French-Italian Border Research Articles

The “Schengen Turn” as the Reshaping of the French-Italian Border: The Critical Convergence of the Geography of Border Controls and Capitalist Dynamics (1990s-2000s)

ABSTRACT On the 1st of January 1993, border controls at the French-Italian border were officially “abolished” in the framework of the Schengen area. However, the border didn’t disappear; rather, its geography adjusted to the evolution of the capitalist logics of the European market, creating a hierarchized borderzone where “boundaries and scales intersect to fuel further expansion of (…) the frontiers of capital” (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013, 321). The article draws on the fields of critical border studies and radical geography to show the critical convergence of capitalist dynamics and border police practices in the French-Italian border zone. This has been reflected in the production of transport infrastructures enabling high-speed cross-border circulation at the expense of local roads and practices. Moreover, the evolution from “fixed” border control to “random and mobile” identity checks led to the creation of a police targeting system that selects passengers on the basis of a social-racial profiling. After the Schengen agreements, the French-Italian border became a mobile device allowing the accumulation of capital through the selection of “legitimate travelers” and the control of “illegal migrants”, enacting locally the “polarization of mobility” (Bauman 1998) that occured at a global scale at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Vallée de la Roya and its opaque infrastructures of transit. Inhabiting the border.

This paper offers a closer look at the French-Italian border and its violence. The border in the Vallée de la Roya restores some conditions of rurality, transit, and danger to which the migratory route is confronted. In this context, different genealogies of displacement, social fabrics and spatial forms are forced to coexist and resist situations of crisis in different ways, contributing to ongoing processes of dematerialisation of the border. At the southern French-Italian border and specifically in the valley emerge new forms of spaces and practices of holding, as the simultaneous and ambivalent conflict between support and hostility, mobility and immobility, visibility and invisibility. The progressive increase of transits and the subsequent enclosure of the internal frontier engender dispersed and mobile massive militarisation as well as important acts of reception. The valley and the experience of Le Camping encompass a new fragment of the infrastructure of solidarity that explains its performativity as a transnational dispositive of protection, enabling transits through the informal, diffuse, and opaque system of collective resistances of architecture.

The Value of Information. Mobility and Border Knowledge Battlegrounds in the Ventimiglia Region

ABSTRACT This contribution explores the acquisition, circulation and negotiation of knowledge related to mobility and border crossing among migrants at the French-Italian border of Ventimiglia. Despite governmental deterrence policies and border controls, the pursuit of “secondary movements” seems not to decrease, and is increasingly putting Europe to the test. In this context, the underground knowledge network that exists can be used to circumvent legal and geographical borders and to gain access to forms of citizenship. The “right” information is thus fundamental in determining the level of risk embedded in the various pathways and practices of de-bordering, as well as in constructing specific behaviors and migration carriers. To examine contentious information issues, we have participated in activities supporting the Progetto20k collective, including: Eufemia Info&legal point, an independent solidarity center in Ventimiglia; and the Italian-French Border Guide, a project designed to produce and spread mobility knowledge.

Memories from the ‘invisible city’: migration traces at the French-Italian border of Ventimiglia

ABSTRACT Since the reintroduction of border control at the French-Italian border in 2015, the town of Ventimiglia has witnessed an increasing number of migrants who are deemed illegal in the eyes of the current EU migration system. These people have been blocked or slowed down in their attempt to continue their journeys. This article examines around 120 drawings and writings left by migrants in Ventimiglia at the ‘Eufemia’ InfoPoint opened by Progetto20k, a collective that provides support to migrants attempting to cross the border. By reflecting upon these migrant experiences, the present work offers a unique perspective of undocumented movements to and through Europe. Such empirical material is invaluable in order to supplement the debate on ‘migration traces’ along international illegalised migratory routes. Through the analytical lens of ‘migration traces’, this work evidences the complexity of migration narratives from a bottom-up perspective. It also highlights the need for said perspective to challenge the dominant representation of undocumented migrants, perceived merely as threats and ‘objects to be governed’.

