Mediterranean Migrants Research Articles

Living in a multicultural context: Health and integration from the perspective of undocumented Mediterranean migrants, residents, and stakeholders in Italy. A qualitative-multimethod study.

To catch a representative view of a multicultural population's needs. Qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted from July 2022 to January 2023 with the project's stakeholders, migrants, and residents. Data analysis was performed using a multimethod textual analysis technique. Territorial barriers, lack of social network, and specific professionals' training emerged as healthcare delivery obstacles. For migrants, language improvement emerged as a health priority. A deep relationship with migrants emerged as a deficiency for residents. A welcoming project equipped with solid leadership and the right resources can be fundamental in mediating health promotion and integration. In this process, the involvement of the resident population is essential. Analysing the migrants' needs and the strengths and limitations of a reception system could help identify the challenges for professionals in delivering culturally competent care. In this context, the nurse's role becomes relevant, being responsible for taking charge and caring for the population and the link between professionals and the population. WHAT PROBLEM DID THE STUDY ADDRESS?: The study addressed the problem of improving the overall health of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, mainly focusing on reception and integration into a new society process. WHAT WERE THE MAIN FINDINGS?: Worse health was identified with adaptation, integration, and family problems. Territorial barriers emerged, hindering good health. WHERE AND ON WHOM WILL THE RESEARCH HAVE AN IMPACT?: These research findings can be valuable for health professionals who want to improve the reception process and enhance a care model integrated with residents. No patient or public contribution. To describe the research report, we referred to the COREQ checklist (Tong etal., 2007).

Narratives of Mediterranean migrants in Italian cinema: The camera angle and close-up in Terraferma and Fuocoammare

Over the last two decades, Italian cinema has turned its gaze towards the Mediterranean Sea to dismantle the narratives constructed by populist political parties and mainstream European media, which have emphasized the rhetoric of border protection, security and legality through the systematic depersonalization of migrants. Film counter-narratives to this have been effectively developed, and cinema has responded to the materiality and fixity of migrants’ bodies by composing stories in which these migrants recover their sociopolitical agency. This article provides a close analysis of the characterization in Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma (2011) and Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) (2016) in relation to technical and stylistic forms of filmic representation. Particular attention is paid to the correlation between the aesthetic level of the films and the social dimension of the characters, which is primarily expressed through framing in which the migrant occupies the central position, establishing a dialectical relationship with the other characters and their social space.

Migrants, refugees, invaders: responses to the Riace Model’s inclusive citizenship project

ABSTRACT In imagining a post-nationalistic and post-racialized future, the refugee hospitality and integration project implemented in Italy, known as the Modello Riace (Riace Model), sought to use state-funded, sustainable activities to encourage asylum seekers to mix with locals and settle in the economically depressed and depopulated areas of southern Italy. The project navigated legal frameworks and defied rampant ethno-nationalism to integrate refugees during the Mediterranean migrant crisis and to mitigate the associated climate of hostility towards them. The experiment prompted a political backlash and stirred paranoia about an imagined ethnic replacement of Italians. This paper introduces the Riace Model’s humanitarian vision and its interaction with the social solidarity economic sector in Italy after the 2008 financial crisis. It analyses interviews with the then-mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, and their reception on social media, to examine notions of humanitarianism and citizenship in Italy. Highlighting the contrast between Riace’s imagined future and hostile views of refugees as invaders and criminals, the study demonstrates the conflict that arose at a time of economic austerity. The study also illustrates how public figures became proxies for opposing factions, discusses the Model’s legacy, and highlights the challenges facing future integration schemes.

