their struggle as a broader battle against precarity and exploitation. The piece concludes suggesting that by bringing in the genealogy of struggles and solidarity practices, migrants’ spaces appear as part of a precarious mobile common in the making.

Disjointed knowledges, obfuscated visibility. Border controls at the French-Italian Alpine border

This article deals with border controls at the French-Italian Alpine frontier which have been implemented to govern and contain the migrants in transit. It analyses border controls by focusing on the circulation of knowledge and the economy of visibility which are enacted at that frontier. The article illustrates how the French-Italian Alpine area has become a border-zone for migrants, showing that modes of knowledge and forms of visibility are constitutive of bordering processes. It moves on with a section on the production and circulation of knowledge at the border, introducing the notion of “disjointed knowledges” to account for the asymmetries and fragmentariness at play in border control activities. It argues that we need to start from the partial non-circulation of data and local frictions in order to understand bordering practices. Then, it engages with the obfuscated visibility produced on migrant crossing, drawing attention to how migrants’ presence at the border is alternatively visible and concealed by the authorities.

Comparative Analysis of Transnational Cooperation in the Alpine Border Region Bavaria—Austria

Comparative Analysis of Transnational Cooperation in the Alpine Border Region Bavaria—Austria

A new species of Neottia (Orchidaceae, Epidendroideae) from alpine border region between China and Myanmar

Neottia nujiangensis, a new species from alpine border region between China and Myanmar, is described and illustrated. Neottia nujiangensis is sympatric and similar to Neottia fugongensis, but differs from it by having flowers densely along the rachis, pedicel and ovary about 5 mm long, lateral sepals ovate, petals elliptic, lip 4 mm long and not ciliate, lobelets widest at base, auricle dentate.

Timing of retreat of the Reuss Glacier (Switzerland) at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum

We used cosmogenic 10Be and 36Cl to establish the timing of the onset of deglaciation after the Last Glacial Maximum of the Reuss Glacier, one of the piedmont lobes of the Alpine ice cap that reached the northern Alpine foreland in Switzerland. In this study, we sampled erratic boulders both at the frontal position in the foreland (Lenzburg and Wohlen, canton Aargau) and at the lateral Alpine border position (Seeboden moraine, Rigi, canton Schwyz). The minimum age for the beginning of retreat is 22.2 ± 1.0 ka at the frontal (terminal) position and 20.4 ± 1.0 ka at the lateral position. These ages are directly comparable with exposure ages from the other piedmont lobes in the northern Alpine foreland. Our data from the mountain called Rigi, do not support the hypothesis that boulders located external to the Seeboden moraine were deposited prior to the last glacial cycle. We present a first exposure age from an erratic boulder in a retreat position in the Alpine foreland. The Reuss Glacier was approximately 12 km behind the maximal extent no later than at 18.6 ± 0.9 ka.

The influence of bedrock orientation on the landscape evolution, surface morphology and denudation (10Be) at the Niesen, Switzerland

ABSTRACTLandscape evolution and surface morphology in mountainous settings are a function of the relative importance between sediment transport processes acting on hillslopes and in channels, modulated by climate variables. The Niesen nappe in the Swiss Penninic Prealps presents a unique setting in which opposite facing flanks host basins underlain by identical lithologies, but contrasting litho‐tectonic architectures where lithologies either dip parallel to the topographic slope or in the opposite direction (i.e. dip slope and non‐dip slope). The north‐western facing Diemtigen flank represents such a dip slope situation and is characterized by a gentle topography, low hillslope gradients, poorly dissected channels, and it hosts large landslides. In contrast, the south‐eastern facing Frutigen side can be described as non‐dip slope flank with deeply incised bedrock channels, high mean hillslope gradients and high relief topography. Results from morphometric analysis reveal that noticeable differences in morphometric parameters can be related to the contrasts in the relative importance of the internal hillslope‐channel system between both valley flanks. While the contrasting dip‐orientations of the underlying flysch bedrock has promoted hillslope and channelized processes to contrasting extents and particularly the occurrence of large landslides on the dip slope flank, the flank averaged beryllium‐10 (10Be)‐derived denudation rates are very similar and range between 0.20 and 0.26 mm yr−1. In addition, our denudation rates offer no direct relationship to basin's slope, area, steepness or concavity index, but reveal a positive correlation to mean basin elevation that we interpret as having been controlled by climatically driven factors such as frost‐induced processes and orographic precipitation. Our findings illustrate that while the landscape properties in this part of the northern Alpine border can mainly be related to the tectonic architecture of the underlying bedrock, the denudation rates have a strong orographic control through elevation dependent mean annual temperature and precipitation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The border as liminal space

This article examines the concept of liminality as it relates to the terms ‘border’ and ‘limit’. It shows that early anthropological approaches refer to liminal space as a means of managing the dynamic relationship with the norm in a social structure. In more recent analyses, liminality is used to demonstrate the way in which situations of otherness develop, in a complex interplay of power, place, and social and spatial norms. Analysis of the project to develop a macro-regional strategy for the Alps provides an illustration of this. Thus, the MRS project aims to unite an “Alps” space around common objectives. It raises the question of the alpine border, whether in the context of national borders to be crossed, the limit of the mountain area to be moved, or the area of the Alpine Arc to be defined. Representations that are found of the alpine limit lead us to conclude that a liminal alpine space can be constructed in both a cognitive and functional sense.