Repertoires of sanctuary: building a network of safety at the French–Italian border

ABSTRACT Sanctuary cities have experienced a strong political and theoretical revival in the last decade. However, the focus on cities and their policies restricts the idea of sanctuary to its urban, legal and – to a certain extent – North American enactments, leaving dispersed and rural forms of sanctuary understudied. In this paper, I examine the sanctuary spaces and practices in the Roya Valley, at the border between Italy and France, and more particularly the journey of its most well-known activist, the farmer Cédric Herrou. Although Herrou’s first actions could be best described as humanitarian and hospitable help towards migrants, they gradually evolved into more structured solidarity actions. These led to a decision by the Constitutional Council that strengthened the French constitutional value of fraternity to better distinguish disinterested support from human smuggling motivated by profit. I argue that these three concepts of fraternity, hospitality and solidarity identify different repertoires of sanctuary that respectively fulfil functions of signalling, protecting and community-building. These different functions, when articulated together, constitute a sanctuary or network of safety. By reconstructing this series of practices and justifications, I aim to clarify the conceptual vocabulary and normative appeal of sanctuary.

« Je suis passé clandestinement par la montagne… » Pratiques, mises en récit et représentations du passage de la frontière franco-italienne (1945-2020)

Cet article vise à interroger la mémoire collective et les représentations culturelles des mouvements migratoires dits ‘clandestins’, dans les Alpes franco-italiennes entre 1945 et 1960, séquence qui correspond à la dernière grande vague d’émigration italienne vers la France. L’étude des parcours individuels à travers cet espace transfrontalier enrichit notre connaissance des phénomènes de mobilité. Une attention toute particulière est ici accordée au récit de l’expérience des personnes en migration dont les témoignages ont été sollicités.

Unaccompanied Adolescent Minors’ Experiences of Exception and Abandonment in the Ventimiglia Border Space

This article explores unaccompanied adolescent minors’ (UAMs) experiences of deterrent practices at internal EU borders while being on the move. Previous studies have acknowledged the securitisation of external borders through gatekeeping and fencing practices; however, there is a recent and continued renationalisation of internal EU borders by the member states. Like other migrants who are travelling irregularly, UAMs also often face harsh living conditions and repeated rights violations in border areas, regardless of their specific rights to protection and psychological needs. Research has called for a renewed focus on migrant children’s experiences as active agents at the borders, but until now studies exploring UAMs’ experiences at internal EU borders remain scarce. Drawing on Agamben’s notion of “legal exception,” we seek to explore how deterrent practices are confusingly intertwined and affect UAMs’ psychological wellbeing and subjectivities in the Ventimiglia border space. Participant observations and in-depth interviews conducted with UAMs at the French-Italian border provide unique insights into how these bordering practices affect migrant children’s legal and psychological safety and reshape their subjectivities. This contribution highlights UAMs’ conflicting needs and feelings of institutional “abandonment” when left without institutional welfare protection in the border space, on the one hand, and feeling pressured to act responsibly towards their relatives, on the other.

The Migration Crisis in the Local News: Evidence from the French-Italian Border

The Migration Crisis in the Local News: Evidence from the French-Italian Border

Early cretaceous accretionary complex of the valaisan ocean, western alps?

Based on detailed field investigations and structural mapping in the Petit-Saint Bernard Pass area (French-Italian border), the Versoyen Complex is newly defined as an imbrication of four structural units. The first one is composed of the remnant of the Valaisan ocean floor (“basalt” and “black schist” formation) and the other three units -grouped under the name of “schistes a blocs”- contain blocks with different origin: oceanic, continental or a mix of both, embedded in a matrix of grey micaschists. Kinematic analysis highlights the compressional style of this complex with a well-developed stack of tectonic slivers. Rocks in the tectonic melange include Paleozoic green gneiss and grey-green micaschists blocks, together with Upper Paleozoic granitoid and layered gabbro, which display a typical orogenic calc-alkaline signature, comparable to that of coeval plutonic rocks of the Brianconnais continental basement attributed to a late Variscan back-arc environment. A new isotopic dating on a calc-alkaline layered gabbro block gave a U/Pb zircon age of 310 ± 4 Ma, in the range of other dated plutonic rocks such as the Punta Rossa and Aiguille du Clapet megablocks. These Paleozoic continental basement rocks of the Versoyen Complex were initially rift allochthons, but are now outcropping as a tectonic melange, with imbricated blocks and slivers within an Early Cretaceous grey micaschists matrix. Radiolarians sampled by Beltrando et al. (2012) within the grey micaschists have been attributed to the Late Jurassic - Early Cretaceous. Additional stratigraphic and geodynamic constraints allow us to restrict the deposition of the Versoyen sediments from the Aptian to Cenomanian times. The Versoyen Complex is unconformably overlain by the Valaisan Trilogy (Aroley-Marmontains-Saint Christophe) of Cretaceous age. The Turonian Aroley strata deposited on the Versoyen “schistes a blocs” units and the absence of any Aroley limestones within the underlying tectonic melange testify a clear stratigraphic unconformity, mapped regionally, between the Versoyen Complex and Valaisan Trilogy. Both are affected by a high-pressure metamorphism related to the Alpine collision around 40 Ma and trace of former metamorphism are nowhere observed suggesting that the former melange did not result in a significant tectonic thickening. We interpret the Versoyen Complex, as a pre-Alpine Cretaceous subduction-related accretionary prism, formed during the closure of the Valaisan Ocean. Valaisan rifting initiated during the Late Jurassic, as a consequence of an eastwards propagation of the North-Atlantic rifting towards the Alpine region. This propagation followed pre-existing Variscan structures along the Zone Houillere, explaining the present marked differences between Variscan basements on each side of the Valaisan suture (External Crystalline Massifs and Brianconnais basement). Due to the southward subduction of the Valaisan Ocean, this passive margin was later on deformed through compressional shearing tectonics, developing a “schistes a blocs” fabric and imbricating the former rift allochthons. During the Tertiary Alpine collision, Versoyen and Valaisan Trilogy units were deeply underthrusted, and then exhumed under the Subbrianconnais units - including the Petit-Saint Bernard and Arguerey Liassic calcschists, which underthrusted in turn the Brianconnais Front.

