Lorenzo Rinelli

Esta intervenção surgiu do aumento da utilização de tecnologias de reconhecimento facial na gestão da população, mais especificamente no controle da migração europeia. Inspirado por essas circunstâncias, reflito sobre o uso de lentes ópticas desde o início do uso da câmera pelos europeus como arma colonial até os dispositivos de captura de imagens atuais como uma ferramenta de rastreamento para detectar e acampar pessoas em movimento. Creio que esta metodologia arqueológica com sensibilidade estética permite revelar como as técnicas disciplinares contemporâneas de captação de imagens são produzidas por uma relação complexa de poder e saber enquadrada na mesma lógica biométrica de procura da verdade que marcou a dominação colonial europeia. Concluo minha intervenção apresentando uma poderosa obra de arte de uma artista contemporânea que rompe a reivindicação ilusória de verdade científica e imparcialidade que ainda coloniza o sistema de verificação visual e evocando raízes africanas ...

This article problematizes the rhythm of Rome that emerges as a symphony from the multicultural agenda of the new city urban grand plan. Officially the plan aims at giving voice to different sounds of the immigrant communities living in the city; in reality, I sustain, it renders their rhythm unintelligible, their essence never a possibility. After framing the ideas behind the new grand plan for Rome, I engage in a contrapuntal reading of two documentaries L’Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio(Ferrente, 2009) –The Vittorio Square Orchestra, and Come un Uomo sulla Terra(Segre & Yimer, 2008) - Like a Man on Earth. By comparing the two on the light of roman urban policies and European migration control practices, I establish how the former despacializes other ideas of communities and reinforces the homogenization of immigrants’ unique experiences of the urban.

More than twenty years ago Edward Portes pointed out that “The major contemporary migration flows do not follow a blind economic logic, but are commonly patterned by historical bonds of hegemony and the structural imbalance of peripheral societies subjected to the influence of more powerful nations” (2000, 161). To comprehend and reflect on that structural imbalance within our interconnected world while challenging the current discourse on Euro-Africa mobility is the fundamental premise of this comprehensive volume. Part of the “Border Regions” series, “Expanding Boundaries: borders, mobilities and the future of Europe-Africa relations” edited by Jussi P. Lane, Inocent Moyo and Christopher Changwe Nshimbi consider Africa-Europe’s borders and the phenomenon of migration that traverses them through a holistic perspective in which challenges and opportunities coexist in a complex way (Rinelli 2015). Between the lines of several chapters, we discern the intellectual stance to call into question two unique and related problems that often condition outcomes of numerous investigations on Africa-Europe relations through the lens of mobility. First and foremost, the question of limited research funds for African scholars located in Africa is addressed. Next, a political economy of knowledge that leads to a proliferation of research that specially focuses on emigration of Africans towards Europe and read it as a threat turning the security spotlight on is highlighted. With regard to the former, academic literature has normally given prominence to foreigner scholars whereas African voices are seldom audible (Ranciere 2006). Here lies the fundamental strength of this volume, which also represents its greatest risk by attributing validity simply through a geographical construct. The organization of this volume in three main sections is appropriate for the purpose of challenging at once both issues mentioned above. What is more, for a cross-disciplinary collection, the whole volume reads well with a concise and clear prose that leads the audience conversant in Migration Studies, Border Studies but also in Conflict and Security Studies, to knowledge making. It does so by incorporating alternative framings and visions that otherwise have been for the most part extremely politicized and Eurocentric. Take for example the first part which problematizes the concept of the externalization of European migration control. That is arguably in the last twenty years the main European border policy that can be condensed in the transfer of border management to third countries and which has been the subject of heated discussions on many occasions such

This article theorizes the dynamics that emerge from the intimate relationship between contemporary African migration, liquid borders, and law around the channel of Sicily, between Italy and Libya. There, in the same waters where Ulysses and Aeneas roamed for years, whose epic journeys are considered foundational within the European identity narrative, today the trajectories that migrants boats traverse are disrupting and shuffling the European geographical limits. As a response, states are enacting a policy of containment that renders African migrants’ presence at sea invisible, while criminalizing human solidarity enacted by private organizations as well as individuals. Making use of a legal discourse analysis I will dig the premises behind the antinomic concept of criminal solidarity that emerges today in Europe as a somehow coherent system of thought, shaped by laws, codes of conduct, rules, and rulings. Specifically, by analyzing the rulings of one tribunal in Sicily, I will ma...

Based on an ongoing group effort with undocumented migrants, this article highlights a series of processes, problems, and instances that allow us to theorize the political subjectivity of undocumented migrants. More specifically, the essay draws on fieldwork in Lampedusa that culminated in the LampedusaInFestival event, without limiting itself to a single ethnographic study. This work looks at how the island of Lampedusa has acquired a symbolic status, serving as both the camp and the gateway of Europe, with the power to attract and catalyze different subjects, some of whom are active in political struggles — their undocumented status notwithstanding.