In-migration as a new process in demographic problem areas of the Alps. Ghost towns vs. amenity settlements in the alpine border area between Italy and Slovenia

In-migration as a new process in demographic problem areas of the Alps. Ghost towns vs. amenity settlements in the alpine border area between Italy and Slovenia

Glacial history of the alpine herb Rumex Nivalis (Polygonaceae): a comparison of common phylogeographic methods with nested clade analysis

The glacial history of the alpine herb Rumex nivalis was investigated using amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) and restriction fragment length polymorphisms with polymerase chain reaction (PCR-RFLPs) of cpDNA. Both traditional statistical methods widely applied in phylogeographic research and nested clade analysis were used. The AFLPs indicated little geographic structure probably due to the wind-pollinated reproductive system of the dioecious R. nivalis. Because cpDNA haplotypes exhibited distinct distributional patterns, correlation between AFLPs and PCR-RFLPs was low. The results of common statistical methods and of nested clade analysis were largely congruent. Both supported in situ survival of one group of common haplotypes in the Central Alps. For another group of common haplotypes, classical phylogeographic analyses gave strong evidence for survival in peripheral refugia at the northern alpine border, whereas this conclusion was not as clearly supported in the nested clade analysis. Nested clade analysis provided several detailed insights on past and ongoing populational demographic processes. Thus, it is a valuable tool in the phylogeographical analysis of haplotype data, but it should preferably be combined with other statistical analyses. In situations with low genetic variation in cpDNA, classical phylogeographic analytical tools on nuclear DNA will still be the methods of choice.

Magnetostratigraphic constraints on relationships between evolution of the central Swiss Molasse basin and Alpine orogenic events

Magnetostratigraphic chronologies, together with lithostratigraphic, sedimentological, and petrological data enable detailed reconstruction of the Oligocene to Miocene history of the North Alpine foreland basin in relation to specific orogenic events and exhumation of the Alps. The Molasse of the study area was deposited by three major dispersal systems (Rigi, Hohronen, Napf). Distinguished by characteristic heavy mineral suites, conglomerate clast populations, and the presence of key clasts, these systems record three major phases of denudation of the Alpine edifice. The Rigi system eroded the Austroalpine and Penninic nappes of eastern Switzerland from 30 to 25.5 Ma as a result of backthrusting and uplift of these units along the Insubric Line. Subsequent uplift of the Aar massif some 40 km to the north appears to have controlled the duration of the Hohronen and Napf dispersal systems, spanning 24–22 Ma and 21.5–15 Ma, respectively. They record downcutting into the crystalline cores of the Penninic and Austroalpine nappes of eastern (Hohronen) and western (Napf) Switzerland. High-resolution reconstruction of the structural and geometrical evolution of the proximal Molasse reveals in-sequence and out-of-sequence thrusting events at the Alpine front and incorporation of the Molasse into the orogenic wedge by in-sequence thrusting and underplating. Furthermore, it reveals close relationships between periods of rapid denudation in the central Alps and phases of increased sediment accumulation rates at the proximal basin border. An initial increase in Molasse accumulation rates to >1 km/m.y. occurred between 30 and 25.5 Ma and coincides with the Insubric phase of backthrusting along the eastern Insubric Line, where >10 km of vertical displacement is interpreted. During the same time span, the Alpine wedge propagated forward along the basal Alpine thrust, as indicated by the coarsening- and thickening-upward megasequence and by occurrence of bajada fans derived from the Alpine border. The end of this tectonic event is marked by a basinwide unconformity, interpreted to have resulted from crustal rebound after initial loading. A subsequent increase in accumulation rates to >1 km/m.y. between 23 and 21.5 Ma coincides with initial uplift of the eastern Aar massif by at least 4 km. This phase of high accumulation rates is associated with incorporation of early Chattian conglomerates into the orogenic wedge. The third advance of the Alpine wedge between 21 and 15.5 Ma caused underplating of Molasse deposits, resulting in synsedimentary backthrusting of previously deposited Molasse sequences and in the development of a progressive unconformity. A rapid increase in accumulation rates from 0.35 to >1 km/m.y. between 15.5 and 15 Ma marks the final loading event in the wedge, which may be caused by further major displacement and loading of the Aar massif. This deformation is coeval with out-of-sequence thrusting of the Helvetic border chain and of the piggyback stack of North Penninic and Ultrahelvetic Flysch nappes along the basal Alpine thrust.