Border town authorities and the multilevel politics of the ‘transit migrant’ emergency

ABSTRACT The article takes the approach of multilevel politics to analyse the way the presence of illegalized ‘transit migrants’ is dealt with within the urban space of Ventimiglia – a medium-sized city located south of the French–Italian border – by the town government and its mayor after heightened French border controls. It focuses on the period between 2015 and 2019. Within the unneutral and criminalizing framing of ‘transit migration’, border towns have narrow room for political manoeuvre, and yet they can be seen as the contentious scene of migration policies and politics. Presented and justified as a pragmatic compromise between the migrants’ humanitarian needs and the inhabitants’ claims for security and decorum, Ventimiglia’s municipal policy of encampment was built on cooperation, conflict and contestation with both higher tier authorities and grassroots civil society, thus showing an intricate system of multilevel politics. Followed by widespread discontent which partially translated into electoral disavowal, the town government’s actions eventually reinforced the framing of ‘transit migration’ policies as emergency measures and strengthened the migrants’ invisibility and precariousness in the urban space. This ethnography-based case study thus provides greater understanding of the particularities of local and multilevel migration politics in border towns and how these contribute to shape and enhance the exclusionary border regime.

The Southern French–Italian Border Before, During, and After COVID-19 Lockdowns

This essay focuses on the French–Italian border of the Maritime Alps. Grounded on previous research and on more recent data, it examines both “desirable” (cross-border workers and customers) and “undesirable” (illegalized non-European migrants) circulation before, during and after the COVID-19 French and Italian lockdown.

Chasing Down Foreigners at the French-Italian Border (Hautes-Alpes) as a Matter of Social and Racial Policing

In the town of Briancon (Hautes-Alpes), on the French side of the French-Italian border, the border police (PAF) controls for those who have crossed the border illegally by operating on a discretionary basis. Mobile police practices include tracking down racialised people across the mountains. These practices expose illegal migrants to dangers inherent in the high-mountain environment and are part of a continuum of police and administrative violence committed against them. Migration control in the Briancon area demonstrates how the mountains can be integrated into power strategies that reinforce the dominance of certain social groups. It also shows that borders today, which facilitate the mobility of “legitimate” foreign populations and hinder that of “undesirable” foreign populations, function by identifying individuals and differentiating them on the basis of race and class. The persistence of “police hunts for illegal humans” (Chamayou, 2010) as a control technology helps us, on the whole, to understand how migration control on France’s borders forms part of a “colonial present” (Gregory, 2004).

From Affects to Contentious Politics.Dis

Since 2015, the reintroduction of controls at northern Italian borders forced asylum seekers to take risky routes to reach their destinations in the European Union (EU). While several deaths have been registered since 2015 along the whole Alpine chain as a consequence of asylum seekers’ exposure to risk, some local villagers experienced unexpected encounters with migrants in distress transiting along mountain pathways. Based on six months of empirical fieldwork on the French-Italian border be...