This book challenges the common European notions about African migration to Europe and offers a holistic understanding of the current situation in Africa. It advocates a need to rethink Africa-Europe relations and view migration and borders as a resource rather than as sources of a crisis. Migrant movement from Africa is often misunderstood and misrepresented as invasion caused by displacement due to poverty, violent conflict, and environmental stress. To control this movement and preserve national identities, the EU and its various member states resort to closing borders as a way of reinforcing their migration policies. This book aims to dismantle this stereo-typical view of migration from Africa by sharing cutting-edge research from the leading scholars in Africa and Europe. It refutes the flawed narratives that position Africa as a threat to European societies, their economies, and security, and encourages a nuanced understanding of the root causes as well as the socioeconomic fa...

Distorção de lentes: captura de imagem, racismo e subversão da fotografia colonial à "iborder"

This intervention emerged from the increase of use of facial recognition technologies on population management, specifically on European migration management. Inspired by these circumstances I reflect over the use of optical lens from the early use of the camera by Europeans in colonial times in connection to contemporary image capture devices as a tracking tool to detecting and encamp people on the move. I believe that this archaeological methodology with an aesthetic sensibility allows to reveal how contemporary disciplinary techniques of image capture are produced by a complex relation of power and knowledge framed within the same biometric logic of truth-seeking that marked the European colonial domination. I conclude my intervention by featuring a powerful artwork of a contemporary artist that with her artwork disrupts the illusory claim of scientific truth and impartiality that still nowadays colonizes the system of visual verification, by upsetting its cluster of relations of power, by evoking forgotten African roots of modernity.

This essay examines insurrectional asylum-seeking and refugee practices that highlight and disturb the legal and spatial relationship between refugee camps, zones of capture, and cities. Through a critical consideration of the logic of the refugee camp and its intersection with the law, technology, security, and humanitarian discourses, we map a series of practices emerging from the proliferation of camps, the urbanization and normalization of refugee camps, and their virtualization and inscription on human bodies. The essay engages as well, insurrectional enactments and everyday movement(s) in Tel Aviv, Rome, and Nairobi that affirm today's refugees’ and asylum seekers’ right to the city. In doing so, we raise ethical and political questions about the equivalence of the rights of citizens and those of stateless persons and the entanglements between camps, cities, and camp-cities.

As I write this intervention, Italy, the country where I dwell, is in a complete lock-down mode while the epidemic's impact on Italy's mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. This publication is based on my present-time reflections as a social scientist and thinker with a specific preoccupation with border studies, highlighting the ethical and political implications of the epidemic in Italy, particularly for migrant workers. This piece is written as the health crisis unfolds with no end in sight but with the inevitable contraction of the economy and the subsequent well-being of migrant workers when the pandemic is under control. It is a snapshot of our time and of a personal journey.

"Onwards ad-agio then, but together, because it is within the empty space next to us that the impact of our power over the other’s concern materializes, and where the basis for judgments about the very essence of any community- to-come, dwells."

This article theorizes the dynamics that emerge from the intimate relationship between contemporary African migration, liquid borders, and law around the channel of Sicily, between Italy and Libya. This is one of the deadliest and most trafficked migratory passages in the world. By analyzing the rulings of one tribunal in Sicily, I will make an attempt to expose how rigid conceptions of borders naturalize state’s efforts to define the limits of national territory, while conversely, I will consider how the micropolitics of justice are capable of shaping the contours of discourses on current migration.

The development of digital media and the availability of new technologies have had an important impact on how nowadays trauma of displacement have been documented and narrated by victims in different contexts. This intervention aims at discussing ways in which those memories can – or not – be gathered and elaborated in the digital realm. I will be looking among other things at my personal visual project for the Italian national association for civilian victims of war [ANVCG] and African asylum seekers for the elaboration of scenario planning laboratories with high school students in the Island of Lampedusa. There, within the borderscape, a combination of oral biographies and aesthetic tools –video making, storytelling, drawing and design-collapse the digital generational gap and unbridle students' fervid imagination around the peculiarities of the geographical place and the possibilities of time, in times of crisis. In other words, I eventually consider the cathartic effect of aesthetics by combining archival and interactivity possibilities with regards to the generational gap and technological leap which permeates this historical transition in which we happen to be.

In questo momento di estrema fragilità per l’Europa dovremmo guardare alla migrazione nel modo in cui guardiamo a noi stessi. La diplomazia europea ha un ruolo fondamentale all’interno del progetto
umanitario di lungo periodo volto a dirimere i conflitti e democratizzare i regimi che soffocano la società civile africana. C’è la necessità impellente di sviluppare politiche innovative per moltiplicare i potenziali benefici sociali ed economici di questa giovane popolazione in movimento,
e quindi per rendere tale movimento sostenibile.