ОЦЕНКА СОСТОЯНИЯ ЗАПАСОВ МОРСКИХ ВИДОВ РЫБ ЧЕРНОГО МОРЯ (ВОДЫ РОССИИ) В 2021 Г

Based on the available biological and fisheries data, stock status review for 18 units of the fish species inhabiting the Black Sea and the both Azov and Black Seas is presented. A modified version of the traditional approach to the harvest control rules for the aquatic bioresources of the Azov and Black Sea Fishery Basin is described for the case when they are assessed by the mathematical methods to estimate the current stock biomass and fishing mortality. For 11 stock units, analytical modeling including cohort, production and trend models has been applied. Based on the estimates of biomass and fishing mortality concerning biological reference points, in 2021, the status of six stock units of the marine fish species inhabiting the basin and exploited by the Russian fisheries was identified as increasing or stable (“Black Sea” stock units of the European sprat and European anchovy, “Crimean” stock unit of turbot, “Crimean and Caucasian” stock unit of red mullet, and “Black and Azov Seas” stock units of garfish and rays). Five fishery stock units (“Crimean and Caucasian” of mullets, picarel and Mediterranean horse mackerel, “Black and Azov Seas” of sand smelts, and “Caucasian” of turbot) have shown a decreasing trend in terms of abundance, and for the rest of the investigated fish stock units (“Mediterranean migrant” bluefish, Atlantic bonito and Atlantic mackerel, “Black Sea” whiting, so-iuy mullet and the other marine fish species, “Black and Azov Seas” spiny dogfish), the status has not been determined due to the absence of systematic biological and fishery data.

Inter and intra-population variability of the migratory behaviour of a short-distance partial migrant, the Eurasian Stone-curlew Burhinus oedicnemus (Charadriiformes, Burhinidae)

Migratory behaviour in birds shows a remarkable variability at species, population and individual levels. Short-distance migrants often adopt a partial migratory strategy and tend to have a flexible migration schedule that allows a more effective response to extreme environmental variations. Weather seasonality and environmental heterogeneity have been reported as significant factors in the diversification of migratory behaviour for Mediterranean migrants, but relatively few studies investigated the migration patterns of non-passerine birds migrating within the Mediterranean basin. In this study, we investigated the migratory strategy of 40 Eurasian Stone-curlews Burhinus oedicnemus tagged with geolocators and GPS-GSM tags and belonging to continental and Mediterranean populations of the Italian peninsula. The proportion of migrants was higher in continental populations, but we observed a significant variability also within Mediterranean populations. All birds spent the winter within the Mediterranean basin. Continental Stone-curlews departed earlier in spring and later in autumn and covered longer distances than those from Mediterranean areas. The speed of migration did not change between seasons for continental birds, while Mediterranean individuals migrated faster in spring. The likelihood of departure for autumn migration of GPS-tagged birds increased when temperatures were near or below 0 °C suggesting that Stone-curlews tend to delay departure until weather conditions worsen abruptly. As a consequence of global warming in the Mediterranean, the frequency of migratory birds in the considered populations might decrease in the near future. This could affect the distribution of species throughout the year and should be taken into account when targeting conservation measures.

Migrant Lives on First Nation Land: Greek-Australian Memories of Titjikala in the 1960s

ABSTRACT Via ethnographic and oral history methods and transcultural memory work, this article presents the complex, ambiguous and at times contradictory relationship between a Greek family and an Aboriginal community, including the traditional landowners, in Central Australia in the 1960s. Within a commonplace narrative of colonists and pastoralists buying, owning and selling First People’s land, ownership by Greek migrants and the historical presence of Aboriginal people provides an entry point into a microhistory that illustrates and reveals under-acknowledged, fraught and fragmented facets of transcultural life in 1960s rural Australia, and the place of ethnic-settler-colonisers in Australia’s history of settler-colonialism, dispossession, and pastoralism. Through this case study, we argue the importance of uncovering, recovering and reclaiming the history of Mediterranean migrants’ transcultural relationships with First Nations people.

Conceptualizing Motives for Migration: a Typology of Italian Migrants in the Athens Area

Migration flows from a southern European country to another one have received scarce attention so far. This is especially true for Italians migrating to Greece or, more specifically, the Athens area. Thus, there are limited insights as to the reasons why Italians are leaving and why they have been choosing Greece as their destination. This paper looks at their motives for migrating and their destination choice in order to understand the diversity of migratory trajectories through a typology. In order to do this, we carried out in-depth interviews to Italians living, both permanently and temporarily, in the Athens area, employing snowball sampling. As a result, we have identified 5 types of Italian immigrants in Athens: Mediterranean, nomadic, work, entrepreneurial, and marriage migrants. Mediterranean migrants are driven by the typically Mediterranean character of climate, landscape, food, and culture in their deliberate choice of Athens. Nomadic migrants have casually chosen Athens to satisfy their need of continuous physical mobility and multiple moorings as a defining aspect of their identity. Work migrants are motivated by the search of a job regardless of the place and work content. Entrepreneurial migrants are motivated by a vocation for a professional career in Athens. Finally, for marriage migrants, the choice of Athens is a consequence of a couple choice and shared life projects.