La Communauté rhénane alpine transfrontalière et l'aménagement régional des voies de communications (The Rhenish Alpine cross border community and the communication network improvement)

The economic strong-points unique to each of the three regions, Liechtenstein, the Swiss canton of St. Gallen and the Austrian Land Vorarlberg complement each other rather than they compete against themselves. From the cross-border cooperation, the "Rheinthalische Grenzgemeinschaft" was funded. Its existence contrasts with the lack of agreement of the three countries concerning their role in Europe (EEA, EFT A, EU). The sometimes unstable balance between the varying degrees of "europea- ness" and cross-border-cooperation is shown in the coordinated development of the communication network. This is the key to the economy of the Rhine valley of this alpine border region which has always been used for traffic crossing the Alps.

Sedimentary sequences, seismofacies and evolution of depositional systems of the Oligo/Miocene Lower Freshwater Molasse Group, Switzerland

ABSTRACTMagnetostratigraphic chronologies, together with sedimentological, petrological, seismic and borehole data derived from the Oligo/Miocene Lower Freshwater Molasse Group of the North Alpine foreland basin enable a detailed reconstruction of alluvial architecture in relation to Alpine orogenic events. Six depositional systems are recorded in the Lower Freshwater Molasse Group. The bajada depositional system comprises 200–400‐m‐thick successions of ribbon channel conglomerates and overbank fines including mud‐ and debris‐flows which were derived from the Alpine border chain. The alluvial megafan depositional system is made up of massive pebble‐to‐cobble conglomerates up to 3 km thick which reveal a fan‐shaped geometry. This depositional environment grades downcurrent into the conglomerate channel belt depositional system, which comprises an ≈2‐km‐thick alternation of channel conglomerates and overbank fines. The sandstone channel belt depositional system is bordered by the 100–400‐m‐thick overbank fines assigned to the floodplain depositional system. At the feather edge of the basin, 50–400‐m‐thick lacustrine sediments in both clastic and carbonate facies represent the lacustrine depositional system.The spatial and temporal arrangement of these depositional systems was controlled by the geometrical evolution of the Molasse Basin. During periods of enhanced sediment supply and during phases of stable sliding of the entire wedge, >2000‐m‐thick coarsening‐and thickening‐upward megasequences comprising the conglomerate channel belt, alluvial megafan and bajada depositional systems were deposited in a narrow wedge‐shaped basin. In the distal reaches of the basin, however, no sedimentary trend developed, and the basin fill comprises a <500‐m‐thick series of sandstone meander belt, floodplain and lacustrine depositional systems. During phases of accretion at the toe of the wedge, the basin widened, and prograding systems of multistorey channel sandstones extended from the thrust front to the distal reaches of the basin.The rearrangement of the depositional systems as a function of changing orogenic conditions created discordances, which are expressed seismically by onlap and erosion of beds delimiting sedimentary sequences. Whereas stable sliding of the wedge succeeded by accretion at the toe of the wedge is recorded in the proximal Lower Freshwater Molasse by a coarsening‐and thickening‐upward megasequence followed by erosion, the opposite trend developed in the distal reaches of the Molasse. Here, fine‐grained sandstones and mudstones were deposited during periods of stable sliding, whereas phases of accretion caused a coarsening‐ and thickening‐up megasequence to form.

Deformation partitioning during polyphase oblique convergence in the Karawanken Mountains, southeastern Alps

The Karawanken Mountains of southeastern Austria straddle the Insubric Line, a major fault zone that corresponds to the Austroalpine-South Alpine border of the eastern Alps. They display polyphase structural patterns that resulted from deformation partitioning at shallow crustal levels. Following a poorly constrained late Cretaceous deformation history, Paleogene contraction produced NW—SE-trending fold—thrust structures and possibly related sinistral (?) cross faults. Miocene deformation produced both NW- and SE-directed thrust faults and NW-striking high-angle dextral cross faults which merged with or displaced the W-striking Insubric Line. Distributed dextral strike-slip displacements of the order of 30–40 km and thrust displacement of 4–5 km along the northern Karawanken front initiated subsidence of a small foreland basin north of the Karawanken Mountains. Recent regional deformation seems to be concentrated along cross-cutting NNW-striking dextral faults within a shifting system of seismogenic transfer faults that probably merge with the convergent South Alpine thrust front to the west. There are conspicuous parallels in the style of deformation along the Karawanken Mountains with that found along other seismogenic convergent strike-slip faults, such as those of southern California, New Zealand and Anatolia.

Deux cas de relations transfrontalières entre les Grisons et la province de Sondrio (Two cases of traditionnal transborder relations in italo-swiss Alps)

Abstract. - This paper is a study about agricultural relationship and exchanges through an alpine border, between the Italian province of Sondrio ant the swiss canton of Grisons.