Migration is sustainable when it meets the needs of countries of origin, transit and destination, while accompanying migrant populations without depleting natural and human resources Under what conditions do we consider migration sustainable? What do we mean by sustainability of migration in an age when more people are on the move on a global scale? What does this mean with regard to the specific case of the African continent? While intra-continental African migration has decreased by approximately 38% in the last 15 years, the number of people moving from one African country to another is still greater than the number of those leaving Africa for Europe by approximately 68.5%. Extra-continental emigration to Europe is on the rise. With regard to Africa, the increased movement of people is also caused by the fact that, from the late 1990s, there has been a sharp and proportional increase in “riots and protests” (ACLED, 2016) whose nature, causes and effects go beyond the scope of this paper. However, the reality is that the number of African young people is rapidly and relentlessly expanding against the backdrop of limited opportunities. To address this, there is a need to develop new policies to capture the potential social and economic benefits of Africa’s population growth and to make population movements sustainable. While the question of sustainability in general remains contested, sustainable migration between the two continents of Africa and Europe is one that meets the needs and priorities of countries of origin, transit and destination while aiding voluntary and forced migrant populations by avoiding the depletion of natural and human resources, more so human life. Policy choices and actions can capture the enormous potential of African migrants to turn them into a healthy, educated, empowered labour force that can contribute to the real and sustained economic growth of both Africa and Europe.

Based on an ongoing group effort with undocumented migrants, this article highlights a series of processes, problems, and instances that allow us to theorize the political subjectivity of undocumented migrants. More specifically, the essay draws on fieldwork in Lampedusa that culminated in the LampedusaInFestival event, without limiting itself to a single ethnographic study. This work looks at how the island of Lampedusa has acquired a symbolic status, serving as both the camp and the gateway of Europe, with the power to attract and catalyze different subjects, some of whom are active in political struggles — their undocumented status notwithstanding.

This essay examines insurrectional asylum-seeking and refugee practices that highlight and disturb the legal and spatial relationship between refugee camps, zones of capture, and cities. Through a critical consideration of the logic of the refugee camp and its intersection with the law, technology, security, and humanitarian discourses, we map a series of practices emerging from the proliferation of camps, the urbanization and normalization of refugee camps, and their virtualization and inscription on human bodies. The essay engages as well, insurrectional enactments and everyday movement(s) in Tel Aviv, Rome, and Nairobi that affirm today's refugees’ and asylum seekers’ right to the city. In doing so, we raise ethical and political questions about the equivalence of the rights of citizens and those of stateless persons and the entanglements between camps, cities, and camp-cities.

This piece looks into the urban dimensions of migrants' journey from Africa into Europe. Specifically, it follows few African migrants into the city of Rome. In this piece, I locate one of the new frontiers of Europe within a paradox of the city of Rome that is both fundamental and vital to its economic expansion: an inexorable growth of buildings that goes together with a mounting rejection and marginalization of an emergent immigrant population. The analysis of this paradox is crucial and reveals the way cityspace as a striated space is traversed by memories, sounds, images and experiences. A sort of living and pulsing archive that is transformed and re-membered in interesting ways by the new migrants. The paper takes into consideration the ways in which migration control policies and migrants’ lived experiences transform and have been transformed by the city.

This article problematizes the rhythm of Rome that emerges as a symphony from the multicultural agenda of the new city urban grand plan. Officially the plan aims at giving voice to different sounds of the immigrant communities living in the city; in reality, I sustain, it renders their rhythm unintelligible, their essence never a possibility. After framing the ideas behind the new grand plan for Rome, I engage in a contrapuntal reading of two documentaries L’Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio(Ferrente, 2009) –The Vittorio Square Orchestra, and Come un Uomo sulla Terra(Segre & Yimer, 2008) - Like a Man on Earth. By comparing the two on the light of roman urban policies and European migration control practices, I establish how the former despacializes other ideas of communities and reinforces the homogenization of immigrants’ unique experiences of the urban.

This article examines the 2006 Fanta advertising campaign for Italy, which employs Hawaiian cultural particularities inscribed in a generic tropical scenario to sell the Fanta soft drink to the world market. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s work on faciality, I aim to show how media promotion of leisure products reinforces the colonial perception of Indigenous cultures, Also, and less obviously, I aspire to comprehend how Transnational Corporations’ (TNCs) advertising allows both the construction and alteration of determinate geographical spaces and cultural practices that eventually become evocative to the potential consumer. I am interested in the process of coding that neutralizes Native peoples’ unique geographical and historical expressions. This process I have in mind constitutes the sounding board for the subjectification of the viewer, as stereotypical signs of Native cultures become the referent for commodities.