The Camp of God: Reimagining Pilgrimage as Migrancy in Augustine’s City of God 1

ABSTRACT Following the Sack of Rome in 410 CE, African Christians like Augustine welcomed migrants from Italy. This was part of a trend of catastrophic human displacement that anticipated – albeit in an inverted manner – the Mediterranean migrant crisis of the twenty-first century. It was in this context that Augustine wrote, in his City of God, of a civitas made up of peregrini – not merely “pilgrims,” but “migrants” or “refugees.” The vision of community corresponding to Augustine’s sense of peregrinatio was not the city, but the camp: the civitas that plays host to the migrant. As Agamben has reminded us, the prevalence of camps tells us something about the regime of law conditioning even those who supposedly live “outside the walls.” In light of Agamben’s insight, this article makes the case that Augustine’s political theology of peregrinatio and civitas is best understood in terms of migrancy and the refugee camp.

Cane farming and cultural difference: Catalan migration and land practices in early twentieth-century Queensland

The article draws on labour and migration histories of the early twentieth century to demonstrate how migrants’ land use was modified in the process of moving from rural Catalonia to northern Queensland. Once in Australia, migrants were able to use sharecropping practices to negotiate Anglo-Saxon expectations of assimilation associated with cane farming. Using a detailed case study, the article demonstrates the interconnected systems of migration and agriculture in Catalonia and Queensland. These cultural practices came under increasing pressure in the mid-1920s, as cane farms expanded beyond the scope of a single family to own and farm their own land. The article contributes to scholarship regarding the racialisation of Mediterranean migrants. It also demonstrates the limits of ethno-centric histories to understand the cultural diversity and economic interests that characterised Queensland’s northern cane fields.

MIGRANTS IN DETENTION: APPROACH OF THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Mediterranean migrant crisis is not calming down and in the last six decades the nature and character of these migrations has changed. The authors deal with the one of the aspects of their position – detention. This work is divided into several parts. In the first part, the authors explore the problem of the migration crisis. After that, they explain in detail an Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The main part of this work is devoted to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights related to the migrant’s detention.

Ancient DNA from the skeletons of Roopkund Lake reveals Mediterranean migrants in India

Situated at over 5,000 meters above sea level in the Himalayan Mountains, Roopkund Lake is home to the scattered skeletal remains of several hundred individuals of unknown origin. We report genome-wide ancient DNA for 38 skeletons from Roopkund Lake, and find that they cluster into three distinct groups. A group of 23 individuals have ancestry that falls within the range of variation of present-day South Asians. A further 14 have ancestry typical of the eastern Mediterranean. We also identify one individual with Southeast Asian-related ancestry. Radiocarbon dating indicates that these remains were not deposited simultaneously. Instead, all of the individuals with South Asian-related ancestry date to ~800 CE (but with evidence of being deposited in more than one event), while all other individuals date to ~1800 CE. These differences are also reflected in stable isotope measurements, which reveal a distinct dietary profile for the two main groups.

Operation LITTEN: a year delivering medical care during the peak of the Mediterranean migrant crisis, 2016-2017

AbstractThe increased movement of migrants across the Mediterranean to the European Union intensified in 2015. This paper will focus on the complex experiences and lessons learnt by three Medical Officers (MOs) involved in one year of maritime rescue operations in the Mediterranean (August 2016 to July 2017). During this period a total of 7930 people were rescued by the Royal Navy (RN), with the largest single rescue involving 712 people. The medical teams involved delivered sustained care for periods of up to 80 hours, often with no immediate casualty evacuation available. The scope of clinical practice was wide and challenging, from the birth of infants, to the delivery of care to those with burns, gunshot wounds, sepsis and drowning. The teams were often confronted with mass casualty events, a challenge for any deployed unit.