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

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.

Legal Weapons in Action at the French-Italian border

The establishment of the Schengen area has had a considerable impact on migratory flows to Europe, in particular due to the strengthening of the external borders of this area, which has led to it sometimes being labelled “Fortress Europe”. Conversely, internal border controls were abolished under Article 22 of the Schengen Borders Code, which states that: “Internal borders may be crossed at any point without a border check on persons, irrespective of their nationality, being carried out”. As ...

Distrust and Stigmatization of NGOS and Volunteers at the Time of the European Migrant "Crisis". Conflict and implications on social solidarity

This paper deals with the recent episodes of stigmatization of solidarity in the context of the European migrant crisis. Securitarian measures frame as illegal not only migrants but also volunteers supporting them. Starting from the debate about zero tolerance policies, considered as a form of depoliticization of traditional politics, the research shows how NGOs and volunteers are becoming distrusted and conflictual, even if they long framed themselves as neutral and apolitical. An analysis of the recent emergency decrees and the decrease of trust in the Third sector, along with volunteers' criminalization, reveals a changed picture for Third sector organizations. The Ventimiglia case study is representative of this changed context. The 11th June 2015 the French-Italian border has been closed; since then, civil society has been involved in supportive and conflictual actions about the migrants' presence, while local politics tried to avoid political confrontation. In this situation, depoliticized politics has indirectly extended the target of its norms, stigmatizing not only migrants but also their supporters. We now deal with NGOs and volunteers conflictual and distrusted. Changes in the Third sector are helpful to consider the fragmentation and the politicization of solidarity.

Les soins aux personnes exilées en transit à la frontière

On the French-Italian border, Vintimille and Briançon are towns through which many migrants pass. The Médecins du monde nursing teams, working with other volunteer associations, provide care and a listening ear through outreach interventions or in temporary housing structures. They monitor migrants' health and initiate their healthcare pathway, guiding them towards adapted care facilities.

Passeurs: Narratives of Border Crossing in the Western Alps

This article focuses on representations of passeurs: migrant smugglers across the French-Italian and Swiss-Italian borders. I analyze a heterogeneous corpus of novels, films, and essays published between 1990-2017 that refer to different waves of migration, from World War II to the contemporary migration crisis. I argue that these texts complicate and help question the current criminalization of migrant smugglers most often found in the media and political discourses. In particular, I claim that these discourses confuse or dismiss migrants’ experience of border crossing, as they neglect important ethical and legal differences between smuggling and trafficking, humanitarian actors and professional smugglers. The texts I analyze insist on these nuances, enriching our understanding of the human stakes of “illegal” migrations. Through the analysis of literature and film, I present figures of migrant smugglers who have operated illegally to facilitate migrants, but who must not be confused with human traffickers. For example, in his bio-fiction Il vuoto alle spalle (1999), journalist Marco A. Ferrari gives an uplifting, idealized portrayal of Ettore Castiglioni, an Anti-Fascist Alpinist active during World War II, who smuggled Italian Jews and political opponents to the Fascist regime to Switzerland, including the second President of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi. Francesco Biamonti, who lived at the French-Italian border and was a prolific novelist in the 1980s and 1990s, insists on the professionalism of smugglers who have been traditionally present in the Western Alps. In particular, Biamonti stresses that good passeurs are those who never put the life of their clients (migrants) at risk. Novels such as Vento largo (1991) and Le parole la notte (1994) not only point at the negative effects of globalization in Liguria (Italy), but also lament Europeans’ lack of attention to and understanding of increasing migratory flows, well before the media started talking about a migrant “crisis.” Lastly, I present the work of journalists who occasionally performed the role of “humanitarian smugglers” and later reported their experience in written or cinematic form: Io sto con la sposa, by Gabriele del Grande, Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry, and Antonio Augugliaro (2014); Passeur, by Raphaël Krafft (2017). These works express the authors’ need to reconnect with the professional and anti-Fascist tradition of passeurs in the Western Alps, at a time when there is no alternative to “illegal” border crossing for too many migrants.

Assessment of key infectious diseases among asylum seekers at the French-Italian border (Liguria)

Assessment of key infectious diseases among asylum seekers at the French-Italian border (Liguria)

Assessment of key infectious diseases among asylum seekers at the French-Italian border (Liguria)

Assessment of key infectious diseases among asylum seekers at the French-Italian border (Liguria)