From crisis to creative critique: the early twenty-first century Mediterranean crossing on stage and screen in works by Teatro delle Albe and Andrea Segre

ABSTRACTThe article analyses the 2010 play Rumore di Acque [Noise in the Waters] by the Teatro delle Albe and Andrea Segre’s 2014 docufilm Come il peso dell’acqua [Like the Weight of Water] as creative responses to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. In challenging the frozen representation and rhetoric of public reporting and discourse, characterized by recurring images of boats accompanied by the number of arriving or dead migrants, both works propose a critical reading of the migration phenomenon through a focus on individual stories. As the play and the docufilm themselves cross a sea of genres and expressive tools, they also place the migrant at the centre of an interrogation of national paradigms and Western societies. They ultimately call into question the exclusionary politics and policies of the contemporary world and identify in the empathy towards the human quest for freedom and recognition a lively engine of the early twenty-first-century global community, so profoundly marked by movement and displacement.

Refugees and crises of law

ABSTRACTThe word ‘crisis’ has been on everyone’s lips with regard to the mass arrival of refugees into Europe over the past couple of years. Behrman argues that the crisis can best be understood as one of law. More specifically, the Mediterranean migrant crisis is but the latest in a long series of crises of law, whereby attempts to control and manage the movements of forced migrants have failed on their own terms, let alone on upholding principles of humanitarian protection. By examining the history of these laws over the past century, the theme of order taking precedence over humanitarian concern, and the persistent illusion that human migration can be effectively controlled are shown to be at the root of refugee crises past and present.

Multilocus Bayesian Estimates of Intra-Oceanic Genetic Differentiation, Connectivity, and Admixture in Atlantic Swordfish (Xiphias gladius L.).

Previous genetic studies of Atlantic swordfish (Xiphias gladius L.) revealed significant differentiation among Mediterranean, North Atlantic and South Atlantic populations using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA data. However, limitations in geographic sampling coverage, and the use of single loci, precluded an accurate placement of boundaries and of estimates of admixture. In this study, we present multilocus analyses of 26 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within 10 nuclear genes to estimate population differentiation and admixture based on the characterization of 774 individuals representing North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Mediterranean swordfish populations. Pairwise F ST values, AMOVA, PCoA, and Bayesian individual assignments support the differentiation of swordfish inhabiting these three basins, but not the current placement of the boundaries that separate them. Specifically, the range of the South Atlantic population extends beyond 5°N management boundary to 20°N-25°N from 45°W. Likewise the Mediterranean population extends beyond the current management boundary at the Strait of Gibraltar to approximately 10°W. Further, admixture zones, characterized by asymmetric contributions of adjacent populations within samples, are confined to the Northeast Atlantic. While South Atlantic and Mediterranean migrants were identified within these Northeast Atlantic admixture zones no North Atlantic migrants were identified respectively in these two neighboring basins. Owing to both, the characterization of larger number of loci and a more ample spatial sampling coverage, it was possible to provide a finer resolution of the boundaries separating Atlantic swordfish populations than previous studies. Finally, the patterns of population structure and admixture are discussed in the light of the reproductive biology, the known patterns of dispersal, and oceanographic features that may act as barriers to gene flow to Atlantic swordfish.

Making “Mediterranean Migrants”: Geopolitical Transitions, Migratory Policy, and French Conceptions of the Mediterranean in the 20th Century

Despite the fact that most migrants in mid-20th century France came from the western Mediterranean, the relationship between conceptions of migrants and conceptions of the Mediterranean is poorly understood. This article analyzes both how French policy debates about migrants borrowed from discourses about the Mediterranean and its inhabitants, as well as how these debates reveal changing ideas about the Mediterranean as the frontier of “Europe.” To this end, the article examines four periods of geopolitical reconfigurations when migratory patterns and policies were reworked: as a result of World War I, in the wake of World War II, during the 1950s and 1960s with decolonization and European integration, and in the midst of economic crises and European enlargement since the 1970s. During the course of the 20th century, the concept of the “Mediterranean migrant,” as well as the “Mediterranean” itself, increasingly referred to persons from the southern shore of the Mediterranean, rather than from Southern Europe. This shift, in conjunction with an increasingly united Europe, has several implications for migrants’ inclusion in the nation-state and European Union.

Abstract P229: Incidence of Acute Myocardial Infarction in First and Second Generation Migrants: Do Second Generation Migrants Converge Towards the Host Population?

Background Differences in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) incidence between migrants and the host population have been reported. Incidence may converge towards the host population over generations. We assessed whether AMI incidence differences between migrants and ethnic Dutch exist, and whether they converge towards ethnic Dutch over generations. Methods A nationwide register-based cohort study was conducted (n=7,601,785) from 1997 to 2007. Using Cox Proportional Hazard Models, AMI incidence differences between migrant groups and ethnic Dutch were estimated. If possible, analyses were stratified by generation. Results AMI incidence differences between migrants and ethnic Dutch depended on the migrant’s country of origin, and often varied between migrant groups originating from the same geographical region. For example, among North African and Mediterranean migrants, incidence was higher in Turkish (Hazard Ratio (HR):1·34;1·28-1·41), but lower in Moroccan migrants (HR:0·46;0·40-0·52) compared with ethnic Dutch. Most migrant groups had a similar or lower incidence than ethnic Dutch, which converged towards or exceeded the incidence in ethnic Dutch over generations. This was most profound in Polish and Chinese migrants (first generation Chinese: HR:0·51;0·42-0·62, second generation Chinese: HR:1·36;0·90-2·04). Conclusions Health care professionals and policy makers should be aware of substantial AMI incidence differences between migrant groups and the host population, and the often unbeneficial change over generations, most striking in some of Europe’s most expanding migrant groups (Polish, Chinese). Future research should be cautious when clustering migrant groups based on geographical region of the country of origin.

Ethnic Disparities in the Graduate Labour Market

This paper examines ethnic wage differentials for the entire population of workers who enrolled for the first time as students at Dutch universities (WO) and colleges (HBO) in 1996 using unique administrative panel data for the period 1996 to 2005 from the Dutch tertiary education system. The study breaks down wage differentials into two components: a component which can be explained by the observed characteristics and an unexplained component. The analysis provides new evidence for the magnitude and the origin of ethnic wage differentials by gender. In general, ethnic wage gap is larger for migrant women than migrant men and larger for Western and Caribbean migrants than for Mediterranean migrants. Ethnic minority workers appear to have larger wage surpluses which is almost entirely explained by their observed favourable characteristics. Most notably, Mediterranean female graduates have significantly positive wage discrimination, while Western female graduates seem to face a small wage penalty.

Review Paper: The Health Status of Migrants in Australia: A Review

This review summarizes the findings of studies conducted in Australia between 1980 and 2008 that focused on the health status of migrants in one or more of Australia's National Health Priority Areas (NHPAs), identifies gaps in knowledge, and suggests further research directions. Systematic literature searches were performed on CINAHL, MediText, PsycINFO, and MEDLINE. It was found that the majority of migrants enjoy better health than the Australian-born population in the conditions that are part of the NHPAs, with the exception of diabetes. Mediterranean migrants have particularly favorable health outcomes. The migrant health advantage appears to deteriorate with increasing duration of residence. Many of the analyzed studies were conducted more than 10 years ago or had a narrow focus. Little is known about the health status of migrants with respect to a number of NHPAs, including musculoskeletal conditions and asthma.The health status of recently arrived migrant groups from the Middle East and Africa has not been explored in detail.

La porta stretta. L'Italia e "l'altra riva" tra colonialismo e politiche migratorie

It is a known fact that Italians have not come to terms with their colonial past, and that xenophobic attitudes can be traced along the full political spectrum of Italian history and contemporary politics. In this essay, the author stresses the fact that Italians also turned colonialist when European colonialism was in decline, and racist when the rest of Europe put its racial tendencies under scrutiny. He further argues that the same attitudes of denial, delay, and blindness to the racial element in Italian society and politics can also be traced in the evolution of the social sciences from the end of the war to the early 1990s, when a sudden rise in immigration from the Mediterranean basin imposed the “racial other” to the center of both scholarly and political debates. As a consequence of this culpable delay, the author concludes that the principal attitudes towards Mediterranean migrants in Italian discourse, politics, and society still oscillate between criminalization on the right and a bland form of (multi)culturalism on the left, both oblivious to the profound oppression and “invisibility” of the “other” in Italian society.